North Baltimore’s Bonnie Knaggs
has often been called the village’s unofficial historian.Actually, it’s her official title.Knaggs was
appointed village historian in 1984 by then-Mayor Robert Patterson Jr. It’s a position she has held with
pride and dedication since.“People with families and children direct their energy toward raising their
kids. I guess my kid is North Baltimore,” Knaggs joked.Ask her about the old opera house, or the time
when the village boasted three grocery stores, two appliance shops and a bakery, Knaggs has dates, names
and an anecdote ready.The 82-year-old newspaper editor and real estate agent moved to North Baltimore
for her third-grade year and has been rooted their since. She graduated from NBHS in 1948.“I guess I
just kind of fell into this and realized there was a need to preserve the history,” Knaggs said.She
began archiving North Baltimore for the village’s Centennial Celebration in 1976.“By default, I got to
be the chair of the Centennial Celebration,” she said. “Because of that, I started seriously collecting
North Baltimore memorabilia.”Her collection was enough to fill a large room in her home.“It got to the
point where at flea markets people would say, ‘Hey, Bonnie, I’ve got some North Baltimore stuff,’” she
said. “I became known as the North Baltimore collector.”Knaggs later went on to found the North
Baltimore Area Historical Society and has spearheaded numerous historical projects to benefit the
village such as: historical books on North Baltimore; signs on I-75 designating North Baltimore as the
“Crossroads of the Heartland;” marker at the edge of town listing the village as a historical railroad
and oil town; wooden train whistles with the old depot on them to commemorate the CSX railyard; and the
Main Street “welcome banners,” among many other projects.Dr. Ralph Wolfe, president of the North
Baltimore Library Board of Trustees, which later purchased property for the Historical Society on Main
Street, called Knaggs a “historical entrepreneur” and “patriot of North Baltimore.”“The community is
fortunate to have had someone with this interest because community history dies when people die,” Wolfe
said.Knaggs was also integral in having the historical marker placed in front of the library in 1997.“It
took me three years to get it,” Knaggs said.“I would also like to have a marker for the historical
center and I would also like one where the old school was torn down,” she said.Knaggs founded the North
Baltimore Area Historical Society in 1998 shortly after the historical marker was erected.“It all
started over a Civil War flag,” she said.While at the beauty shop, Knaggs overheard talk of a Civil War
flag designed by the ladies of North Baltimore. A founding family had the flag and wanted to donate it
to the local historical society — provided there was one.“I immediately told her to tell her yes,”
Knaggs said.And that’s how it was started.While she is passionate about North Baltimore’s history,
preserving it is also something she feels compelled to do.“Somebody has got to do it,” Knaggs said. “It
was lost between the 1890s and 1976 and nobody did anything.“It just frustrates me that people aren’t
more interested in preserving things.”