CUMBERLAND — Formed from a Facebook group with more than 3,000 members, Cumberland Heritage Partners LLC is a small group of investors that preserves rare pieces of Allegany County history including two of the oldest log buildings constructed within city limits.
“We’ve never had this many people digging at the same time, on the same questions,” said Dave Williams, a local historian and member of the Facebook group Western Maryland History. “What we have is a whole new category of people adamantly following local history.”
The group researched the historic value of two county structures and decided to purchase two log buildings believed to have been built around the early 1800’s, a unique time in Cumberland’s past, because the National Road was not yet constructed, the C&O Canal hadn’t been built and the B&O Railroad was nearly 30 years from inception.
“It was a really neat time,” said Williams. “So our guys committed themselves to take a little bit of money out of their pocket and make sure some key pieces of this time didn’t just go away.”
The first purchase was the McIntosh House located on Mechanic Street and thought to have been erected in 1809 by Dickenson Simpkins, a Revolutionary War officer who also operated a tavern on Valley Street.
The second was built by Michael Brotemarkle, a wagoner, on land inherited from his father, Christophe Brotemarkle, a German Hessian mercenary who fought for the British in the Revolutionary War. It was located on Valley Road but has been deconstructed and the logs moved to another location.
In the time following the British Revolution, Cumberland was still a ghost town, Williams said. The industrial boom hadn’t happened yet, and the area was a constant flow of settlers moving west.
Williams said this forgotten era is important to remember and preserve.
“This is not a history that happened anywhere else, this is uniquely ours,” said Williams. “The purchase of these two buildings is a very modest start, but we have secured two pieces of history, and we are now working up a plan to see if we can redevelop them somehow on Mechanic Street and begin to recapture the history of Mechanic Street.”
Williams said having a historic preservation project is key to tourism.
“In addition to our museums and our preservation areas, if we always have projects that are discovering things that are open to the public, people are going to come to see the discovery,” said Williams.
Follow staff writer Heather Wolford on Twitter @heatherbwolford.
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