On July 21, 1817, Captain Benjamin C. Howard’sĚýFirst Mechanical VolunteersĚýformed up early in town and marched six miles to the North Point battleground. Accompanying them were wagons conveying the monument blocks to be assembled and dedicated on site that day. The monument’s construction was directed by Lt. Thomas Towson, a stone masonĚý“who aimed at simplicity and neatness.” With a final application of whitewash it was dedicated to honor Private Aquila Randall a member who was killed in a skirmish just before the Battle of North Point, September 12, 1814. The company was joined by other 5thMaryland Regiment officers at the monument while Captain Howard delivered a modest appropriate address:
“….I can picture to myself the sensation of those who in far distant days will contemplate this monument…and the melancholy event which has caused our assemblage at this spot…This monument which we are now erecting, will stand as a solemn expression of the feeling of us all…But I regret that the spot, which is made classic by the effusion of blood, the sport where the long line stood un-appalled by the system and advances of an experienced and disciplined foe, has been suffered to remain unnoticed. It is here where her citizens stood arrayed soldier’s garb, that honors to a soldier’s memory should have been paid. To mark the spot be then our care.…”
The inscriptions on the monument read:
The Gunpowder Copper Works, a once-prominent factory located along the Great Gunpowder Falls near Glen Arm, Maryland is the second oldest copper works in the United States. The factory operated from around 1811 to 1858 turning blocks of copper into thin sheets used for covering the bottoms of ships and boats to increase their speed and durability. Possibly the most intact industrial site of its kind along the Great Gunpowder Falls, the factory is located immediately past Factory Road on northbound Harford Road.
The Gunpowder Copper Works was established around 1811 by Levi Hollingsworth, a veteran of the American Revolution and a prosperous merchant from Cecil County with major investments in shipbuilding. On a trip to England, Levi Hollingsworth studied the refining, milling and rolling of copper and brought back extensive machinery he needed to set up a factory in America. He likely established the factory soon after leasing a mill from Dr. Thomas Love and Caleb Dorsey Goodwin on this site in 1811.
The Copper Works factory complex included two sets of sheet rolls, two refining furnaces, and later, and a cupola furnace for treating the slag. A water-wheel furnished the power. With a factory among in the fertile hills of Baltimore County, workmen eventually took to farming when business slowed. When the crops needed attention, workers left rolling and milling for another day.
During the War of 1812, the Gunpowder Copper Works supplied the U.S. Navy with sheathing, bolts and nails. Levi Hollingsworth joined the Fifth Maryland Regiment in 1814 and was wounded in September fighting the British at the Battle of North Point.
Shortly after end of the war, the dome on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. was rebuilt using copper sheathing rolled by the the Gunpowder Copper Works using ore mined in Frederick County, Maryland. The Capitol Dome contract brought the mill national recognition as a copper supplier. The profit from the project allowed Levi Hollingsworth to buy out the Ridgely and Goodwin interests in the Gunpowder Copper Works in 1816. By the time Hollingsworth died 1822, the mill was the only copper refinery in operation south of the Mason-Dixon Line. By 1850, the Gunpowder Copper Works had produced between 550,000 and 1.5 million pounds of copper sheeting.
After Levi Hollingsworth's death, the Copper Works sold to John McKim, Jr. and Sons. Operation of the copper works continued under the management of Isaac McKim until his death in 1838. Isaac McKim linked the Gunpowder Copper Works to the family's shipbuilding supply business on Smith's Wharf in Baltimore's harbor, now the site of the National Aquarium.
After Isaac's death, his nephews bought out the other beneficiaries and ran the Copper Works. Haslett and William McKim were both active businessmen in Baltimore, serving on the boards of the Baltimore Dispensary, the Peabody Institute, the B&O Railroad, and the Maritime Insurance Company. William McKim served as an aide-de-camp to Commander John Spear Smith during the Baltimore Bank Riot in 1835. His uncle, Isaac, had served a similar position to Commander Smith's father, General Sam Smith, during the War of 1812.
In September 1843, a notice in the Baltimore American, advertised the copper works for lease including:
"a sheet mill with two pairs of rollers, two pairs of large shears operated by a water wheel, two annealing furnaces, a tilt and bolt mill, a tilt-hammer operated by a water wheel, two furnaces, a blacksmith shop, carpenter and turning shop and a nail machine. Two refining shops with a slag furnace, coal houses and homes for workmen. The Dam is substantial and in good condition, and the water power is among the best in the vicinity of Baltimore. The works are on a good turnpike about 10 miles above Baltimore."
