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| Information compiled by John
McGrain, Baltimore County Historian |
| Mills Near Loch Raven Summary (March 4, 2002) |
Westerman's Mills Most of today's village of Phoenix is the area around the company town that was on ground too high to flood in the 1922 expansion of the crest of Lach Raven Dam No. 2 to 240 feet above sea level. The mill and company store building and east of the parking for the Northern Central hike and bike trail. The trail is the bed of the former Baltimore & Susquehanna Railroad that was started in 1829 to link Baltimore City with York, PA. The first enterprise at what became Phoenix was a gristmill started on a tract of land called "Gunpowder Mills" by Elisha Merryman, who had the ground resurveyed under that name in 1793. The property passed to Nicholas Merryman of Elijah, who was shown as the owner of a sawmill in the 1818 tax ledger. The 1823 assessment list showed that the grist and sawmill had passed to Merryman's widow. In 1828, William Westerman bought the mills, but even before he acquired the ground, he had appeared in the 1823 assessment as "W. Westerman at the W. Factory," where he also owned two slaves. The abbreviation "W" usually indicated a wool factory; thus Westerman was probably the first textile manufacturer at this site. He soon died and the 1833 tax list showed that his widow, Mary Westerman, was owner of the " Gunpowder Mills" land tract. The first post office here was called Westerman's Mills, established in 1841, and postmarked letters survive. By the time of establishing the post office, Mrs. Westerman had been forced to sell the mill, never paid for during her husband's ownership. Westerman's trustee, C.R. Blan, advertised the estate for sale in 1839, stating that the mill had been partly refitted as a cotton works but its machinery had already been taken out. Phoenix Factory Most of the present Phoenix village is the fringe area of the company town that was demolished in 1922 during the reservoir project. The church building at the sound end of Mount Avenue was one of the chapels provided by the company and was disassembled from the floodplain and reassembled on the hill. Down in a ravine to the west and to the rear of the Mount Avenue houses is the former bed of the Baltimore & Susquehanna Railroad, now the hike and bike trail. At Westerman's Mills village, Thomas H. Fulton established a new business called Phoenic Factory in January 1848. Fulton also owned the Washington Factory at present Mount Washington (the historic mill building now housing the Fresh Fields supermarket) and a calico works in the city at Cathedral and Read Streets. The equipment from Phoenix would be sent to Washington Factory when it needed repairs. The Sun of January 29, 1848, reported that the first product of Phoenix Factory was twilled Osnaburg "of a most superior quality." In 1847, the tax assessor listed the factory as property of Fulton and Munro but by 1849, Fulton was sole owner. The 1850 census of manufacturers showed employment of 35 male and 50 female workers. The equipment included 1140 spindles and 42 looms, which produced 778,796 yards of Osnaburg annually. By November of that year, Fulton was forced to close Washington Factory and run Phoenix on only 3/4 time. Fulton was deep in debt, and died the very day after Washington Factory was auctioned under court order. The 1852 auction advertisement described the "factory house" as 100 by 36 feet, with an iron water wheel, stone dam, with 9 ft. of waterfall, and a town that consisted of eight new brick houses and eight new log houses, plus a 2-story stone house. The buyer was George Slothower, who paid $28,550 for everything. Phoenix as a place name appears for the first time on the 1850 county map by J.C. Sidney and P.J. Browne. tHe name is also carved on a tombstone set up in 1852 when William H. Howard was buried at Poplar Hill Church near Warren. The Phoenix workers went on strike in 1854 for a 10-hour day and they were almost the only employees who won the shorter working day during that wave of work stoppages. In 1863, during the Civil War, Phoenix was involved in making "shoddy," a reconstituted woolen cloth made from fibers of old Union army uniforms that were picked apart and respun. Shoddy was the cloth that flaked away while it was worn, turning into particles and dust, giving its wearer annoying itching. After the war, there were long stretches when the mill was closed for lack of orders. In 1872, a newer and larger factory was constructed, and Jacob Vance was described as its architect. When measured in 1918 by the assessor, the mill was three stories, 55 by 156 feet. The 1872 building program included 30 houses. A stone school was built by the company in 1874 for use by Baltimore County's school