Ellicott City, Maryland
Ellicott City is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in, and the county seat of, Howard County, Maryland, United States. Part of the Baltimore metropolitan area, its population was 75,947 at the 2020 census, making it the most populous unincorporated county seat in the United States.
Ellicott City's historic downtownthe Ellicott City Historic Districtlies in the valleys of the Tiber and Patapsco rivers. The historic district includes the Ellicott City Station; it is the oldest surviving train station in the United States, having been built in 1830 as the first terminus of the original B&O Railroad line. The historic district of the town is often called "Historic Ellicott City" or "Old Ellicott City" to distinguish it from the surrounding suburbs that extend south to Columbia and west to West Friendship.
History
Milling
Prior to the establishment of Ellicott City, the main crossing of the Patapsco River connecting Baltimore with western Maryland stood about three miles north at what is now Hollifield. The main road continued west towards Mount Airy and Frederick along what later became Maryland Route 99. The first mill at that site on the river had been built by Christopher Gardiner in about 1716. Near this place, in 1766, James Hood used the Maryland Mill Act of 1669 to condemn for a mill site adjacent to his river-side property, where he built a gristmill. His son Benjamin rebuilt the corn grinding mill after one of the frequent Patapsco floods in 1768.On 24 April 1771, three Quaker brothers from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, chose the picturesque wilderness several miles upriver from Elk Ridge Landing, the uppermost part of the river then navigable by tobacco-loading sailing merchant ships in the 18th century, to establish a flour mill, purchasing of Baltimore County land from Emanuel Teal and from William Williams. John, Andrew, and Joseph Ellicott founded Ellicott's Mills, which became one of the largest milling and manufacturing towns in the East.
In 1774, Joseph Ellicott purchased Hood's Mill for 1,700 pounds, which became known as "Ellicott's Upper Mills". In 1775 the brothers expanded their holdings with from Bartholomew Balderson. Nathaniel sold his partnership in 1777, and Joseph sold all but his Hood's Mill ownership the next year. With the development of Ellicott's Mills, the main road connecting Baltimore to the west shifted southward from the Upper Mills to the Lower Mills at Ellicott City. This route later was incorporated into the Baltimore and Frederick-Town Turnpike and the National Road.
The town retained the name "Ellicott's Mills" when the U.S. Postal stop opened on October 7, 1797.
The Ellicott brothers constructed sawmills, smithies, stables, an oil mill, a grain distillery, and grain mills. They helped revolutionize farming in the area by persuading farmers to plant wheat instead of tobacco and also by introducing Plaster of Paris fertilizer to revitalize depleted soil. The Ellicotts produced the product until a fire on 11 January 1809. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, a rare Roman Catholic and a wealthy landowner with the largest fortune then in colonial America, was an early influential convert from tobacco to wheat. By 1830, the founders' families could no longer support operations, and by 1840, the Ellicott family sold off their interests in the two flour mills, the granite quarry, the saw mill and plaster mill.
Rail
In 1830, Ellicott's Mills became the first terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad outside Baltimore, the first commercially operated cargo and passenger railroad in the country. The B&O was organized in 1827 and had its "first stone" laid the following year with major ceremonies on July 4, Independence Day, with the beginning of construction. The Ellicott City Station, built on an embankment across the corner of the town and along the Patapsco River and intersecting Tiber Creek stream, with its "Oliver Viaduct", named for a B&O board member Robert Oliver crossing over the National Road of large blocks of locally quarried gray granite, stands today as a living history museum, and has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior, administered by the National Park Service. It bears the designation as the "Oldest surviving railroad station in America". In 1829, New York industrialist and Baltimore foundry-owner Peter Cooper began testing his iron steam engine, Tom Thumb, on the B&O Railway. This was the first time a steam locomotive was used to transport persons over rails in the United States. The famous race between Tom Thumb and a horse-drawn rail carriage took place between Relay Junction on the return trip from Ellicott's Mills towards Baltimore in August 1830. Even though the horse won the race due to a sudden broken drive belt on the Tom Thumb, it heralded the time when steam engines steadily improved, and the soon-to-be steam-operated railroad became a vital link in the town's economy and later expanding to the city of Baltimore's economic supremacy along with the state in the nation.The site of the Howard County Courthouse, which was built from 1840 to 1843 in the former western Howard District of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, was so designated for the new temporary district in 1839, and continued and was expanded later when Howard County became an official independent jurisdiction in 1851, as one of the 23 counties in the state of Maryland. The town in 1851 was in a spate of depression as low costs shut the Maryland Machine Manufacturing Company. Over 80 vacant dwellings lined the Howard County side of the river. By 1861, Ellicott's Mills was a prosperous farming and manufacturing area.
