Tag: history

Author and historian Joe Manning, Florence, Mass., recently completed an online article that centered on the Blizzard family and the Garrett County mining town of Kempton, pictured below. George Blizzard was among the many employees of the Davis Coal and Coke Company, which began operations in 1914. The company built the mine and houses on a hillside above the Potomac, where most of the residents lived in single-family houses, with four to six rooms, an outdoor toilet, and a small lot, enough for a lawn in front and a small garden in back. Next to the company store was an arcade called the Opera House, with a lunchroom, bowling alleys, pool tables, dance floor, and auditorium. The streets were unpaved. By 1918, Kempton had 106 houses and a population of 850, which grew to around 2,000 by the time the mine suddenly closed in April 1950, causing the Garrett County commissioners to have the county declared a federal disaster area as some 250 miners were suddenly unemployed. Within a decade or so, the town all but disappeared. Pictured above are George and Lillie Blizzard, with children (from left) Mildred, Carl, Dorothy (front), and Nellie. Dorothy Blizzard Slaubaugh is still living today in Virginia, and an interview with her done by Manning in February is included in his feature. Many descendants of the Blizzards reside in Garrett County today. For the past seven years, Manning has been conducting a personal project to track down and interview descendants of some of the families photographed by the Farm Security Administration in the late 1930s and early 1940s. “In my career as a social worker, I became interested in child labor photos, and wanted to find out what ultimately happened to these children,” Manning said. “I began scanning the many photos available through the FSA and had a desire to turn these children and their families into more than just a photo; to find out about them and what became of them.” He has completed nearly 50 such articles over the past several years. Manning grew up in southern Maryland, but spent a lot of time in Garrett County. His father Joseph was a deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources under Governor Marvin Mandel and had a second home in Garrett County. Manning’s online article about Kempton and the Blizzard family can be found at http://www.eightsteeples.com/blizzard1.html.

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