A House Divided Part II
by “My Father’s Son”
The house at 601 East Main Street in Thurmont is much more primitive in style than its neighboring Aurora Cottage. A simple square by perimeter, 601 is a 2-1/2 story, typical three-bay façade, differing from others in Thurmont of the same description by its forward-facing, steeply-raked front gable, allowing space for a largely habitable attic beneath the high-pointing rafters. One hundred and eighteen years old, this address is often known as “The Campbell House,” recognizing two scores of ownership by the surname. Removal of the columned wrap-around porch, asphalt-shingle siding, full-sized attic front-gable windows, and the replacement of the sash exchanged for the front door, the “Campbell place” is promptly exposed as Aurora Cottage’s lost Annex.
Before proceeding, let’s resume where Part I concluded in 1912 with the Charles C. Waters family leaving their Fredericktown-house at 116 E. Church Street, returning to Thurmont’s 513 E. Main, this time as their private home. Five years prior, Waters and business partner, Charles Cassell, closed and sold the Aurora Cottage boarding house. Just as this endeavor ended, so would all others involving the pair on June 2, 1907, when Charles E. Cassell died two months after the home’s sale. Cassell’s absence invested Waters further into the legal arena where his reputation as a learned estate attorney had grown since passing the Frederick County Bar in 1898.
The Waters’ second arrival to Aurora Cottage brought the departure of the Annex. By purchasing a bordering sliver of land from owner Blanche Darr Donaldson of Philadelphia allowed Waters to shift the Annex he and Cassell had constructed approximately 100 feet 12° SE to become its own address—the structure’s displacement angled to accommodate a large shed still sited behind the Annex today. As no staircase existed in Aurora’s addition, Waters outfitted an L-shaped stair against the Annex’s severed side incorporated into the stacked passages once linking the guest wing to Aurora. The retro-fitted house was rented until 1919 when Waters would add twenty-five feet of his own holdings to the Annex, creating a satisfactory lot fronting fifty-five feet on E. Main Street. Upon purchase that same year, Edgar and Marguerite Tregoe secured the Annex as a separate entity to be forgotten as a fragment of the neighbor it once coupled.
The Tregoes extended their lot to Apples Church Road by obtaining more of Donaldson’s land. They sold the whole to Ross and Nanna Firor in 1935. Divided into four lots, the Firors sold most of Tregoes Donaldson purchase between 1952 and 1968, returning the Annex’s acreage to near its original conveyance.
Over a year prior to Waters’ sale of the Annex, November 1918 announced World War I’s conclusion and spread peace across the globe quickly cloaked by suffrage even unseen through warfare. The American Medical Association summarized our country’s morale best: “Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now it must turn with its whole might to combating the greatest enemy of all—infectious disease.”
At age eighteen, the Waters’ only son, James, became ill with the “Spanish-Flu,” the wickedest epidemic in recorded history. James was a prime host for the ailment, which spiked the death-by-illness rate of those aged fifteen to thirty-four by 20 times that of the previous year. Over 675,000 American lives were lost, James Waters’ among them.
His son departed, Charles Waters amended his Will to donate Aurora Cottage to the Order of the Holy Cross, instructing his “present home and grounds” be designated the “James Somerset Waters Memorial for religious and charitable purposes.” Per the Will, Rosa Waters received life estate at Aurora Cottage after Charles’ death in 1926, the occasion of her death or remarriage to execute her husband’s final testament. Unexpectedly, Rosa contested the Will and County Case #11557, Rosa Waters v. The Order of the Holy Cross, dishonored the late Mr. Waters’ wishes. Rosa’s legal victory protected her home from institutionalization and reestablished entitlement by Mrs. Waters, allowing sale to occur four years later.
The Dern, Fraley, and Green families succeeded Rosa Waters, each conveying the property to the next after an average inhabitance of eighteen years until the deed was purchased by the Cochran family—Aurora’s longest owners (this month marking thirty years of residence). Nine acres added by the Waters’ between Aurora’s current lot and the Western Maryland Railroad were sold by the Derns in 1940 (later becoming the Cannon Shoe Company), and additional area lost by Fraley’s 1945 purchase and swift construction of a trending bungalow-style home upon the Aurora lot for daughter Mabel and son-in-law Earle Townsend. The Townsend’s created 511 East Main Street, carved from the Aurora parcel, an abnormal allocation, shrinking to around only fifteen feet to dodge Aurora Cottage’s existing carriage house before reopening its bounds.
The Cochrans obtained Aurora Cottage from William and Patricia Green, parents of familiar Frederick News Post photographer, Bill Green. The Green family occupied the home from 1967 until 1986. Bill’s paternal grandparents were houseguests of the family and occupied a “suite” of sorts arranged in the first-floor area, where the Annex earlier joined. This space was repurposed by the Greens, with its own bath and access to a section of the front porch receiving glass-enclosure. “It is told that Mr. Green gave a large ledger, found in the home’s attic, containing Aurora Cottage’s Inn records to a Thurmont resident for historic keeping. The whereabouts of this ledger 49 years later is a mystery but remains an artifact Mrs. Cochran would greatly like the opportunity to view.”
White and trimmed with green at the time of purchase, the most apparent change made by Jim and Debbie Cochran is the colors accentuating the home. Aurora’s palette was realized after Debbie sketched the home and colored in photocopies of her drawing to depict various color schemes using colored pencils matched to paint swatches. The exterior grandeur of the Cochran’s home continues inside where a fireplace opposes the front door; a handsome stairway travels up the rightward wall; and a fine, baby-grand piano floats among floor to ceiling windows. Throughout their thirty years at Aurora, Jim’s vintage Triumph roadster has fittingly posed out front in the circular drive; Debbie haunted the porch as a witch on many an All Hallows Eve; and children, Wes and Wendy, have been seen coming and going from Catoctin High, on college breaks, and now as adults continuing to frequent their childhood home.
Aurora Cottage, as a whole and a house divided, has boarded thousands of guests, hosted splendid soirees, and been the backdrop to the best and least-desirable memories of changing residents. Sallie Boyce’s 513 E. Main St. home stood complete only a relative moment before the Annex was added to its original form. Residing for the last 105 years 100 feet apart only a brief thirteen years united the pair prior to the Annex’s separation to 601 E. Main Street. New ownership and recent improvements leave many hopeful that the Annex will return from prolonged neglect and periods of vacancy (during which one man reserved squatter’s rights for a time) to sustain its status as joint-shareholder of Aurora Cottage’s colorful history. Fortunate that both remain, neither home can be more fairly addressed “Aurora Cottage” than the other although the San Franciscan-colors and tin-fashioned, faux terra-cotta-tile roof of the Cochran’s 513 residence more familiarly claims the moniker, ushering in day’s first light like a shimmer of magic on the foothills of the mountain.
The Cochran Family home on Thurmont’s East Main Street, absent the Annex, once affixed at the home’s right side is presented today in nearly the original vision of Sallie K. Boyce.