commissioners. Set on a fenced lot, it measured 30 by 30 feet. The school had 24 feet of blackboard and one wall map. Location was on a Carroll Road just north of the fork in Phoenix Road. Robert W. Garrett and Sons and Joseph W. Jenkins bought the mill town in 1875 and spent money on improvements such as a turbine wheel and an auxiliary steam engine, but the factory was often idle for years at a time. The mill contained 6,000 spindles and had 175 employees when Mount Vernon Manufacturing Company bought it in 1887. At that time, the product ws light cotton duck, a sort of canvas. Despite such upgrading, the Sun in 1911 could describe Phoenix as practically deserted; expecting to be drowned in the next reservoir project. Phoenix had been shut down since 1903 when the Mount Vernon Mills joined in a cotton duck trust and closed the smaller plants at Phoenix, Franklinville, and Laurel. When the property came on the market in 1916, Summerfield Baldwin, Jr. of Warren bought the mill town in his own name. The next year, Baldwin deeded the mill to the Warren Manufacturing Company owned by his family. An exvellent aerial view of the doomed mill was taken on December 21, 1921, by Sun photographer William D. Tipton flying a Curtiss biplane. The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore acquired both Warren and Phoenix towns for $1 million in a single deed recorded in 1922. The city demolished the mill town and mill. Some of the stone was reused in a Tudor-style shopping center at Anneslie. Some forgotten fire hydrants from the mill town survived in the woods. The present skating pond is apparently the tailrace of the extinct factory. Some granite and concrete installations can be seen when the weeds are killed off by winter weather. The Baltimore County Historical Trust conducted a walking tour of Phoenix on June 8, 1997. Warren Factory Warren was a complete mill town that was more or less upstream of the present Warren Road Bridge built in 1922 when the City of Baltimore demolished the town to back up the water of Loch Raven Reservoir. The foundations left behind are probably covered with silt, although the church ruin survived on the north side of the road just east of the bridge. Even in the worse drought, there is nothing to be seen of the old manufacturing village. On September 10, 1814, John Merryman leased 283 acres on Gunpowder Falls to a group of Baltimore investors, including General Sam Smith, James A. Buchanan, Andrew Clopper, Hezekiah Pricer, Robert Watson, John Doff, William Richardson, and George Warner. The lease mentioned a "water works to be erected on said land." Possibly the plant was named for General Warren of Revolutionary fame. Certainly no one named Warren was involved in the development of the enterprise. No mill had ever operated at this site before the Warren plant was built. Warren proved to be an unlucky site. The investors built two cotton mills, but the company suffered losses by flood in 1817 and fire in 1830. One of the products made here was calico, or cotton cloth printed with color patterns. Among the company's disasters was the indictment of investor James A. Buchanan for irregularities at the Bank of the United States. Columbus O'Donnell bought the whole place in 1830 and hired a mill manager from New England to put the works on a business-like footing. The manager noted in a letter that in more flush times "men were as thick as grasshoppers about the factory." Another disastrous fire struck in 1834. Then the last of the stockholders, the Dawson brothers, lost their shirts building a navy for the Republic of Texas, not getting paid and having to sell their interests. In 1841, Warren was taken over by the American Manufacturing Company, and in 1842, John Sharpley took over the entire enterprise for $20 plus assumption of all the debts. On Sharpley's death in 1864, Summerfield Baldwin and some partners bought the place in 1864. Eventually, the Baldwin family came to own the entire works and they held on until the city needed the place for water supply purposes. The Baldwins were people of strong religious convictions and they resolved to make Warren a model working community, free of alcohol. The company furnished a sturdy stone schoolhouse to Baltimore County and had a medical clinic and a gymnasium. Warren had been a disorderly place at one time where Christmas was celebrated by drinking sprees and firing pistols into the air. The Baldwins made it a sedate and rather attractive town, considering that the workers' houses and the mill building all dated from the period of the first investors. All the same, Warren was on a collision course with modernity and suburbanism. The city had once sued the company for allowing privy effluent to drain into the first, low dam built at Loch Raven in the 1870s. The city's witnesses