Libraries in Howard County 1904-1923

The Maryland State Library Commission was formed by law in 1902 and did annual reports. Three colleges in Howard County - St. Charles College, Rock Hill College (picture left) and Redemmptorists' College Library. By 1923 there were 22 traveling libraries, and new public libraries in Ellicott City.

St. Charles' College 1911 fire, now Terra Maria ruins

Surrounded by homes, the assembly hall ruins are all that remain of the St. Charles' College, started in 1831, for young men preparing for the priesthood. Articles about the March 16, 1911 fire, and the building of the Assembly Hall five years earlier (1906), below.

Schools at Ellicott mills and Chickasaw students

Martha (Ellicott) Tyson (1795-1873) wrote the book The Settlement of Ellicott's Mills, 1871 which included several education related topics.  Her father was George Ellicott, whose 18th century home is still across from the mill.  Various past posts about Tyson HERE

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.

George Ellicott Jr. home becomes part of St. Mary's College

The Ilchester Hotel/Home/Tavern that Ellicott built in the early 1830s was sold in 1866 to the Redeptorists for $15,000.  The walls had weakened by the coal trains and had to have pipes to stabilize the old stone structure.  The main 'upper house' was built in 1868, and a large wooden addition was built beside and behind the 4 story granite building.  The first chapel with long windows was attached to the granite hotel and used into at least 1895.

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.

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.  ...