Ilchester tiny post office is even tinier

At one time the smallest post office in Maryland, it was built about 1910 on the shore of the Patapsco River.  In the 1950s it was moved to 4607 Bonnie Branch Road at the postmistress, Teresa Schaad’s house.  Originally it had wood siding, but it now has stone to match the current home. 

Patapsco Female Institute and the women who ran it

As pictured in 1854, the institute (opened 1837) was managed or owned by three ladies ... and a few men.  The most well-known, from 1841 to 1856, was Almira Phelps who moved in with her family and made it a nationally celebrated school. Sarah Randolph, author and great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, was the last director from 1879 to 1885. A descendant of one of the Ellicott founders, Lilly Elliott owned it from1891 until her death in 1924; first as her home, then hotel, then as a WWI hospital.

Martha Ellicott Tyson - Swarthmore founder, writer, Quaker elder

Martha (Ellicott) Tyson (1795-1873) was born in Ellicott’s Mills to George Ellicott, son of one of the founders, and younger sister of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea.  She married Nathan Tyson, lived in Baltimore and had a country home “Jericho” north of Baltimore by the Tyson mills. While raising a large family she became an Elder in her Quaker (Society of Friends) meeting, stressed education, women’s rights and abolition. She helped found Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, Pa. in 1860. Her many books include a genealogy of her family, The Settlement of Ellicott's Mills, and A Sketch of the Life of Benjamin Banneker.

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea and the first Maryland cookbook in 1845

Elizabeth (Ellicott) Lea (1793-1858) was born in Ellicott’s mills to

George and Elizabeth (Brooke) Ellicott, the son of one of the

founding Quaker brothers.  In 1812, she married Thomas

Lea Jr. (1789-1829) at the New Elkridge Meeting House in Ellicott City,

and lived at his family mills near Wilmington, DE.

After moving to her mother’s Brooke family lands near Sandy

Spring MD in 1823, Lea’s husband died and left her to

raise their large family at "Walnut Hill" farm.  Lea sent her newly

married daughter a recipe manuscript which was first published

in 1845.  Domestic Cookery went through two more editions -1846, 1851 -and numerous printings during the next 40 years.