failed to convince a Towson judge with their scientific evidence. Then in 1908, the city water board tried to buy Warren secretly to put it out of business and drown the town in the backed up waters of the proposed upper Loch Raven dam. When word of the arrangement got out, there was a many-week investigation in the city council, much pious posturing, and indignation. The deal was ultimately quashed, and the factory kept making cotton products. It took 14 years for the city to gain possession of the town by condemnation, and it cost them $1 million. Under the 1908 deal, the city could have gotten the town essentially free by paying less for it then and letting the factory continue for 14 years, paying rent to the city, until the dam would be completed to its present height. Warren enjoyed much publicity toward the end; many a city dweller ventured out in his automobile to take farewell photographs. Many excellent photographs survive in collections. No one could pass up shooting the neatly aligned rows of sanitary booths behind the solid stone housing units. There were great views to be composed of the mill viewed through the wrought iron bridge. Bits and pieces of Warren timber were incorporated into all sorts of other buildings, and four bungalows were moved to Bosley Road near the former Cockeysville Elementary School, where they survive in 2002. The county papers always reported on school programs and church events at Warren. There were reports of delightful programs at Christmas with recitations and songs. The working people and their children were apparently quite literate and the papers reported on lectures and debates, great American amusements before radio and television were available. Wheeler's Mill No trace of Wheeler's Mill can be found where Paper Mill Road crosses Western Run; the county historian searched the stream banks in the leafless season in early 1998 near Ashland Presbyterian Church and only found the stone abutments of a former bridge. There was an early mill at Western Run Road where present Paper Mill Road crosses the stream and its first known mention was in the 1756 Baltimore County Court proceeding where there was a reference to a "road lately laid out by Mr. Mordecai Price's and John Merryman's from the Temporary Line until it intersects the rolling road that comes down by John Merryman's to Wheeler's Mill." Another court record mentioned a road "from Wheeler's Mill to the Court Road." That document gave a valuable clue to a tobacco-rolling road at least 12 miles from tidewater. In the November Court minutes of 1758, Joseph Bosley, Jr. was appointed overseer of the road from "Wheeler's Mill to Old Court Road." Wheeler's Mill was mentioned again in the November Court Minutes of 1768 in describing a road from a mill "to the Great Falls on Gun Powder that led to York County." The same year, a letter from Jospeh Ensor told his correspondent that he should pass Towson's Tavern at the Sign of the Horse and inquire at Wheeler's Mill for directions to the Ensor Plantation. As late as 1800 in the published description of the boundaries of the election districts, Wheeler's Mill was mentioned as standing on Western Run on the road from Wilson's Tavern. The same description placed Wheeler's Mill downroad from Nicholson's or Gouldsmith's Mill at what is now Paper Mill Bridge. The last known mention of Wheeler's Mill appeared in the Baltimore Evening Post, September 22, 1808, when a camp meeting was to be held "on the land of the late Thomas Cocky Deye, Esq., near Mr. Stephen Wheeler's Mill on the Western Run, about half a mile easterly of the Beaver Dam and 15 miles from the city of Baltimore." Wheeler's Mill was missing from the 1850 county map and also from the 1877 G.M. Hopkins' "Atlas of Baltimore County." Rogers Mill This colonial mill and its successor paper mill were on the north side of Paper Mill Road, east bank of Gunpowder Falls, a substantial ruin that was discernible before the construction of the new Paper Mill Road bridge in 2001. The first mention of the mill here was in 1773 when Benjamin Rogers advertised that two Irish servants had run away from his mill on the Great Falls of Gunpowder. An early traveler, Ebenezer Hazard, noted in his diary for November 6, 1777: "Crossed the Falls of the Gunpowder at Redgers [sic] Mill." An advertisement for a stray mare was published in the Maryland Journal in 1787 that stated that the animal had gotten lost somewhere between Rogers and Gwynns mills on the Great Falls. In 1787, John Merryman advertised that he had been authorized to dispose of the property of Benjamin Rogers and Charles Rogers, and offered to sell a valuable farm of 530 acres with a grist and a sawmill. In 1792, Mary Nicholson, administrator of Benjamin Nicholson, advertised a large mill on the Great Gunpowder