Collection documents Middletown's history

Feb. 24—In an upstairs room of Middletown's town office, pieces of the town's history are spread out in piles and boxes.

In a stack in one corner are programs from town homecoming events in 1914 and 1925, along with booklets from gatherings of the Middletown Woman's Club dating from the 1920s and '30s.

On a table across the room, a tattered copy of the Valley Register newspaper from Sept. 26, 1862, lies in a plastic sleeve, with a front page article that informed the residents of the Middletown Valley of President Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Becky Axilbund, the executive director of Main Street Middletown, holds a frame with the senior portraits of the 29 members of the Middletown High School graduating class of 1931.

The items come from thousands of pieces of memorabilia collected by former commissioner Larry Bussard over decades of documenting the town's history.

There are a lot of photos from various families in the town, as well as maps, church programs

"It is anything and everything that says Middletown, Maryland," Axilbund said.

Many of the items show how rural and isolated Middletown was until fairly recently, when a trip over Braddock Mountain to Frederick was more difficult than it is now, she said.

One photo from the early 1900s shows several children sitting in front of Christ Reformed United Church of Christ along South Church Street, as several cattle roam nearby.

Bussard served as a Middletown commissioner for 18 years before stepping down in September 2020.

He was also the longtime owner of Bussard's Barbershop on Main Street, where he joined his father in 1966 and cut the hair of three generations of Middletown residents before retiring in 2017.

Bussard said Wednesday that he built his collection by gathering items from people who knew he was interested in documenting the town's history and through going to estate sales and auctions.

"If it had Middletown on it, I bought it," he said.

Several items document the life and career of baseball player Charlie Keller, a Middletown native who won four World Series titles with the New York Yankees in the 1940s.

While he had a hard time narrowing down his favorite piece, he settled on a large wooden sign that read "Main's Quality Ice Cream, Middletown, Maryland," representing the creamery that once occupied the spot on Main Street where The Main Cup restaurant is today.

Both of his grandfathers had worked for Main's, giving the sign a sentimental value.

The town had decided several years ago to dedicate the room at the town offices to record the town's history, but the process had been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Burgess John Miller said.

Bussard's collection offers an important record of the local history and what has been important to residents over the years, he said.

As Bussard has brought items in, the town has brought in other longtime residents to help identify people in photos or where photos were taken, and so the process has become something of a community project.

Bussard's artifacts have been an "invaluable" part of that process, Miller said.

"We're just so fortunate to have this type of record of our history," he said.

Follow Ryan Marshall on Twitter: @RMarshallFNP