Col. John Eager Howard and sons during the War of 1812

The namesake for Howard County and owner of land there ("Waverly") was too old to fight, but his sons helped protect Fort McHenry and Baltimore. Howard's "Lodge Farm" [H on map, width of the penisula, to top of map] on Patapsco Neck was next to Gov. Charles Carnan Ridgely (of Hampton Mansion) [R] and in the way of the British who landed at North Point [X] on Sept. 12, 1814.

Although the British had beaten the Americans in a battle north of Washington DC, then burned the Capitol and White House, they would be delayed by fierce fighting going to Baltimore, their General Ross was killed and Fort McHenry survived a bombardment from the ships (there's a song about it).

"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.

Waverly Jumbles

Governor George and Prudence Ridgely Howard named the home and lands that his father, Col. Howard, gave them "Waverly" after the enormously popular 1814 Sir Walter Scott novel Waverley. His brother Benjamin's wife, Jane Gilmor Howard, included a recipe for the rose water flavored cookie in her charity cookbook Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen in 1873.

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.