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Community Corner

Picture This: A Glimpse Into Catonsville's Storied Past

Generations of prominent families called Elton Park home.

On Saturday, June 7, 1919, The Argus of Catonsville ran a tribute to Elias Livezey, who turned 100 years of age on Tuesday. He would live for two more years.

The article notes that he was seated on the porch of his “roomy cottage,” Elton Park, which it describes as: “An old place with the mantle and fragrance of livableness and blessedly unacquainted with a landscape barber.” It also made note of the “trees that sometimes trailed their limbs to the ground and …where there were beautiful, weather-stained fences long in service and bearing themselves with simple dignity.”

Elias Livezey acquired Elton Park in 1857, located between St. Timothy’s Church property and Edmondson Avenue, where it stood until the 1950s when it was razed to make way for the development of Inglewood.

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A prominent real estate broker, Elias remained engaged in the civic affairs of the community throughout his long life. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had five children, two of whom died at an early age.

The youngest daughter, Josephine Elton Livezey, was born in 1861 at Elton Park (208 Ingleside Avenue) and lived there until her death on July 3, 1952. She was involved in many philanthropic organizations throughout her long life. According to her obituary, as a young woman she organized and conducted a school for Negro children of Catonsville, teaching them sewing and other useful arts. She also served on the board of the University Hospital for many years, to which she contributed generously.

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Josephine’s sister, Elizabeth, was the wife of Bernard N. Baker of  “Ingleside,” an estate given them by Elias Livezey. There, Elizabeth cultivated a formal English-style garden on the property. We learn more about the Livezey lineage from their daughter, Marguerite Harrison, in her autobiography, There’s Always Tomorrow: The Story of a Checkered Life. She writes: “the Livezeys were members of an Old English county family who had come to Pennsylvania with William Penn and settled as farmers in the eastern part of the state.”

Marguerite tells of her mother’s physical breakdown that resulted in her living with her grandparents at Elton Park, attending nearby St. Timothy’s School as a day student for five years. “We were trained to have quick sympathies and open minds and a keen appreciation of culture in the broadest sense of the word.”

Marguerite says she acquired the habit of independent thought from her grandfather, who had a keen interest in politics, religion and the social problems of the day. For many years, she worked as a reporter for The Morning Sun where she served as both music and drama critic and wrote a series of articles on postwar conditions in Germany and interviewed prominent foreigners who were visiting in the United States.

She made news, as well. During the early 1920s, she spent 18 months “as a guest of the Soviet Government.” That was a polite way of saying she was detained against her will. For the first nine months, she was held in a guesthouse provided for foreigners, with final nine months in two Bolshevik prisons. Senator Joseph France of Maryland secured her release on July 28, 1921. She details her story in a first-person account that appeared in The Sun on Aug. 5, 1921. This and all of her bylined stories are available through the BCPL’s research databases, accessible online to anyone with a library card. Marguerite’s colorfully written autobiography detailing her adventurous life is also available in The Catonsville Room.

For more reading on the history of St. Timothy's go here.

Thanks go to Bryce Rumbles, librarian at the Catonsville Branch, and Lisa Vicari, Catonsville Room volunteer and board member, Friends of the Catonsville Library, for their research assistance.

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