In Carroll County, Maryland, there is a small town named Silver Run. In the late 1700s, a master silversmith named Ahrwud resided in the area with his daughter Frieda. He moved to the area from Germany with his wife and daughter, but his wife died shortly after they arrived. Ahrwud was known to be friendly with the local Native American tribe the Susqhuehannocks. He was said to be a gruff man with a long white dirty beard who smoked a clay pipe and wore a silver cross that he cast himself and a wide brimmed hat. Ahrwud and his daughter lived separately from the other settlers.
Frieda, his daughter, was blonde and very smart. It's said that she taught herself to read the Bible when she was 4 years old. As she matured, Frieda became a skilled artist able to sketch and paint beautifully. She often helped design the silver pieces her father made. She was known to roam the woods wearing moccasins and her hair in braids.
People were curious about Ahrwud's friendship with the Susqhehannocks, his beautiful daughter with her hair in braids, and the fact that Ahrwud could sell his goods at unusually low prices. It seemed as if he had an unlimited supply of silver.
Every night, Ahrwud would lock Frieda in her room. She would hear her German father speaking the language of the Susqhehannocks, followed by the sound of him closing and locking the shop door. Frieda was frustrated at being treated like a child despite being 17 years old. One night, she stayed up waiting for her father's return. When Ahrwud entered the house, Frieda called out to him saying, "Father! Father! Where have you been? Please tell me or I shall die!" Ahrwud unlocked the door and embraced his daughter. He realized that she had waited up all night for him to return so he promised to show her his secret the next night--if she swore on her life never to tell another person.
As night fell, Ahrwud fulfilled his promise. He blindfolded his daughter and ventured into the darkness, guiding her with one hand and carrying a lantern in the other. The path was rugged, leading them uphill and downhill through thorns and brush. At a stream, Frieda was allowed to drink, and her blindfold was briefly removed. She used the chance to orient herself before being blindfolded again to continue their journey. Eventually, they reached a cave. It was cold and damp and Ahrwud picked Frieda up and carried her down some steps. He placed her on a rock ledge and removed her blindfold.
It was a low cave, and the walls were of green stone and were covered with pictures of the Indian gods. Frieda looked down and gasped. Scattered around the cave floor were piles and piles of silver. Jewelry and plates, glittered at her feet. Ahrwud told his daughter that the mine belonged to the Susqhehannocks, who shared its location with him due to their friendship. He warned her that if the mine's secret ever left their family, they would face death within three days. The mine would disappear, and their souls would wander the earth until three lives were sacrificed to set them free. Only then would the local settlers discover the mine's location. Frieda vowed to keep the secret.
Ahrwud began melting the silver to create coins. An hour before dawn, he blindfolded his
daughter, and they returned home. But Frieda, being smart, marked the path by snapping branches as they traveled back to their house. Once they arrived home, Ahrwud went to sleep, but Frieda was too excited and immediately went to tell her friend about the treasures she had seen. After some persuasion, Frieda's friend convinced her to reveal the mine. Using the broken branches as a guide, the girls found their way to the cave. They loaded up with as much silver as they could carry and headed home. Unbeknownst to them, they were being watched.
The first day went by without any events, as did the second, but on the third day, several Native Americans arrived at Ahrwud's home. Informing Ahrwud about his daughter's betrayal, they took both him and his daughter out of the house and to the mine. There, Ahrwud began to weep knowing what fate was about to befall him. Frieda was wrestled to the ground and beheaded. The Native Americans then began to dance around Ahrwud as they burned Ahrwud's eyes with a rod of hot silver. The Native Americans left the bodies there in the cave and sealed the entrance to the cave.
Shortly after Ahrwud and Frieda disappeared, the settlers began to see Strange eerie things around the area of Rattlesnake Hill. On moonlit nights they would see the figure of a headless woman as tall as the trees. The figure had a column of fire dancing above her shoulders; and carrying a lantern by her side. They would also see the spirit of Ahrwud carrying a lantern made out of his daughter's head. People began to suspect that this was the location of the mine, but they were soon driven away by large black dogs and hideous serpents, or killed.
