Gray's Patapsco Cotton Factory 1815 in operation, 1820 fire

Gray had improved the old paper factory for cotton in 1815, but in five years there was a terrible fire.  200 workers - mostly women and children - were left without a job, so money was raised for their relief.  Previous posts HERE

Edward Gray - cotton mill on the Patapsco, George Washington,

Edward Gray (1776-1856) sailed from Ireland as a teenager to Philadelphia where he saw President Washington and would work his way up to owning a mill on the Patapsco.  Gray was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland to a Welsh mother and Irish clergyman father.  He “became warmly interested” in the American Revolution and at eighteen went to the new country’s capital of Philadelphia to make his fortune.  The first day he saw his hero, George Washington and happened to start work at the “commercial house” of Washington, and he took the President his monthly bank-books.  He owned the Patapsco Mill, later named Gray's Mill, which made cotton.

Bloede Dam - Power plant inside a dam

The first hydroelectric plant within a dam was built just south of Ilchester and Ellicott City on the Patapsco River in 1907. The underwater plant had windows behind the falls for light, but during rain when the "water is muddy" less light entered the room.

The dam was removed in 2018.

Cotton mills of Ellicott's Mills in 1849

 In 1849 there were 4 large-scale mills along the Patapsco River by Ellicott City which made cotton material: Union in Oella (pictured), the Granite, the Patapsco, and the Thistle. 

Cotton mill heated in 1816 by a young Robert Mills

Robert Mills, the American born architect of two Washington Monuments - Baltimore in 1815 and DC in the 1830s - designed a soap stone and brick furnace for the large (100 feet by 40 feet, three story stone) cotton mill a mile down the Patapsco River from Ellicott's Mills.  It was run by Edward Gray, father-in-law of John Pendleton Kennedy.  More on "Patapsco" HERE

"Patapsco" - the home not the river - and the 1868 flood

Edward Gray built the home and mill complex, and lived there with his two daughters and his son-in-law John Pendleton Kennedy.  Kennedy (1795-1870) was a lawyer, novelist, politician, Secretary of the Navy and kept a journal which gives fascinating accounts of his education, fighting to protect Baltimore in 1814 and his homes in Baltimore and "Patapsco" near Ellicott City.  After Edward Gray died in 1856, the Kennedys continued to live between the two homes until the flood of 1868 - described below.

Washington Irving visits his friend John Pendleton Kennedy

Novelist Washington Irving (1783-1859) who bought a cottage in 1835, and transformed it into the fanciful "Sunnyside" in Tarrytown, NY (picture below) wrote about his visits to Kennedy's "Patapsco" country home outside of Ellicott City.  The house had been built c1820 by his father-in-law Edward Gray within his textile manufacturing complex by the Patapsco River, with additions built over the years.  John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870) was a lawyer, politician, Secretary of the Navy, novelist, reformer, historian and kept a detailed journal.