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Community Corner

Picture This: A Glimpse Into Catonsville's Storied Past

Mill town bands played on, sometimes when towns were gone.

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.

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Through it all, brass bands continued to play. For example, the Alberton Cornet Band, founded by mill workers in the early part of the 19th century, was still performing as the Daniels Community Band in the latter part of the 20th century. Indeed, they performed at the Friends of the Catonsville Library fall meeting on Nov. 10, 1982, as reported in the Catonsville Times.

In this photo (c. 1915), the drumhead shows that the Oella Cornet Band was organized in November 1896. According to a “Brief” posted in The Sun on Mar. 15, 1898, “The Oella Cornet Band has been incorporated by Nicholas Jones, Jr., John R. Davidson, John Hobson, Samuel Tracey and John W. Hogan.” Guess it took them a bit of time to make it official.

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Ten years later, the Oella Cornet Band furnished the music for a “lawn fete for St. Denis Firemen, according to The Sun, Sept. 11, 1908. By 1914, it was organizing “fetes” to raise funds for its own organization.

It appears that the band had a strong community presence in the area. The Sun reported that the Oella Cornet Band provided the music for a “rousing peace demonstration” on Nov. 12, 1918, in Ellicott City that attracted 5,000 participants to the courthouse.

Oella was founded a century prior to that and flourished throughout the 19th Century. The textile mill, operated by William J. Dickey and Sons, Inc. since 1887, ceased operation after Agnes caused extensive damage to its power plant.

 In better times, the company was the town’s chief employer and had its own “Dickey Textile Band” among other amenities. A feature story in The Sun on May 22, 1977, about the “Oella Has Roots” festival, reported: “The company also had a baseball team, a policeman, whose duty it was to turn on street lighting, and two doctors who offered their services free of charge.”

Author Paul J. Travers In The Pataspco: Baltimore’s River of History (1990) made note of the placid life in Oella in the late 19th/early 20th century: “Community recreation consisted of a baseball team and a noted town brass band.”

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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