In 1858, major rain storms in mid-June caused significant flooding in the area and along the Great Gunpowder Falls, which destroyed the dam at the Copper Works. The dam was rebuilt, but operation ceased later that year and the factory closed. The owners rented the property rented to a tenant operator in 1861 but it likely remained closed during the Civil War. The Maryland General Assembly incorporated the Gunpowder Copper Works as a state facility in 1864, naming Levi Hollingsworth's son-in-law, William Pinkney Whyte, president of the operation, and Enoch Pratt, one of the incorporators. Despite Whyte's prominence as a politician and Pratt's success in business, the newly incorporated copper works soon failed. The City of Baltimore bought the 303 acres of land on which the copper works sat in 1866 as the possible site for a future reservoir.
In 1887, the Baltimore City Water Board sold the copper works to Henry Reier, who sold it to Henry E. Shimp for his "bending works at the Old Copper Factory on the Gunpowder," where he manufactured wheel rims, wagon-wheel spokes and wagon shafts. The facility never processed copper again, but Shimp's Eagle Steam Saw and Bending Mills continued operating into the twentieth century.
J. Alexis Shriver, Harford County landowner, bought the property in 1910 and sold the plant's water wheels during a World War I scrap drive. By the mid-twentieth century, the facility stood in ruins but was acquired by the state as part of the new Gunpowder Falls State Park.
There are at least four buildings from the original complex still standing along Harford Road just above Gunpowder River bridge. These include the Copper Works House with outbuildings, the Tilt-hammer House, the Foreman's House, and the spring house and bridge.
Constructed about 1815, the Gunpowder Copper Works House is a one-and-a-half-story stone building reportedly used as a dormitory for the workers at the nearby plant. By about 1900, this building had been converted to a stable by J. Alexis Shriver then later converted to a residence. The small stone Foreman's House was built around 1815. Two more stories and a large shed dormer were added to the building later. The house sold to Henry Reier in 1877 and his family held it until 1938. The Tilt-hammer House, built about 1815, may have been the coppersmith's house at one time. When it served as the tilt-hammer house, this building is where copper was pounded into sheets. The building became a residence after 1925 and the only original parts of the structure are the exterior stone walls.
Today, all of these buildings are in use as residences or offices. They are located within the Gunpowder Historic District and sit on land which has been incorporated into Gunpowder State Park.
The Baltimore County Almshouse officially opened in 1874 as a public home for the county's indigent, elderly, and infirm residents. The Almshouse and its predecessors were the ancestors of today’s nursing homes, mental health hospitals, homeless shelters, and other social services and health care facilities. After Baltimore City and County separated in 1851, the County took over one of two original almshouses that had served Baltimore: Calverton, founded in 1819. The County sold the aging Calverton facility in the 1870s and built a new almshouse farther north. Originally called the Upland Home, the third and final almshouse is now known simply as "the Almshouse."
The project of building the Almshouse began in 1871 when County Commissioners purchased property in the village of Texas, Maryland, from Dr. John Galloway. Galloway also served as one of the Almshouse's early physicians. Builders Codling and Lishear, following designs by local architect James Harrison, used locally quarried limestone to erect the four-story edifice. In 1872, the Sun reported how the main home was "constructed of the best material and in the most substantial manner" and claimed the building would "be a credit to the county." After a total outlay of nearly $60,000, seventy-four "inmates," as residents were known, moved in on January 8, 1874.
Housing for inmates at the Almshouse was rigidly segregated by race and gender. The County built the "Pest House" (short for pestilence), a small structure down the hill from the main home, to quarantine residents with contagious diseases. Far more often, the Pest House served as segregated housing for African American men. In the main building, white men and women lived in the front wing (on separate floors) and African American women lived in the back wing. The Almshouse superintendent reserved the first floor for himself and his family, along with any resident physicians and other privileged employees.
The Almshouse property included a farm of well over 100 acres and able-bodied residents were expected to work as farmhands or within the home in cooking, sewing, laundry or childcare, to help provide for their own upkeep. While the farm was generally described as productive in various reports over the years, the County still spent thousands of dollars annually on items like coal, bread, beef, fertilizer, medicine and salaries. Records from the late nineteenth century show expenditures totaling $7,200 in 1869, $12,520 in 1883 and $11,345 in 1886, for example. Salary expenditures went mainly to the twelve superintendents who oversaw the Almshouse from 1874 to 1958, with varying degrees of success (at least according to accounts in the press, which sometimes carried a whiff of partisan bias). The last two superintendents, who served from 1907 to 1959, were father and son, John P. and William Chilcoat. On balance, the Chilcoats seemed to earn more praise than their predecessors for their care of residents and effective oversight of the farm. William Chilcoat, for instance, was credited with lobbying successfully to secure County funds in 1938 to add more meat and eggs and otherwise upgrade the residents' diet.