There was a mine shaft dug on Rattlesnake Hill during the gold craze of 1848 by a group of men from Woodsboro, Maryland. But they became discouraged and gave up, and left a large hole behind. Nut others believe that they were frightened away by evil spirits that chased them demanding their souls in payment for the silver. The mine remained undisturbed until 1875, when Josiah Myers of Hanover, Pennsylvania, with two assistants, re-opened mining operations. They used hex signs, four leaf clovers, and talismans that they carried with them as protection from the evil spirits.
Despite their protection, they were doomed. Black cats with fiery red eyes appeared and disappeared around the mine, huge black dogs would bare their fangs and vanish into the ground with a puff of smoke, and strange salamander-like creatures would dart through the air and under the leaves, disappearing when the men tried to catch them.
On August 15, 1875, the head miner was buried under ten feet of earth by a cave-in. The other men frantically tried to dig him out, but he was dead before they could reach him. It was whispered that two more people had to die before the cursed souls of Ahrwud and Frieda would be set free and the silver mine rediscovered
The following article article appeared in the February 7. 1885 issue of the American Sentinel:
"The famous Myers' District silver mine, about a mile and a half east of this place, was reopened a couple weeks ago by a young German who has only been in this country two months. The vicinity of the mine still sustains its reputation for queer appearances. The miner says that on Friday morning, 30th ult., at nine minutes past eleven o'clock, the hour the moon fulled, three curiously clad Indians carrying a lantern, appeared on the hill by him and disappeared in the woods beyond. One evening while he was digging by moonlight, they also made their appearance.--T."
Another article appeared in the April 25th edition of the Hanover Spectator::
"....A light, as of a lantern carried by someone was said to have often been seen moving across the hills toward the mine, which, if followed, would disappear; this light always moved in a uniform course, and was never seen to pass beyond the mine. A well authenticated story comes from a man who must have seen Old Ahrwud himself. This man was one night walking along a post fence, not far from the mine, when he noticed a stranger just on the other side of the fence, wearing a long gray beard, a big broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a lighted lantern. The stranger moved quietly with him until they reached a crossfence bounding the next field, when the stranger passed through the fence without raising his lantern and vanished. When this man was asked why he did not talk with the stranger, he answered, "He didn't look as if he wanted to talk!" A farmer who lived near the mine said that he often saw this light and that he was one night coming down the Hanover road with his team when, at a point in the road where the woods reach from the road to the mine, his horses stopped and refused to go a step. He got off the saddle horse, and went forward, but could find nothing in the road; he then whipped the horses, without making them move, until he felt a breath of cold air across his face, after which the horses moved on as if nothing was wrong. He did not see anything himself, but the horses snorted as if in great fright. Another person spoke of a time when he was a boy, and was one night going near by the mine with his father...when his father with a sudden start said: "Did you see that woman without a head? She was nearly as tall as the trees!" The boy did not see the headless woman, but said that he saw a big fire burning on the top of the trees that same night."
At the intersection of Route 97 and Old Hanover Road in Union Mills, Maryland, Rattlesnake Hill can be seen. The hill is now part of private property. In the area where the mine is believed to be, is an outcropping of glacial rock. Though common 20 minutes north in Gettysburg, PA, this type of rock formation sits in contrast to the rolling farmland of Carroll County, MD.
The rock formation is a mound of several boulders roughly seventy feet long by thirty feet high. At the base of this mound, is a pit filled with rusted junk and leaves. About 30 feet away sits another pit. There is a shallow cave at the top of the formation that is just big enough to squeeze into if you go sideways. Local residents say that civil war soldiers made and stored bullets there, and Confederate scouts watched Union armies march up the road to Gettysburg.
Is there truth behind the legends? Perhaps we'll never know.
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