Falls, 17 miles from Baltimore on the road to York. That property was Ranelagh Mills and was the very same one shown on Dennis Griffith's 1795 map of Maryland and Delaware, where it was marked as the "Nicholas" mill, east bank of the falls on the road to Slade's Tavern. In the advertisement of 1800 describing the new election districts, there as mention of William C. Gouldsmith's Mill (formerly Rogers) on the Old York Road at Gunpowder Falls. In 1811, William Copeland Gouldsmith sold a mill on Great Gunpowder Falls to Charles Jessop. The deed in that transaction revealed that the land grant name was "Benjamin's Hills and Valleys." Charles Jessop's ledger survives at the Baltimore County Historical Society and shows that he moved to the Vaux Hall mansion in 1807. Later, he bought several mills, including Boyd's Mill and the Beaver Dam Mill. He referred to the mill nearest to his home as the Oxford Mill, which seems to mean the old Rogers Mill. Jessop's ledger records heavy damage in the flood of August 9, 1817. On January 30, 1822, the ice in the Gunpowder broke and water stood seven feet deep in the first story of the mill. Another flood hit on February 18, 1822. Jessop recorded on March 17, 1825, that William Price, a three-year-old had drowned in the forebay of the mill - that is, in the final sluice leading to the water wheel. The old colonial mill was apparently rebuilt, because a new works, the Marble Vale Mill equipped with four pairs of 4-1/2 foot burr stones and a sawmill was advertised in the Baltimore American of September 17, 1838. At that time, William Tyson was the tenant operator of the mill. Marblevale Paper Mill Marblevale Paper Mill was built probably next to the flour mill about 1828 by Charles Jessop. At some point, Joshua Jessop inherited the place. The owner in 1850 was John Hunter, who sold it to his cousin, a trained papermaker from the north end of the county, William H. Hoffman. The 1850 census of manufacturers showed that the Matthews and Hoffman Paper mills produced $8500 worth of printing paper. The mill burned in 1888. When William H. Hoffman went into bankruptcy, his trustee in 1894 advertised the site of Marblevale Paper Mill "now occupied by Joshua Evans." Apparently, the site was never used again for milling or paper-making. In the late 1900s, Elizabeth Anderson Comer performed an archaeological study in connection with the plan to build the new bridge. Substantial stone foundations were still there, eleven decades after the fire that ruined the paper business. Fitzhugh Mill This mill did not appear on the 1850 map or in any subsequent atlases. It is not carried in any census of manufacture reports. A ruin consisting of a foundation and wheel pit on Fitzhugh Run was reported in 2002 at ADC Atlas. 19 H-7, the site near the letter "Z" in the wording "Fitzhugh" on that map sheet. Horatio Belt at Epping, Baltimore County, advertised in the Maryland Journal & Baltimore Advertiser of October 27, 1789, that he wanted to sell "About 200 acres of limestone land on the Great Falls of Gunpowder about 12 miles from Balto-Town. The soil is uncommonly rich and very heavily timbered, about 100 acres cleared. There is on it an approved mill seat--the Race already up & the dam may be repaired at a small expense. If the purchaser chooses it he may have 50 or 100 acres more of the same kind of land added to it." In the 1798 Direct Federal Tax List, George Fitzhugh had a gristmill 50 x 26 feet and a sawmill adjoining, each in good condition, but of little value from the scarcity of the water. Fitzhugh advertised 587 acres of land at Meredith's Ford with a mill-distillery 50 x 40 feet, equipped with a pair of Cologne and French burrs, 4 feet in diameter. There was a 20-foot diameter overshot wheel. There were two stills and one 180-gallon boiler; three floors over the distillery (Federal Gazette, Baltimore, October 6, 1812). George Fitzhugh mortgaged some of his property to Sarah Carroll and other on September 25, 1813 to secure his $1400 debt to Daniel D. Fitzhugh, outstanding since 1810. The money was to cover the cost of an extensive distillery. Other references in this document mentioned a tract called Windsor and several Negro men, obviously slaves, named John, Sam, and Ben. Other properties pledged were a patent still of 200 gallons, a copper boiler of 180 gallons, and one doubling still of 150 gallons, together with worms and coolers. (Baltimore City Deeds, Liber WG 125:147). In 1842, Severn Teackle Wallis, Trustee, advertised "the estate of Daniel D. Fitzhugh, Esq., deceased, the Windsor Estate, 12 miles from Baltimore in Dulany's Valley, 308-1/2 acres with a commodious dwelling, an overseer's house and all the granaries, stabling, and outhouses necessary for the stock and crops of a farm of its size. There is also on the place