First Day at Ferry Hill

June 13 – One nice thing about not having to report for duty until 10 is we don’t have to get up early.  It’s less than a 10 minute drive to the Ferry Hill Visitor Center.  We had our breakfast and I packed a light lunch since my hours will be 10 until 2.  I took a shirt to change into as Bill was to pick me up at 2 and we were going into Hagerstown.

 

We both went into the VC so Bill could meet the ranger and other volunteers.  The ranger actually was only filling in and normally there won’t be a ranger at that location on a steady basis.  It’s primarily manned by local and summer volunteers.  The person basically in charge is a young girl from the UK who just finished high this year and came to volunteer for the summer.   So an 18 year old is in charge but she was off today visiting friends in VA.  The lady there today has been a volunteer for 4 years and she shared a lot of info as did the ranger who is a seasonal ranger for the summer and attends college.  Both were extremely knowledgeable.  After Bill left I mostly visited with the other volunteer and read a lot of the info on display.  Ferry Hill was a plantation on the bank of the Potomac and the C & O Canal.  There was first a ferry at the base and then the owner built the original Ferry Hill home and was very prosperous.  It was in the same family for 6 generations and has been added to and changed quite a bit but it’s quite a magnificent place to see from the canal as it sits so majestically at the top of the hill in plain site. 

 

That ferry crossing was a critical point during the Civil War as one side was Confederate and one was Yankee and that ended up causing the family to be imprisoned in their home by the Yankee forces.  They also camped there and used up the bulk of the resources leaving everything in shambles.  The house was used as a military field hospital also.

 

I told Bill to take a book tomorrow as there was not a single visitor the whole day.  Our job will be to greet, ask visitors to sign in, answer questions and run the register for sales at the bookstore.  We can do tours if we like.  I won’t but maybe Bill will.  Only the ground floor of the original home is open to the public as the upstairs is not in good condition.  The rest of the ground floor was much later additions that at one time were made into offices for the park but later abandoned and are just used by the personnel at Ferry Hill.  Due to lack of funding there are no plans to continue to refurbish the house, just to maintain it.

 

Bill was on time and we drove into Hagerstown and found the Staples, Lowes and Vitamin Shoppe at our first stop and the Wal-Mart at our second.  It was looking dark and we expected storming so we didn’t want to be gone too long.  By the time we got home it had rained and was passed.  Good!

 

After dinner I made a small batch of cookies and learned to print my own postage stamps on line so we don’t have to keep finding post offices while we travel.  Bill wrote more postcards and we watched a couple our summer shows on USA.  That’s kinda our official summer station.

 

Kam said this weekend she'd work on my photo album links and some other issues.  That will be great to get back on track.