The vast majority of inmates are now only knowable through the basic details recorded in the Almshouse ledger books, held in the collections of the Historical Society of Baltimore County. The ledgers recorded residents' age, sex, race, and place of birth. Unsurprisingly, the impoverished Almshouse population included many African Americans and immigrants over the years. A 1946 census of the eighty-nine residents, for example, noted fifteen African Americans and fifteen foreign-born whites, mainly from Germany, Poland, Russia and Ireland. Most of the American-born residents in 1946 came from Maryland, but eighteen were natives of other US states. Some residents registered under partial or false names—a "Daniel Boone" entered on October 1, 1891, and the facility admitted a "Napolean Bonaparte" on June 12, 1899—reflecting the distressed circumstances that sent them to the Almshouse. Some unfortunates came to the Almshouse only in death, to be buried in unmarked graves in the potter’s field on the grounds.
We do know a bit more about some individuals. In 1943, the Towson Jeffersonian profiled Fannie Williams, a 104-year-old African American woman and the oldest occupant of the Almshouse. Williams had lived there for forty-one years, "earning her keep" by helping the superintendent’s wife with cleaning and, after she became wheelchair-bound, mending clothes for other residents. Before entering the Almshouse, Williams had worked as a domestic servant in Baltimore County homes. Other residents occasionally landed in the newspapers under more unfortunate circumstances, like Anthony Rose, an elderly white resident who fell down the Almshouse’s elevator shaft and died in 1909.
In the early decades, the facility had a persistent problem with overcrowding, especially during the cold winter months. From 1874 to 1914, more than 10,000 people passed through the Almshouse’s doors as “inmates,” committed to public care for reasons ranging from disabilities to dementia to diseases like measles and tuberculosis. Over time, however, public and private alternatives emerged for those who did not have families able or willing to house and care for them. The founding of the State Lunacy Commission in the early 1890s marked growing concern over the treatment of the mentally ill and disabled. Those considered "insane," who in an earlier era might have lived in an almshouse, were increasingly placed in "asylums." As retirement communities and nursing homes became more common over the twentieth century, the need for almshouses declined further. In 1958, Baltimore County officials closed the historic facility, citing costs.
Since its closure, the Almshouse has housed the Historical Society of Baltimore County (founded in 1959), and a variety of County government offices and other nonprofits. In 1980, the Almshouse was added to the County Landmarks List. Today, the Historical Society maintains its collections and offices, runs a research center for the public, and holds events in this historic structure. The surrounding community of Cockeysville enjoys the open spaces and greenery of the sprawling former grounds, now County Home Park.
The Baltimore Manual Labor School for indigent boys, also known as the Arbutus Farm School, was established in 1841. The school emerged from of a larger social movement developing in urban Victorian society at the time. Amidst the energetic fervor of the Second Great Awakening, white, middle-class Americans began actively participating in a reform movement to change the lives of the poor, inner-city population. Industrialization in the early nineteenth century brought extreme population growth to urban centers. In Baltimore, the population grew six fold between the years of 1820 and 1860. Specialized private and federal institutions formed to battle a rise in young people living in poverty. They began working to relocate children from what they saw as unpromising home environments to more positive atmospheres.
The school provided a, “Free Boarding School for indigent boys, mostly sons of poor widows who are unable to feed, clothe, and train their boys during the years that they should be acquiring an education, to enable each to attain a position of self support.” The School opened its doors in 1841 with fifteen “destitute and orphaned boy[s].” By 1843, the Baltimore Manual Labor School had taken into its care a total of forty-two children.
By applying the boys to a rigorous program centered primarily on physical labor, the school intended to mold the character of these young men, while at the same time supplying them with applicable work skills, effectively generating productive members of society. In 1893, directors of the Baltimore Manual Labor School wrote:
“the best occupation we can train our boys up to, is that of a farmer. It is perhaps almost the only calling which is not overcrowded, and the one most likely to produce an honorable and independent livelihood for the boys who have no capital, but health and energy.”
The types of farm work included tending to the orchards, vegetable gardens, green houses and livestock. The boys attended educational classes including writing, reading and math. They also attended the Catonsville Methodist Church on Sundays and engaged in daily religious exercises. However, education and religion took a backseat to manual labor which required of a six hour daily shift from each child, even for young boys. The school admitted boys as young as five.