At the start of the Civil War on April 19, 1861, "Gaithers Raiders", part of the Confederate "Howard County Dragoons" from Oakland Manor, marched through Ellicott's Mills to Baltimore, responding to the Baltimore riot of 1861, before heading south to join J. E. B. Stuart. Later that month, Union Army troops seized the "Winans Steam Gun" which had been en route to Harpers Ferry, Virginia, at Ellicott's Mills. The experimental gun had been developed by local Southern-sympathizer railroad builder and industrialist Ross Winans. In the fall of 1862, the 12th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry was assigned to guard Ellicott's Mills, setting up the 1,200-man Camp Johnson on the lawn of the nearby Patapsco Female Institute. On July 10, 1864, the third Confederate invasion of the North, led by General Jubal Early, forced the retreat of the Federal troops under the command of General Lew Wallace down the National Pike from the Battle of the Monocacy to the B.& O.'s Ellicott's Mills station and to Baltimore. The one-day delay by Wallace's small force at Monocacy Junction enabled Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to rush troops in time to defend the U.S. capital. Homes and churches in Ellicott's Mills were temporarily used as hospitals for the Union wounded.
In 1866, cholera broke out. In the same year, the Granite Mills cotton factory owned by Benjamin Detford burned down.
Incorporation and disincorporation
In 1867, a city incorporation charter was secured for Ellicott's Mills forming a local government with a mayor and council, and the name was changed to "Ellicott City".The first mayor was E. A. Talbot, who lived in a stone house and operated a lumber yard at the base of the river. His business was washed away in the flood of 1866, and again in 1868. He was offered a clear title on his home from his opponent Issacs if he threw his reelection, which he did. Talbot relocated uphill to a brick and granite store designed by Charles Timanus that houses the Ellicott City Brewing Company today.
File:Governor Hogan Tours Old Ellicott City.jpg|thumb|Governor of Maryland Larry Hogan tours Ellicott City, viewing damage left by the 2016 floods, accompanied by county executive Allan Kittleman.
Howard County built its first jailhouse, the Ellicott City Jail, also called Emory Jail or Willow Grove, on Emory Avenue in 1878. The stone jail intended for 12 inmates operated until the Howard County Detention Center opened in 1983.
In 1879, political gangs controlled the polling locations, shooting and wounding African American Ellicott City voters. The deputy sheriff declined to arrest the leaders for fear of his life and further outbreaks of violence.
In H. L. Mencken's best-selling memoir Happy Days, 1880–1892, he described his childhood in the chapter "Rural Delights" while living with his parents in their rented home in Ellicott City.
Ellicott City favored the temperance movement, enacting a law against "spiritous, fermented or intoxicating liquors" in 1882, taking effect May 1, 1883. This was shortly changed to limit sales of liquor to licensed shops that did not sell other goods, providing the primary source of the town's tax income.
Trolley service was proposed from Baltimore to Ellicott City in 1892, approved on April 20, 1895, and implemented in 1899. The service ran a double-ended streetcar for most of its service life until 1955, when the Baltimore Service commission recommended a bus replacement, which lasted only two years. The Catonsville & Ellicott City Electric Railway Company rail line was later converted to a hiking trail.
In February 1895, shop owner Daniel F. Shea was murdered by Jacob Henson. Henson was tried and sentenced to death. Fearing that Governor Brown might release Henson due to insanity, a group of residents broke into the jail and lynched Henson on Merricks Lane with a sign saying "Brown cannot rule our cort". Governor Brown condemned the citizens and ordered all prisoners sentenced to death be sent to the Maryland Penitentiary from then on.
After a difficult start in 1896, granite mining was started.
In 1907, Taylor Manor started as the Patapsco Manor Sanitarium built on property along New Cut Road. In 1939 the facility was purchased by Issac Taylor and run as the Pinel Clinic. Taylor operated an optometrist business and Taylor's Furniture on Main Street. In 1948 the facility expanded to 48 beds, and in 1968 it expanded to 151 beds. The modernist circular rotunda stands out at the center of campus. Taylor Manor covered more than. In 2000, the facility became a branch of Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital.
In 1924, the Display Machine Doughnut Corporation moved to Ellicott City from New York, occupying the site of the 1916 Patapsco Flouring Mill built on the ruins of the former Elicott and Gambrill's mills. The company made doughnut mix and doughnut manufacturing machines as the Doughnut Corporation of America.
The only chartered city in the county, Ellicott City lost its charter in 1935 with a proposal from Senator Joseph Donovan, as the tax base from saloon fees lost in Prohibition caused citizen protest when taxes were shifted to residents.
On April 27, 1941, a fire gutted the eight-story doughnut factory, but it rebuilt, providing doughnut mixes to WWII troops. In January 1942, an emergency room was set up in the post office for civilian defense for the ongoing war effort.
In 1943, the Metropolitan District was formed to bring water and sewer to Ellicott City, sponsored by newspaperman P.G. Stromberg, I.H. Taylor, Charles E. Miller, Marray G. Peddicord, John A. Lane, and W. Emil Thompson.