Hole-in-the-Wall

Just down the road, along Route 50 near Trappe, is an eerie landmark that hasn’t yet been swallowed by housing developments or shopping complexes. This lonely brick ruin is all that remains of Whitemarsh Chapel, a church dating back to 1665, which was mostly destroyed by fire in 1897.

This church stood on a main road that ran perpendicular to modern Rt. 50, linking the port town of Oxford and the vanished city of Dover, on the Choptank River.  The church ruins have become convoluted with the nearby historical marker, “Hole-in-the-Wall,” which actually refers to an ancient tavern that stood at the nearby crossroads of Hambleton.  It is easy to see how the confusion came about since the ruins appear, from the road, to be a wall with a hole in it!  The Reverend Daniel Maynadier served as rector of the church from 1711 until his death in 1745.

There is a book in our Special Maryland Collection, Land of Legendary Lore: Sketches of Romance and Reality on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake, written by Prentiss Ingraham and published in 1898. It’s in the chapter entitled “Weird Tales that are Told” that we find the shocking story of Hannah Maynadier, the rector’s wife, who is said to haunt the Whitemarsh Cemetery to this day.

Hannah Martin Maynadier died, and her wish was to be buried wearing an old family ring. Two men who had attended her funeral made plans to break into her grave that night and steal it from her finger. After digging up and breaking open the coffin, they found that they couldn’t get the ring off her finger and decided to sever the joint.  This injury to her body, along with the fresh chilly air, revived Hannah, who had been in a coma and not dead as everyone had thought.  She cried out and sat up in her coffin, no doubt giving the grave robbers the fright of their lives. They fled into the surrounding fields.  Incredibly, Mrs. Maynadier, although she was ill and in shock, managed to climb out of her coffin with her burial shroud and make her way through the dark countryside to the rectory, a mile away.   Reverend Maynadier was sitting alone in front of his fireplace when he was startled by a sound at the door as if something had fallen against it, and a low moan.  Imagine his shock and disbelief when he opened the door to find the fainting form of his wife!  He carried her to her bed, called his servants, and sent to Oxford for the doctor.  Hannah Maynadier recovered and lived for many more years.  Daniel and Hannah’s grave is now in the church’s existing foundation and is marked with a plaque. Some people say that the ghost of Hannah can sometimes be seen, wearing her (first) burial shroud, trying to regain her bearings in the old cemetery before finding her way home.

Mrs. Maynadier isn’t the only ghost to lurk in this area, however. There is the ghost of an old doctor in a horse and two-wheeled trap, whose hooves and wheels can be heard on the road along with a voice calling, “Show me the way, show me the way!”  This beloved doctor traveled to patients all around the district and was well known to enjoy a drink.  One night during stormy weather, the doctor was quite drunk when he was summoned to the home of his best friend, who had accidentally shot himself.  After fortifying himself with more drinks, he went on his way, but unfortunately fell asleep while driving, lost his way, and was found the next day disoriented and wandering, still looking for his friend’s house. “Oh, show me the way!” he pleaded with the person who found him, who replied, “There’s no need now, doctor.  He bled to death two hours ago.  You could have saved him had you arrived last night.” The neighbor set him on the path back to his own home, but that was the last time he was seen alive.  He and his horse were found dead in a wreck caused when a bridge damaged in the storm went down as they crossed.  The old doctor’s ashes now lie in Whitemarsh Cemetery, among the remains of so many he had treated in life.  Remember these tales the next time you’re traveling the lonely stretch of road between Easton and Cambridge, especially late at night.