In 1922, Spring Grove Hospital purchased the land following a devastating fire in 1916. The Stabler family owned the property and helped to run the school. Family patriarch Edmund Stabler held the position of superintendent from 1884 to 1904. Interestingly, the hospital used the farmland for a patient agricultural rehabilitation program. The state incorporated this and adjacent tracts of land in the early 1960’s in order to create UMBC. The Stabler home was used by Dr. Albin O. Kuhn, UMBC’s first Chancellor, during the construction of the campus and the Albin O. Kuhn Library now occupies the site where the home stood.
Constructed of tooled Indiana limestone, glass, steel, concrete, and granite, the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery is at the center of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus both literally and figuratively. Since the library first opened in 1968, it has served as a focal point of the campus and UMBC students’ academic lives.
In 1982, the building was named in honor of Dr. Albin O. Kuhn, the first chancellor of UMBC. Chancellor Kuhn helped to found and plan the University of Maryland campus in Baltimore County and took part in the early administration of the new campus. In 1965, Chancellor Kuhn hired his first full-time employee—the university’s first librarian, John Haskell, Jr. Haskell was only 24 at the time, coming to work straight out of graduate school and a few months of active duty in the Army Reserves. He spent many of the early months leading up to UMBC’s opening ordering books, hiring new employees, and creating a catalog ordering system. The campus master plan from that same year also noted the importance of the library:
“The building will be viewed on axis from the main approach drive, appearing unquestionably as the major building on campus.”
In its early years, UMBC housed the library collections in different locations throughout the campus. Chancellor Kuhn’s house served as the catalog center for the library’s 20,000 volume collection while other collection materials were held within Academic Building I. As the university’s holdings continued to grow, the UMBC administration began plans for the construction of a specifically designated library building, which would later become known as the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery.
Campus architects designed the library to grow with the university, making plans to build it in three phases. Phase 1, in 1968, brought all of UMBC’s library collections, which had previously been scattered across the campus, together into one central location. The new library Brutalist unfinished concrete exterior contrasted with an interior of brightly colored walls and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pond. Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Architects recognized the design with their highest honors in 1975.
Phase II opened in 1975 adding the library’s Special Collections department and a select collection of state and federal government documents to the library’s collection and continued the university’s efforts to expand its holdings. Phase III, the Library Tower, opened in 1995, increasing the library’s capacity further to 1,000,000 volumes.
As the library has sought to grow and maintain its holdings, the building has also grown as a student-centered space. This role expanded with the completion of the Retriever Learning Center (RLC) in 2011. Student organizations, like the Student Government Association and the Graduate Student Association, advocated for a central group study space as early as the 1980s. The university administration responded by creating the RLC, a space open to UMBC students for collaborative learning and group study. As described by UMBC President Dr. Freeman Hrabowski in 2011, the RLC is “another example of UMBC’s innovation in teaching and learning.”
Tucked away in the southeastern corner of Baltimore County, and separated from the rest of Sparrow’s Point by a creek, Turner Station is where many African American workers at Bethlehem Steel and nearby factories lived with their families from the 1800s up through the present.
New housing was constructed around World War I in Dundalk for white factory workers, but it excluded black workers. Partially as a result, African Americans focused on building their own community. According to local historian and cosmetologist , Turner Station takes its name from Joshua Turner who first purchased the property in the 1800s:
“It started with a man named Joshua Turner who had purchased this land back in the 1800s and he had purchased it for guano, which is pigeon droppings, and this was [what] fertilized land... There was a lot of farmland near so the fertilizer was to be used for the different orchard farms. I understand there were apple farms and different vegetable farms not too far from here. So Joshua Turner, as I understand, from the records that we had read, had set up a station for the employees that were employed at Sparrows Point and thus this is how the name came about, Turner Station after Joshua Turner.”
While Bethlehem Steel built housing for white workers in Dundalk after WWI, they made no investments in housing for black workers in Turner Station. Instead, residents built their own homes and businesses, growing a community outside the oversight of company officials.
Beginning around 1920, development started in the neighborhoods of Steelton Park and Carnegie. Turner Station soon became one of the largest African American communities in Baltimore County. The town reached a peak around WWII when wartime workers at Bethlehem Steel moved to the area. According to local historian Louis Diggs, credit for the self-sufficient community’s development belongs largely to Mr. Anthony Thomas (1857-1931) and Dr. Joseph Thomas (1885-1963), Anthony Thomas’ son.