There was a time when the entire second grade for all of Catonsville numbered a mere 31 students. Seems hard to believe. In this photo, c. 1902, the second grade class is lined up outside of the public school located on Winters Lane. John Gittings donated a lot on Winters Lane near Melrose Avenue where a one-story building was erected in 1878, added to an 1859 frame schoolhouse. It was enlarged to a three-story brick building in 1898. The following year, a four-year high school program began in the same building, with its first graduating class in 1903. The building remained in use as a …

What is today known as Spring Grove Hospital Center, a 426-bed facility located on a 200-acre campus in Catonsville, has a storied history dating to 1797. That makes Spring Grove the second oldest continuously operating psychiatric hospital in the country. It was established by the state of Maryland at a time when the predominant mode for the care of the mentally ill was largely one of confinement. David S. Helsel, current chief executive officer, and Trevor Blank, a graduate student at Indiana University’s Folklore Institute, co-authored a pictorial history book, Spring Grove State Hospital…

Parade watchers thronged the storefront from sidewalk to second-story porch to rooftop on 818 Frederick Road, in what is now home to Objects Found. In 1982, when this photograph was taken, the US Armed Forces Recruiting Center occupied the space. This year marks the 66th Annual Catonsville Fourth of July Parade. When Marie O’Dea, editor of the Catonsville Herald-Argus, had the idea for a parade, she put it together with the help of a committee in just four weeks. After watching a small Memorial Day parade, she thought it was time to add an Independence Day Parade to entice Catonsville …

Lifelong Catonsville resident James Stoddard seemed destined to the field of transportation and its offshoots. His grandfather drove a stagecoach from Cumberland to Baltimore. His father drove the horses when horse cars began making the trip from Baltimore, the first of which arrived on Oct. 6, 1862. According to a newspaper account in 1951, “His father… moved to Catonsville to be near the big horse barn which then stood beside the hotel.” By age 15, Stoddard himself was driving the double-team horse car between Baltimore and the terminal barn on Frederick Road opposite Montrose Avenue. Some …

The undated poster was likely produced circa 1989, the year Baltimore County established the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park, as the Friends support group was established by that time. Since no area code is included, it must have been prior to 1991, the year area codes were introduced. In 1983, the Maryland Historical Trust conducted an archeological survey and located the home’s site. Additional testing in 1985 and 1986 confirmed the findings. The dig revealed details about 18th century rural life-style, with particular emphasis on the life of free blacks in the area. Benjamin Banneker was…

With Memorial Day soon upon us, we turn our attention to one of the men who gave his own life so that a fellow soldier could live. According to a news story published in The Sun on Jan. 8, 1919, the mother of Sgt. Meredith Dunkerly reported that her son, who is recovering from multiple wounds in a hospital in New York, stated that “in the latter part of September their tank was struck by an antitank gun and disabled. In abandoning it Sergeant Dunkerley was picked off by a sniper and fell wounded. Sergeant [Martin] Doyle carried him to a shell hole through an intense shellfire and to the …

It’s spring and our thoughts turn to horses and the long-standing traditions surrounding them in Maryland. The 118th Hunt Cup steeplechase race was run on April 28 and Pimlico Race Course will host the 137th Preakness Stakes, the second leg in the Triple Crown, on May 19. Pimlico is the second oldest racetrack in the nation, behind Saratoga, in New York. The Hunt Cup has an equally storied past. According to its website, “In 1894, the members of the Elkridge Fox Hunting Club challenged the members of Green Spring Valley Hounds to a timber race: the first Hunt Cup. Although the first race was …

Flowers had long been a part of John B. Harmon Sr.’s livelihood since he served as caretaker of the 25-acre Belle Grove estate, the home of D.C. Howell. Indeed, Harmon and his family, which included four children, lived in a gardener’s cottage on the grounds of the estate, which has been enlarged and restored. Harmon left that position in 1911 to become a supervisor of the State Roads Commission. Harmon also purchased the Burns Dry Goods store at 906 Frederick Road, which became the family’s new home above the shop. For a time, his wife, Mary Agnes, operated it as “M.A. Harmon, Stationers,” …

Alfred Brazier Howell, who was born in 1886, gave a detailed account of what life was like growing up on “Belle Grove” estate. His typed remembrance, edited by Jean Walsh in 1998, is among the holdings in the Catonsville Room. This was not their only home for the Howell family spent winters in their three-story home, with stable, on the southeast corner of Madison and Park Avenue in Baltimore, as was the custom among the affluent of the time. Wrote Howell: “Belle Grove consisted of about 25 acres on a small hill on the south side of Frederick Road. Tollhouses were at the cemetery below …

Imagine a time when the area that now includes Westview Park and Westview Mall was a grand sweep of open land, upon which were a beautiful home, a carriage house, a race course and a private boarding school for “young ladies.” Such was the estate of James Gibson. The Central Race Course, in existence since 1854, lay parallel to Johnny Cake Road (spelled as two words at the time) and was near the Ingleside Female Seminary—a school that was run by the wife of James Gibson. The family’s 130-acre property was located near Johnnycake Road and Ingleside Avenue. The school was founded in 1843.  …

