The Thurmont Historical Society is hoping to renew interest in the group and get some fresh ideas for projects of historical interest they can tackle, President John Kinnaird said. Next year, the group will celebrate its 20th anniversary.

There are now 25 members who regularly come to meetings, and Kinnaird recently sent out 145 newsletters talking about planning the anniversary.

The group is holding a general meeting at 7:00 p.m. on February 28 at The Creeger House, 11 North Church Street, to elect officers, get previous members re-involved, and gain insight from any new members "as to what we could or should be doing," he said.

"We’d like to come up with a list of projects that we could do," Kinnaird said. "Really, we haven’t much of anything in the last two years as far as any projects go. We did mostly fundraising in the past, the donation of The Creeger House, and [installing] central air [there]. In the last year, we’ve decided to have a Thurmont room in the Thurmont Regional Library. We’re going to give them our genealogical books and references."

One of the group’s founders, and President Emeritus Sterling Kelbaugh, said turning The Creeger House into a museum of Thurmont’s history has been the society’s major accomplishment so far. When the society started, they had no space for such displays, and no place to meet.

"We were using borrowed space in the Thurmont Bank, which is now Bank of America, and that was temporary," he said. "We had no meeting place. We had our original meetings at the town office and we stored the artifacts that were donated to the society at the bank, and it became necessary for us to find a home. We were fortune enough to have an abandoned house given to us by its owner."

When the group received what is now The Creeger House in 1993, it was in very bad structural condition, and had been vandalized, Kelbaugh said. The group renovated the home, which had originally been a log cabin built in the early 1800’s, that was later enlarged into two-story building.

"The size was more than doubled by Col. John Rouzer during the Civil War," he said.

"It’s not a historic restoration," he said. "It was done by many members volunteering their time and effort. It was done with no grant money, many contributions from citizens, local

business and town of Thurmont itself. We had several successful fundraisers."

Kelbaugh added that the group actually turned down a $25,000 grant offer from the state to restore The Creeger House, in order to have the freedom to restore it at their own pace, and to maintain property rights there.

"The house is now completed refurbished, completely re-wired," he continued. "The bulk of the work was probably completely done by 1998. In the summer of 2005, central air and heat were added."

However, The Creeger House is not open during the wintertime, he said, because there is no one to stay there and keep it open.

Kelbaugh said that an ongoing project that is personally important to him is obtaining a photographic history of Thurmont and its buildings. "We have electronic copies of over 2,000 photographs, thanks in large part to John Kinnaird," he said.

Kelbaugh added that most of the known history of the town has been passed along by tales told from one generation to the next. At the time of the Civil War the town’s name was Mechanicstown. "The Union First Corps and John Reynolds marched through Mechanicstown," Kelbaugh said. That’s quite a large group of people. There was Calvary movement through Mechanicstown before and after [Gettysburg] and also during the Chambersburg Raid. But, nobody was shooting at anybody [here]."

"The town in the 1700’s [was not] built by a developer," he said. "Some one stopped by here on his way across the mountains because of a sick child, [the story goes]. Nothing is written, it’s mostly an oral tradition we have here. We’re just trying to preserve anything from the past for the future."

Among some of the artifacts the group has collected so far are "signs from now long defunct places of businesses, and little things like that," Kelbaugh said.

"Right now we have just have a hodgepodge of artifacts from the past and quite a few wonderful photographs. We also have microfilms of local newspapers from the 19th century and early 20th century."

The town has seen quite a few papers come and go, including the Catoctin Clarion from the late 19th century to the 1930’s, and the weekly Catoctin Enterprise from the 1930’s to the 1990’s.

"The two that preceded that were short lived," he said. "One was on the wrong side of Civil War."

In what is now Thurmont, Kelbaugh estimates that 90 percent of residents supported the Union, "because of the culture of the people in this part of the country."

Kelbaugh said he hoped that the group would attract someone trained in putting together museum displays to help them showcase these items at The Creeger House.

"We have the facilities, and already a small collection of the things mentioned," he said. "That would be an interesting challenge to anybody that’s slightly interested in local history."

In addition to collecting historical artifacts, one of the main attractions of the group is the genealogical work it does to help people track down their family members, Kinnaird said.

Kelbaugh said that people can come in and use the geneological research library by appointment.

The group had thought about doing oral histories, but had not gotten far because of lack of members willing to conduct interviews, and gather the necessary materials.

"It takes some man power and people involved that would be willing to commit some time," he said.