Today, March 10, we changed the time. Well no, we changed our clocks. Time is constant and no matter how hard we try, we can’t change time. There’s been an attempt to change history with removing statues and editing text books but, the past remains unchanged.
Mother Nature certainly knows what time it is; the trees are budding and the cherry trees are about to burst into bloom.
Charles Carroll, one of America’s Founding Fathers and signer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, owned our land in 1759. In a town in Pennsylvania – Glenville, just outside Hanover, John Woerner (as he spelled it then) was farming with his son George in 1776. John’s father farmed near Littlestown and had come from Germany. John was born there in 1737. George left home to serve under George Washington. In 1783, George came home. He and his dad decided to move to Westminster and bought 177.5 acres of land that had been part of Charles Carroll’s Molly Fancy tract. This was the birth of Evermore Farm.
John and son George hand picked the land they bought. They lived in what we call the log house and began to build the main house. We know that John had completed the two story brick house and had a log barn on the property by 1790, as we have tax records where he commented that the taxes were too high (some things never change). It is likely to have been completed by about 1785 or so. John must have done OK at some point because it has nine foot ceilings on both floors, rare for the time and rare decorative brickwork.
The Woeners produced food for the new towns of Uniontown and Westminster- locally grown food. The Woerners continued to do so until John’s death in 1827. John was a contemporary of Jefferson, Adams, and most of the founders. He dies the year after them, at 89. We have no images of him, but his family has visited several times and states they were generally tall people.
We have no records of what the Woerners produced here, but we have tried to bring animals to Evermore whose heritage would have been consistent with the time, like the Dexter beef and Belted Galloway beef breeds – a triple purpose animal capable of supplying draft field power, milk and beef, and known to be in our area at the time. Certainly they had hogs as well, and we have Berkshires – also of the time and favored by many.
After John’s death, he is buried here at Evermore in a newly established cemetery whose exact location is lost to us. We do have his tombstone and one of what we think was a grand-daughter. We have tried to honor John Woerner and his family by establishing a memorial location where these stones are prominently featured on a hill overlooking the farm. Son George takes over and continues to farm this land until 1832. George is buried at Baust church. The founding Woerner. had this land for 50 years.
Afterward, this land passed through several hands and saw the Civil War. Afterwards, in 1875 it passes to Pastor Amos Caylor who farms here for 30 years before selling the land to the BF Shriver Company. BF Shriver had developed canned vegetables locally and our land was used for this purpose for over 70 years.
This brings us to today when Shrivers divested their Carroll County lands and our piece of this tract was preserved by Robert Porter. Bob did a wonderful job preserving the Woerner house and the outbuildings.
Evermore’s owners, John & Ginger Myers, seek to continue the local food heritage of this wonderful piece of history. We have a lifetime of agricultural experience. Our goal is to share the farm’s heritage, help others learn more about where their food comes from and why that’s important, and to provide the best tasting, sustainable raised, nutrient -dense food for our table and for yours.
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