a large stone mill, which may be readily put in operation, the head of water being good....Apply to Henry M. Fitzhugh, Esq. (Baltimore American, November 22, 1842). Nothing further about this mill has turned up in the maps and atlases of 1850, 1877, 1898, and 1915. This part of the watershed was acquired in 1922 from Mrs. Sovena Smith, marked as Lot 17 in the condemnation papers. Elmer R. Haile, Jr. visited the ruin in 1976 and reported that the mill was on the first stream down river (or south) of Overshot Branch, shown in the District 10 plate of the G.M. Hopkins 1877 Atlas as a small square near the home of Clayton Payne, right over (or north of) the letter "a" in the name "Matthews." In 1876, the mill was on the property of Joshua Matthews. This site was the origin of the one-piece Cologne mill stone that was removed from the watershed property and set up at the Baltimore County Historical Society building in early 1983, donated by the Baltimore Bureau of Water Supply. Britton/Merryman Mill This was the upper Merryman Mill and was shown as "Old Mill" in the G.M. Hopkins 1877 Atlas. It was reached via Merryman's Mill Road. It was on the north bank of the Gunpowder Falls and consequently was in Election District No. 10. Location at ADC 19-F-3. This was part of Lot 23B in the condemnation papers of 1922. The land grant here was "Blythenia Cambria," which can be translated into "Blessed Wales" i.e. the province of Wales in the U.K. This works owned by the Brittons (variously spelled in records) was mentioned in Laws of Maryland, Acts of 1811, Chapter 67, in the description of new road authorized to meet McMechen's Road at Tudor Lane from Colonial Ridgely's gate. (McMechen's house was the Pot Spring Mansion). Commissioners appointed to sell the property of Edward and Nicholas Britton in 1827 conveyed Lot No. 2 of Bladen's Manor or Blythenia Cambria to Henry Trapnell (Deeds WG 186:616). The land was on the north side of Gunpowder Falls on the road from Warren Factory to Charles Jessop's. In 1843, this lot was advertised by trustees and contained a stone gristmill with two pair of burrs, a sawmill, and lime kiln, 15 miles from the city (Baltimore American, October 14, 1843). In the Baltimore County Advocate of January 25, 1851, there was a notice: "Mr. Micajah Merryman has completely replaced the grain and saw mill, situate on the Great Gunpowder Falls, just below Warren Factory, on the farm recently purchased by him of Dr. Tyson...castings and mill-wright work were done by Mr. W. Daniels of Baltimore." M. Merryman advertised "A grist and saw mill for rent. The subscriber having purchased and thoroughly repaired the Old mills formerly Buttons [sic] located in Baltimore County upon the Gunpowder Falls, 1/2 mile below Warren Factory, either rent or let mill upon shares to a good tenant...Possession about 1st April next...M. Merryman." (Baltimore County Advocate, March 5, 1853). This mill was not carried in the 1880 census of manufactures. The news correspondent from Sunnybrook in Election District 10 reported the following in the Baltimore County Union of March 10, 1894: "Dr. Moses Merryman intends to put in his flour mill in the spring improved roller machinery. It was built over 100 years ago by a man named Britton, who at that time owned 1500 acres of land in the neighborhood... About 35 years ago, it was one of the largest merchant mills in the country. It has a fine water power, supplied by the Gunpowder Falls." The Union News of January 31, 1914 (page 8) reported from Sunnybrook the death of Edward C. Stambaugh, who was for many years the miller at Merryman's Mill "near this place." During the past year, Stambaugh had relinquished his duties and gone with his wife to Baltimore. The 1915 Atlas of Baltimore County, Maryland, by G.W. Bromley, on Plate 38, showed George H. Merryman's "S & G.M.," that is, a saw and grist mill. This site was Lot 23B in the condemnation papers of 1922, still a Merryman property when the lake was started. A photograph of the Britton-Merryman Mill is found in the Baltimore County Public Library on the Heritage website, Photo #6915010, taken by C.W.E. Treadwell of Towson about 1912. The mill appears as a hollow shell rising out of the impounded reservoir water. Unfortunately, the same photo in the same collection is also labeled as Yellotts Mill. Overshot Run Mill This mill has been reported by hikers, but John McGrain was not convinced be had reached a mill site on his 2001 trip. The land at Overshot Run was in two parcels in the 1922 condemnation records, Lot 23 and Lot 24, a Merryman family property at that time. The land grant name here was Blythenia Cambria, which can be demonstrated by making a plat of the original manor. Bromley's 1898 atlas [Plate 32] showed "Dr. Merryman" with a "S&GM," or "saw and gristmill." No