A museum tour of Western Maryland

“There are museums in Western Maryland?”

That was an incredulous colleague speaking, after I vaguely mentioned taking a trip to the mountain side of the Old Line State to check out the area’s museums.

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Yes, I said museums. I’m neither a skier nor much of a hiker, at least in the cold. But I hankered for a small-town getaway on a wintry January weekend, and small-town museums just seemed like a funky idea. Obviously.

But hah. I am vindicated. The answer is not only, yes, Andrea, there are museums in Western Maryland, but also, boy, are there ever.

Escapes: Details, Western Maryland

I’m thinking this in the Thrasher Carriage Museum in Frostburg, where I’m staring at a lovely green park trap with red wheels and wood trim. The park trap was the sports car of the horse-and-buggy era, curator Gary Bartik is telling me, and I’m nodding mm-hmm, it’s definitely flashy. But what I’m fixated on is the informational sign in front of me, which tells me that this lovely piece, acquired from relatives of President Theodore Roosevelt, was manufactured by C.N. Dennet of Amesbury, Mass.

Amesbury! That’s so exciting — I feel as if I know that carriage-maker! I’ve driven past the house he once lived in a thousand times when visiting my old New England home and haunts. We always remark on it — “There’s the carriage-maker’s house.” But who was that carriage-maker? What kind of carriages did he make? No idea. And now here, an actual product of his manufacture. I love it when one small piece of your life connects with another so unexpectedly this way.

The Amesbury carriage is my personal highlight, but it’s just one of dozens at this amazing little museum — in Frostburg, of all places. There’s Roosevelt’s inaugural coach — a green five-glass landau with a convertible top (well, sort of convertible; you had to actually lift it off). And the stunning sleighs. The pretty ladies’ basket phaeton from 1912, once owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, the wicker still in perfect condition. And the gleaming black Brewster bachelor’s carriage, with its backstory of sibling rivalry: a falling-out; one brother keeps the family company, wins major prizes in Paris and eventually sells the business to Rolls-Royce. The other brother’s breakaway company? It falters and fails. So sad.

When it comes to backstories, though, there’s hardly any better than Jim Thrasher’s. The carriages’ original owner was an eighth-grade dropout with a love of horse-drawn vehicles who began collecting them in the 1950s, after making good in coal and construction. Eventually, he amassed 100, for what’s considered to be the third-best collection on the East Coast. But he didn’t just let the buggies sit there. He drove them. All around town. Can you picture it? That is so cool.

“That was a great museum,” says my husband when we finally leave. Totally unprompted, he says this. Which makes it high praise, believe me, because this is not a man given to effusiveness. But here he’s sounding almost as enthusiastic as Gary Bartik, who’s about the most enthusiastic museum curator I’ve ever encountered.