Today’s Candle Light Inn at 1835 Frederick Road was built circa 1840 and early records are scant until Bernardt Wick bought the home and surrounding seven acres around 1900 to become a gentleman farmer. In a 1980 interview, Jack Wick (first cousin, once removed) recalled a “beautiful rose garden and a carriage house that stabled several horses.” The estate took its name, “Five Oaks Lodge,” from the five stately oaks that framed the home. The family emigrated from Germany and settled in Baltimore. Wick also recalled that the family’s forte was not in farming but in keeping a tavern. In Marsha …

As Black History Month draws to a close, we turn to a photograph housed in the Catonsville Room that is telling. While it reveals that attention was being given to African-American patients in need of psychiatric care, they were relegated to a separate facility. In fact, Maryland’s state hospital system was not officially desegregated until 1963. Spring Grove fared slightly better: reintegrating its patients in 1961. Much of the history on Spring Grove’s website was drawn from the Maryland Archives. This was the first hospital building built specifically for African-American psychiatric …

Frances (“Fannie”) Lurman—the belle of many a ball— turned down proposals from an English officer in London and a hot-tempered Philadelphia millionaire, to finally marry the man who held a six-decade courtship with her: Dorsey M. Williams. An article written by Clint Johnson described him at that stage in life as a man “whose stalwart, six-foot-two figure is as straight today as it was 50 years ago and whose sweeping white mustache, frosty gray eyes and ruddy complexion make him look every inch the successful country gentleman.”            Williams, an avid foxhunter for many years, was also …

Long before the Baltimore Beltway carved its course through parts of Catonsville, a bucolic area known as Eden Terrace included a number of late Victorian-era homes. One, known as the Sucro-Lawrence House, for the family that has been the sole owner since it was built, is a reminder today of simpler times. In May of 1983, Antoinette (“Toni”) Hughes offered an oral history conducted by interviewer Charlotte French at 13 Woodlawn Avenue, her grandfather’s and father’s home, as part of the Friends of the Catonsville Library oral history program. The full interview transcript is available to …

Draw comfort from the past. Today’s village section of Frederick Road—enjoying a “foodie” renaissance with newer establishments such as Catonsville Gourmet, Atwater’s and Regions—was once home to a grocery store that carried “fancy fruits, vegetables, groceries and canned goods,” as proclaimed in an advertisement in the 1917 Catonsville High School yearbook, June Bug.  John W. Peregoy operated his grocery store at 833 Frederick Road for more than half a century (1895–1950). As was common for the time, the grocery store was located on the first floor of the three-story structure, which also …

This wintry photo shows “Orange Grove,” the Patapsco Flouring Mills owned by the C.A. Gambrill Manufacturing Co. of Baltimore, on Jan. 26, 1904. That specific date is noted in a delightful little book, The Orange Grove Story: A View of Maryland Americana in 1900, by Thomas L. Phillips. Phillips donated an inscribed copy to The Catonsville Room on Aug. 1, 1972.  Because it is considered a reference book, it is available to patrons for one-day loan from the library. The author knew the area well as his father, Michael Thomas Phillips, was appointed Superintendent of Gambrill Mill “C” at Orange …

As we enter the seasonal stretch when family gatherings seem at the forefront of activity, it is fun to speculate on generations of Catonsville residents past. Among the holdings in the Catonsville Room are photographs of the Dill family. Two brothers, Frederick and Robert, were lifelong residents. The featured photograph shows Frederick C. Dill and family posing for a formal photograph, c. 1893, in the parlor of their home at 101 Ege’s Lane, as Egges Lane was then spelled. There is no information as to the reason for the photograph but one would assume that it was taken to mark a special …

Now the Catonsville United Methodist Church, this corner stone-laying on June 20, 1924, was covered the previous day by the Baltimore Sun, which reported the ceremony would take place at 3 p.m. and was to be attended by the Rev. Dr. Frank G. Porter, then pastor of the Rognel Heights Methodist Episcopal Church and former pastor at Catonsville; the Rev. Dr. John A. Nesbitt of the Catonsville Presbyterian Church; the Rev. Dr. John C. Bowers of Salem Lutheran Church, Catonsville; and the Rev. Edward Cordell Powers, pastor of the Catonsville Methodist Episcopal Church at the time.              The…

John Sanford Wilson, founder of the lumber company that bears his name, died on April 11, 1902, of a stroke. His demise warranted a lengthy obituary in The Sun. He was born in Baltimore on Feb. 9, 1846, and was of Revolutionary stock. His obituary stated: “His great-grandfather, John Wilson, participated in the struggle for American independence.” Following the death of his father in 1854, John Wilson went to live with his grandparents on a farm near Catonsville. Originally working as a farmer, business pursuits captured his attention when he moved to Catonsville in 1880. In addition to his …

As a matter of civic pride, many if not most small towns in turn-of-the-century America had brass bands. In the Oct. 4 “Picture This” column, a photo in the Catonsville Room archives showed the community of Alberton auction on Nov. 23, 1940 to the C.R. Daniels Company for the sum of $65,000. That town was ravaged in the floods of 1866 and 1868. Other communities in the Patapsco valley—Ellicott City and Oella among them—suffered severe damage when tropical storm Agnes swept through Maryland in 1972. Through it all, brass bands continued to play. For example, the Alberton Cornet Band, founded …