mill was shown here in the 1915 G.W. Bromley Atlas of Baltimore County, Maryland, Plate 38. Possibly, this mill site matches the tax account of Micajah Merryman in the 1798 tax list of Middle River Upper Hundred. That assessment showed parts of the tracts Blythenia Cambria, Cumberland, Merryman's Delight, and Valley of Jehosephat, with "one stone still house." The 1818 tax list of Old District No. 7 showed Micajah Merryman with 23 acres of property, "name unknown" and a grist mill worth $850 and another gristmill worth $150 [this document is difficult to read]. (This mill cannot be the same as Britton's, which was owned by that family until 1827. In fact, Old District 7 was too far west of the Loch Raven area to include this tax entry in the history--thus we are left with the question, "Were there two Micajah Merryman mills?). The Overshot Run Mill was not in the 1880 census of manufacturers. Merryman's Lower Mill/Gunpowder Mills These were on the west or south bank of Great Gunpowder Falls and was the lowermost of the two "old mills" shown as property of G. Merryman in the G.M. Hopkins 1877 atlas. This site is about 0.5 mile upstream of the present Dulaney Valley Road bridge, flooded out in the first phase of building the second or high Loch Raven dam in 1912-1914. The lower Merryman Mill was 1.2 miles due south of Britton's Mill as measured on the pre-flooding (1910 Maryland Geological Survey topographic map). The site was possibly Lot 23 in the 1922 condemnation papers. In present-day terms, it was probably at ADC Atlas site 19-G-6 (estimated). This mill was not carried in the 1880 census of manufactures. George W. Merryman offered to lease Gunpowder Grist and Saw Mill one mile below Warren Factory in an advertisement in the Baltimore County Union, April 19, 1884. No mill was shown in the 1898 Bromley Atlas, Plate 32, although the residence of George H Merryman was shown on the west side of the falls. A Towson paper reported that George F. Merryman rented Merryman's Mill to A.F. Dellone of Baltimore, a miller with 25 years' experience at Gambrill's Mill (Baltimore County Union, April 2, 1904). A week later, the same paper reported that the new tenant had failed to appear (Baltimore County Union, April 9, 1904). There was no mill listed in the real estate inventory of Dr. Moses W. Merryman in 1904. The assets listed in Election District 10 included 236 acres of land near Sunnybrook and "a stone dwelling and outbuilding and a grist mill." The parcel on the opposite side of the river was 31 acres, described as unimproved land in Election District 8; it had been acquired by Dr. Merryman from Nellie Bosley in 1892 (Register of Wills Inventories, 33:289-290). [This inventory conflicts with the map showing the mill on the west bank of the river.] A note made by John McGrain in 1981 reports that Andrew Clemens had met a Mr. __ King who recalled the valley before it was flooded and remembered only one Merryman Mill. The "old mill" of the 1877 atlas was nowhere to be seen. The Merryman Mill of which we have records was already out of business several years before the city bought it. A Towson paper reported at the time of the project, "All machinery in the old Dr. Merryman Mill, near Warren, has been sold to a Harford County miller and hauled away." Union News, April 11, 1914. No mill was shown in the 1915 G.W. Bromley Atlas of Baltimore County Maryland, Plate 38. This was Lot No. 23 on the 1922 condemnation map, shown as the property of George H. Merryman. Yellott Mill This mill was on the east bank of Great Gunpowder Falls on a side branch called Dulaney Valley Branch, upstream of Morgan's Mill. It was on Lot 13A or Lot 13B of the 1922 condemnation papers, property of Alice R. Yellott. Location ADC 20B-8. The condemnation map suggests that the Morgan Mill was downstream of the Yellott Mill, the opposite of what is shown in the 1850 Sidney and Browne map. John Scott, Trustee, offered to sell the newly built stone gristmill of John Yellott, Jr., along with a sawmill and limekiln (Baltimore American, March 2, 1833). The mill lot was described as part of the land grant "Sewell." George and Coleman Yellott advertised a mill of 35 barrels per diem output, on a strong stream (Harford Madisonian, April 30, 1847). J.C. Sidney and P.J. Browne's 1850 county map showed John Yellott's sawmill on the Great Gunpowder Falls, downstream of Morgan's Mill. This mill was not shown in the 1877 atlas, nor was this mill carried in the 1880 census of manufactures. The J. Yellott estate, but no mill was shown in the 1989 Bromley atlas, Plate 33. A photo of about 1912 is found in the Baltimore County Public Library collection. Number 4751028, photographer C.W.E. Treadwell of Towson. This mill appears as a hollow shell rising out of the impounded reservoir water but is unfortunately the same photo from the Treadwell collection, printed backwards, that was apparently the Britton-Merryman Upper Mill. Yellott's Mill was not shown in the 1915 G.W. Bromley Atlas (Plate 37.) Morgan Mill This mill was on the east bank of the Gunpowder Falls on a side branch called Dulany Valley Branch on the land grant "Valley of Jehosephat." It was on Lot 8 in the 1922 condemnation papers. Location was ADC 20-B-9. Access was via Morgan Mill Road. The Site was west of present Loch Raven Road upstream of the bridge on Loch Raven Road. The mill was not carried in the 1880 census of manufactures. The 1898 Bromley Atlas, Plate 33, showed a "G.