"Wyoming" - Dorsey, Howard, and Wyoming Rolls

Wyoming... not the state, but the Howard County country home ("farm") of Ben and Jane Howard who inherited his father Col John Eager Howard's mansion "Belvidere" in Baltimore to use during the winter. "Waverly" his brother Gov. George Howard's home, was a few miles west of "Wyoming." They lived in Howard County from at least 1842 to 1845 then sold it to a Dorsey. It is gone and only a few mentions remain.

Early cooking in Ellicott City

From hearth cooking 250 years ago to cookstoves, from beehive bake ovens to Reip ovens to ovens in the cookstoves, there were many changes in cooking during Ellicott City's first one hundred years. EC was the home of the first Maryland cookbook author, and another woman author had a successful 1873 fundraising cookbook.

Deborah Disney's Hotel and 'tavern' 1830s to 1860

Deborah McLaughlin Disney (c1798-  ) was a remarkable businesswoman who leased the hotel(not tavern), then bought it in 1840. An acre was sold for a new courthouse and jail; the deed even stated where Court Street would run, and they had to build a "substantial fence."  She increased the hotel size by 1844. "Mrs. Disney's Hotel" or the Union Hotel was a "commodious and well-established hotel," with a 4 story brick addition on the west side, a stable for 70 horses, running water at the stable yard with room for a flower garden, 8 acres to grow vegetables and hay, and outbuildings.  She sold it in 1860.

Wealthy Kraft family's butcher shop on Main Street OEC

8081 Main St., a fine stone building, was built c1833 as a home then became a store.  In 1881 Dorothy Kraft bought the building for Kraft's Meat Market. The Kraft meat sign is seen on the first building.



Andrew Kraft (1836-1881) and Dorothy (1839-1916) were both from Germany - he arrived at age 15, she at age 6 and started working at the mills.  He worked for a butcher, then started out on his own. They married in 1858 and had a large family which continued the business after she died in 1916 as "one of the richest women" in the county leaving "$300,000 worth of property" to her family.

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. 

The Ellicott City Colored School House and Beulah Buckner

Beulah (Meacham) Buckner (1930-2005) saw the dilapidated building while searching for tombstones and other records for slaves and free African Americans.  She found out that it was the old "Ellicott City Colored School", the first publicly funded school for African Americans in Howard County, Maryland.  Tirelessly working to restore and fill the old building, Buckner saw that it became a museum.

Rebecca Garrett 'freed', then retaken 20 years later

Rebecca Garrett's mother was freed by Sarah (Cord) Anderson in her 1805 will.  Later, Rebecca spent about 20 years living free in Baltimore with her freedman husband William Garrett and ten children.  Thomas Anderson and son Isaac reclaimed Rebecca and some of her children in 1849.  She was freed by a Baltimore County court, but on appeal, was returned to the Andersons.

Ann Tonge and Tonge Row

Tonge or Tongue Row was built in the 1840s, with one duplex completed each year by a widow, Ann Tonge.  The three lovely stone buildings reportedly have appeared in movies, such as the TV film Les Miserables in 2000 and the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

Lilly (Tyson) Manly Elliott turned the Patapsco Female Institute into a 60 room home, then hotel

Lily or Lilly Tyson (1852-1924) was a descendant of two prominent Quaker milling and merchant families – the Tysons of Jericho Mills north of Baltimore and the Ellicott founders of Ellicott City. Martha Ellicott Tyson, her grandmother, helped found Swathmore College, wrote a biography of  
Benjamin Banneker and was the daughter of George Ellicott. Lilly bought the old hilltop girls school in 1891.

Edith Clarke - first female electrical engineer

Edith Clarke (1883-1959), a gifted mathematician, was raised in the John R. Clarke home “Arlington”.  She attended numerous colleges including Vassar (1908) and MIT (1919) and had a variety of jobs with the longest at General Electric 1919-1945. Her abilities were finally recognized and she was advanced to an engineer – a job previously closed to women. She invented the Clarke calculator, patented in 1921. After retiring, she taught for ten years at the University of Texas in Austin, then returned to Maryland.

Margaret Jane Blake bought her freedom, her life in a book

"Margy" Blake (1811-1880) was the daughter of Charlotte and Perry Blake - he was a free African-American and a Marine during the War of 1812.  She was born a slave of Jesse and Sarah Levering and looked after one of their daughters, Sarah Levering. Blake bought her freedom in the 1850s, and was the subject of a book by Levering in 1897. Although Jesse Levering had a successful business in Baltimore, he died suddenly of cholera when Sarah was 7 years old, and his widow moved her young family to Ellicott City, and Margaret was sent to work for other families.

Sarah Jane Dorsey freed in 1850, given land in 1869

Sarah Jane Powells (or Powell) Dorsey was born in Lisbon MD in 1828 (or 1832) and was freed in the 1850s by Thomas and Sarah Hood.  "Sarah Hood desires to manifest her regard for Sarah Jane Dorsey, colored, late their slave for her unwavering fidelity and general moral worth as a servant” and Hood purchased over an acre of land in 1869 where the Dorsey family would live for over a century at the home on Rt. 97, Cooksville, MD.

Priscilla Ridgely (White) Morison's daughter Rebecca (Morison) Henry awarded French Legion of Honor

Priscilla White (1850-1942) was the 4th Priscilla.  Her father Charles Ridgely White's mother Priscilla Hill Dorsey (Ridgely) White was born at the great estate "Hampton" to Gov. Charles Carnan Ridgely and Priscilla Hill (Dorsey) Ridgely who was born at "Belmont" (now a Howard County run historic home) to Caleb Dorsey, Jr. and Priscilla (Hill) Dorsey.  She was a life long Howard County resident, spending the winters in Baltimore; and organized reading classes in Howard County, worked for better roads, raised funds for charities and was active in the St. Johns Church of Ellicott City, where they are buried.  One of her daughters, Rebecca (1877-1955), earned the French Legion of Honor medal for her work in Paris during World War I.

Jane Gilmor Howard, cookbook author, raised millions for starving Southerners

150 years ago, Jane (Gilmor) Howard led more than 350 Maryland women to collect the equivalent of $2.3 million dollars for the starving women and children in the South following the Civil War.  Additionally, she wrote a charity cookbook when she was 72 aptly titled Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen.  For several years in the 1840s, she and her husband Benjamin Chew Howard spent summers outside Ellicott's Mills at "Wyoming," near his brother Gov. George Howard's home "Waverly" at Marriottsville. One of their daughters attended the Patapsco Female Institute.

Linwood, Mary Merrick and Jeanne Simons

“Linwood” was the home of a possible future Saint, at one time owned by the great-grandson of Martha Washington and would become a school for children with autism in 1955.  The cupola and flue system were designed to cool the summer house.  ...