Howard County Moves Little-Known Confederate Memorial to Museum

Steve Burns
WMAL.com

ELLICOTT CITY – (WMAL) Unbeknownst to many, Howard County has a monument to Confederate veterans. It had been sitting outside the County Courthouse since 1948, until last night when it was moved to a nearby history museum.

“I think most people didn’t know that there was this fairly small memorial on the courthouse property,” Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman told WMAL. “We’re not destroying our past. We’re actually doing more to preserve it, because I bet you more people now will see it.”

The memorial was put up in the late 1940s not by the county, but by William Henry Forsythe, Jr., a Circuit Court Judge at the time whose father fought for the Confederacy. The memorial lists Forsythe’s father and other Confederate veterans from the county.

Confederate memorial removed from courthouse. https://t.co/6q9OwZdL5m pic.twitter.com/g2jAX4yXMy

— Allan H. Kittleman (@HoCoGovExec) August 22, 2017

“It looks to me like it was something done by one judge with the help of an organization to put it up, not a the behest of the county,” Kittleman said. “I think that’s important for people to realize.”

The memorial has been moved to the Howard County Historical Society Museum, just around the corner from the courthouse.

‘This will be a perfect place for the memorial to be so we preserve our history,” Kittleman said. “But we don’t put it in a place of honor on our public property.”