&S.M.." A Towson paper noted in 1906. "G. Frank Morgan expects his mill to be wiped off the map by the Loch Raven project." (Baltimore County Union, January 20, 1906.) The 1915 Bromley Atlas showed the letters "G & SM" owned by F.G. Morgan, on the west side of Dulaney Valley Branch. At that time, the present reservoir scenic route, Loch Raven Drive, had not been laid out. The Dulaney Valley and Sweet Air Road shown in the atlas followed the west bank of the branch and are today probably inundated. Two iron furnaces operated in the Loch Raven Region: Northampton Furnace starting in 1760, and the Ashland Furnace, a much more advanced operation that began in 1844. Northampton Furnace This works was started on Spring Branch Road near the Hampton estate by Colonel Charles Ridgely in 1760. The furnace probably made the most money of all Ridgely's enterprises and allowed his son Captain Charles Ridgely to build the massive mansion called Hampton, started in 1783. An iron furnace was a stone stack about 32 feet high, a great oven where iron ore, charcoal, and limestone were dumped in at the top and the mixture kept burning, fanned by an air jet, for several days until the iron portion of the ore melted and gushed out at the bottom as pure iron. The limestone or in some cases, oyster shells, were used to purify the molten mixture. The waste product was a glassy substance known as slag. Slag fragments look like jade or obsidian and are easy to collect as artifacts. Northampton Furnace laborers were either slaves or indentured servants. The Ridgely papers and ledgers survive and show who showed up for work each day and how much pig iron was produced. The furnace produced cast-iron cannons during the American Revolution, also cannon balls. Fragments of cannons that burst during their testing have been found in the woods in recent years. Cannon balls have also turned up. This furnace stayed in business until 1827. It was almost obsolete at the time of closure. The Furnace Farm was partially condemned to build the lake in 1922. The furnace stack is usually submerged in the waters of the first cove south of the golf course, about a half-mile walk from Dulaney Valley Road. During droughts, it is possible to reach the ruin via dry land. The Ridgely's also had a large stone gristmill on the furnace property and it was still standing in 1922 when condemned for the reservoir projects. Ashland Furnace Ashland Furnace was started by a number of Pennsylvania investors in 1844, and it was a much more advanced furnace than Northampton. In fact, there were apparently three furnace stacks at Ashland, and the last stacks built there were probably composed of fire brick with an iron jacket bolted around the core. A complete company town of brick and stone houses was constructed along the railroad. Ashland had a company office, store, and post office. Only one photograph is known to exist of Ashland in operation, it's low efficiency stacks filling the neighborhood with clouds of smoke. The Ashland Iron Company also acquired the Oregon Furnace in what is now Oregon Ridge Park. Oregon was their source of iron for many years. By the mid-1880s, Ashland had been bypassed by newer technology and the town shut down. Any metal parts were salvaged and some scrap was taken to Sparrows Point for recycling. In the early 1980s, Ashland was inhabited by poor tenants who had no sewer connections in their historic houses. Health authorities were eager to shut Ashland down because the effluent was probably seeping into the reservoir one route or another. The entire Ashland company town was rehabbed for upscale living in 1985 by developer Kim Strutt. The Ashland housing, company store, and company office can be seen just west of the parking lot for the hike and bike trail at the east end of Ashland Road. The ruins of the furnace can be found on the reservoir property, about 600 feet southeast of the parking lot. A visit is not recommended in the tick and poison ivy season. Great walls still stand with limestone blocks fitted together in almost Inca-type masonry work. Slag fragments can be found in abundance. |
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