Carroll Yesteryears: Carroll’s historic sites represent ‘an embarrassment of riches’

Preservation of county history was important to Helen Shriver Riley and Helen Arnold Gorman, two of Carroll’s native daughters who recently died. Each of them devoted years of their long lives to the Historical Society of Carroll County, the Taneytown Heritage and Museum Association, the Union Mills Homestead, and other organizations devoted to saving Carroll’s past.

Architectural historian Kenneth M. Short, who worked for the Carroll County government in the 1990s as its historic planner, recently referred to Carroll’s many historic sites as “an embarrassment of riches.” Barns, churches, cemeteries, and homes, some dating back to the 18th century, still dot our landscape, unlike what is happening in some neighboring counties where developers’ bulldozers have wiped many of them away and substituted suburban sprawl.

To appreciate the settlement of Carroll County and how it came to have “an embarrassment of riches,” you can check out the Tracey map on the Carroll County Genealogical Society’s website. It is part of the Special Collections of the Maryland State Archives, but originally given to the Historical Society of Carroll County.

Hampstead historians Grace Tracey and her father, Dr. Arthur Tracey, produced a map that depicts Carroll’s Native American trails, roads, and waterways, and identifies the land patents granted by Maryland’s colonial government to individuals before 1756. Some of those first landowners were rich and some poor; some patents were for thousands of acres and others less than 100.

“Belt’s Hills,” patented in 1720 and located near Marriottsville, is the earliest tract on the map, but there are scores of others owned by 1756. Many tracts bear rather ordinary names such as “Meadow,” or “Exchange.” Other names probably reflect where the owner came from – “New Switzerland,” “Tipperara” and “Belfast.” My favorites are the colorful ones that leave you wondering what inspired them – “Petticoat’s Hope,” “Empty Cupboard,” and “Bite Him Softly.”

Owners or tenants quickly began occupying the tracts, erecting crude shelters at first for man and beast. The wealthy owners of huge tracts often lived in elegant style in Baltimore or Annapolis while renting portions of their tracts to tenants who paid a yearly rent.

Slowly but surely the original barns, churches, and homes built across Carroll County were replaced by ones reflecting greater economic success. Quite a few of these survive to this day. Perhaps you won’t see them along major roads, but take detours down small lanes and dirt tracks on your Sunday drive through the countryside. There you’ll find examples of the embarrassment of riches that Ken Short mentions and that he discovered while Carroll’s historic planner.

Before Short began work in 1991, at least two other people with backgrounds in architectural history were responsible for documenting Carroll’s wealth of historic buildings. As early as 1970, R.J. Rivoire took a quick look at the Curfman Farm on Brick Church Road and left some paperwork in the files of the Maryland Historical Trust. Although he didn’t fully record what appeared to be a typical 19th century Carroll County farmhouse, Rivoire left behind a tantalizing note about the property: “May prove interesting archaeologically.” Rivoire continued documenting other Carroll County buildings for several more years. Joe Getty also researched a number of local historic buildings before turning his attention to the law.

Nobody has systematically recorded Carroll’s historic structures since 1999 when the county government stopped using grant money from the Maryland Historical Trust to cover the work of a historic planner. Many historic structures are still around, but they are slowly disappearing, even ones along some of our main streets. While it is impossible to physically save everything, carefully documenting buildings with sketches, floor plans, photographs, deed searches, and the like would, at the very least, allow us to know what existed once upon a time.

While working, Short added the communities of New Windsor, Union Bridge, and McKinstry’s Mills to the National Register of Historic Places. Having that prestigious status is financially helpful for anyone with an old property who lives within the National Register boundaries. The Curfman Farmhouse, though assigned a Carroll County number on the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties, was never officially documented and was not part of a community on the National Register. Luckily, several people who recognized its importance made their own careful analysis of the house before it was recently demolished.

The Poulson-Englar Farm on Nicodemus Road, just a stone’s throw from the Curfman property, was recorded for the Maryland Historical Trust in 1994. It had important ties to the early days of Methodism. At that point it was owned by a nearby quarry. Tenants occupied the house and the magnificent old barn stood empty. Today, 30 years later, the barn is gone and who knows what will protect the house from disappearing as well. Documentation of the Poulson property is available on the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties, part of the Maryland Historical Trust. To appreciate what it takes to “save” an historic site, even if only on paper, check the record for the Poulson-Englar property.

I feel certain that Helen Riley and Helen Gorman would second Ken Short’s recent observation about historic preservation here in Carroll County: “If only there was a strong and well-funded group that could promote just the documentation and research of [historic properties], and disseminate that info, it would do a lot of good in making people realize what the county has and, over time, foster an ethic of preservation.  Whether that should be the county government or some kind of nonprofit, I don’t know, but somebody needs to be doing it.”

Mary Ann Ashcraft is a volunteer at the Historical Society of Carroll County.