Walking from Ellicott Mills to Elkridge, then by train in 1843

On Friday, Oct. 13, 1843 a reporter (“Old Honesty”) walked the six miles from Ellicott’s Mills to Elkridge Landing and wrote a long article about the scenery, mills and trains along the Patapsco River.  He passed Illchester, Thistle Factory (image left), Avalon Furnace, Elkridge Landing and Relay station.

The river was called 'Patapsco Falls' until it reached Elkridge, where it was called 'Patapsco River' to the Chesapeake Bay.
 

“Ill-chester looked very well when he [Old Honesty] passed it, the Patapsco and rail-road intersecting there, but he thought the

Thistle Factory, by some appropriate name would sound to greater advantage, a thistle implying that things are going to waste, while the factory is one of the most flourishing in the country, where the music of human voices combined with the everlasting clack of machinery told him that the proprietor, the honorable Mr. Morris joined the melody of dollars in the happy chorus, and is not in the practice of starving his boys and girls into almshouses and dwellings of prostitution!

The smokes of Avalen Furnace attracted his notice, and on peeping inside he found that it did not all “end in smoke,” for the iron-nerved operatives, without any counterfeiting, are forging night and day, and if certain half naked chaps among them are scorched here and burned hereafter, they will be sorry they ever learned the business.”

“From the nine mile post he witnessed a splendid scene with Elkridge Landing and miniature “Alps on Alps” in the back ground.  On that [mile] post may be found the names of passing travelers…”

At the Relay station, above, he boarded the train to Baltimore without a cow catcher. 

“I would like to be killed honorably in battle, but on this little journey I did not like the idea of being rocketed up into the air, or tumbled circus-fashion down a declivity by the train accidentally, or villain-a-dentially running off the track. … “

“In England they can afford to travel thirty miles per hour, because some American accidents are called murders there, and are compelled to keep the railroads in perfect order” in England clearing things from the track, warning flags … “If things are not conducted better on American railroads, the people will resume the good old fashion of travelling in stage coaches, and force our railroad companies to be as careful as… in England.”

“Some [American] railroad companies cannot pay a cent of interest to the stockholders, and if the stockholders wish to travel on the road, (even if they have not money to go to market,) they are obliged to pay like other people, although the companies might very easily and very honestly give them their lawful, interest in free travelling, in place of money interest these hard times, especially as through them the railroads were started, and the managers’ bread buttered on the right side.”

The Sun.  Oct 18, 1843

©2018 Patricia Bixler Reber
Forgotten history of Ellicott City & Howard County MD