18th century The area of
Frederick County, Maryland was settled by German immigrants beginning in the 1730s. A great deal of publicity surrounded this string of appearances, with the
Smithsonian Institution offering a reward for the hide.
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt reportedly considered postponing an African safari to personally hunt the beast. {{cite book On June 22, 1953,
Whittaker Chambers (whose
home lies in
Carroll County, Maryland) used the snallygaster to examine U.S. Senator
Joseph McCarthy in his essay "Is Academic Freedom in Danger?" (
Life ): "It was a trick of fate in a low comedy mood that Senator McCarthy should first have bounded into public view dragging the unlikely and protesting person of Mr.
Lattimore to share with him a historic spotlight so grateful to the one and so acutely unwanted by the other. It was a trick of fate that, in the case of each, has led to some serious confusions. For it led to the translation of Senator McCarthy into the symbol of a national snallygaster (a winged hobgoblin used to frighten naughty children in parts of rural Maryland), instead of one of the two things that he obviously is: an instinctive politician of a kind fairly common in our history, in which case the uproar he inspires is a phenomenon much more arresting than the senator; or a politician of a kind wholly new in our history, in which case he merits the most cautious and coldblooded appraisal." {{cite magazine ==In popular culture==