Cursed Land in Garrett County Scorches All Homes

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Please welcome guest author James Rada, Jr. Rada writes non-fiction history and historical fiction. His books include the historical novels Canawlers, October Mourning, Between Rail and River and The Rain Man. His non-fiction books are Battlefield Angels: The Daughters of Charity Work as Civil War Nurses and Looking Back: True Stories of Mountain Maryland.

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In Garrett County, MD, somewhere around Swallow Falls or McHenry, there is a plot of land that may be “cursed.”

Early in the 19th century, Joseph Friend, who was a son-in-law of the Western Maryland frontiersman Meshach Browning, built a home midway between Sang Run and Oakland.

In 1823, Friend had married Rachael Browning, who was the second of 11 children born to Meshach Browning and his first wife, Mary McMullen. Meshach Browning has been called Maryland’s most famous frontier hunter. He also explored much of Western Maryland. He remains well known today because of his memoir Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter, which was first published in 1859.

Browning’s father, Joshua, was an English soldier who survived Braddock’s massacre in 1755. He deserted the army and settled in Western Maryland to make his way as a woodsman.

Meshach Browning learned these skills growing up. He was drafted into the military as a sergeant and served for a short time in the War of 1812. After the war, he returned home to hunt and explore. Browning estimated in his book that during his lifetime he killed “from 1800 to 2000 deer, from 300 to 400 bears, and about 50 panthers and catamounts, with scores of wolves and wildcats.”

Friend’s home, in what would eventually become Garrett County, was his dream home for his family until it burned down, killing two of Friend’s sons. The Cumberland Evening Times (Feb 2, 1899) lists the two children who died as John, 8, and Freeman, 10.

However, a family tree compiled by a branch of the family indicates that Joseph Friend and Rachael Browning had 10 children, but only two of them died in the same year. Mahlon and John both died in 1839. These two boys were also two years apart for a portion of the year while Freeman and John were nine years apart.

“Mr. Friend, thinking that the occurrence was one of those awful accidents that sometimes happens, rebuilt, but when his house burned down the second time in the same mysterious way that it did the first, he thought it was very strange and refused to rebuild and moved elsewhere,” the newspaper reported.

Friend sold the property to a man whose last name was Bray. He knew about the mysterious fires that had burned down two homes. Undeterred, Bray built his home on the old foundation only to have it burn down a short time later.

Bray wasn’t ready to give up. “Mr. Bray, like Mr. Friend, concluded that he would not rebuild on the old site or foundation, so he changed the location and had his new house erected near the old foundation,” The Evening Times reported. In 1899, Bray’s second home burned down. The fire from the house also jumped to the large barn that stood a few yards away from the house.

“Mr. Bray, like the former owner, also concludes that the spot is doomed, and will not again replace the buildings. He is terribly worried about the matter as all he has is wrapped up in his little farm,” the newspaper reported. Rachael Friend died in 1869 in Deer Park and Joseph died in 1894 in Sang Run. The unknown plot of cursed land remains waiting for the next home to be built upon it.

More articles on early Garrett County, MD:

Some notes on Sang Run, MD(Opens in a new browser tab)

Drinking a quart of whiskey neutralizes the poison(Opens in a new browser tab)

The accidental town(Opens in a new browser tab)