I was born and reared in Cumberland, Allegany County, Maryland. My mother's Rice (Reiss) ancestors settled in this area before the Mason-Dixon Line was drawn in the 1760's. My paternal great-great-great-grandfather was from the Island of Guernsey in the English Channel, and he immigrated to Baltimore as a young man, was hired by the B&O Railroad, worked some years in Martinsburg, (W.) Virginia, and was sent to Cumberland in 1850 to supervise construction of the railroad viaduct across downtown and the cut through West Side that necessitated the removal of the old cemetery and the transfer of bodies and monuments to the newly-opened Rose Hill Cemetery in 1851.

I was born and reared in Cumberland, Allegany County, Maryland. My mother's Rice (Reiss) ancestors settled in this area before the Mason-Dixon Line was drawn in the 1760's. My paternal great-great-great-grandfather was from the Island of Guernsey in the English Channel, and he immigrated to Baltimore as a young man, was hired by the B&O Railroad, worked some years in Martinsburg, (W.) Virginia, and was sent to Cumberland in 1850 to supervise construction of the railroad viaduct across downtown and the cut through West Side that necessitated the removal of the old cemetery and the transfer of bodies and monuments to the newly-opened Rose Hill Cemetery in 1851.