BAL 0 COUNTY 0 I IISTORY TRAI I,S Agriculture Building • 9811 Van Buren Lane • Cockeysville, MD 21030 Editors: ISSN 0889-6186 JOHN W. McGRAIN and WILLIAM HOLLIFIELD VOL. 34 2001 NOS. 3 & 4 —Peale Museum, Baltimore "Worthington's Mill on Gwynns Falls" painted by C. Maynadier about 1850 depicts what is possibly Holly Mill on Lot 4. CALVERTON MILLS Three Mile Mill Race where the water impounded a short distance upstream of Windsor Mill Road wended its way, By John McGrain corkscrewing along at a constant level along the contours of the hillsides of the stream valley to reach the uppermost of the The Calverton Mills were one of the most ambitious mills, without any loss of altitude to start the grinding process. schemes of Baltimore's age of limitless confidence. Five great The project made use of the plentiful water and descend- merchant flour mills were built in one string along Gwynns ing elevations along the geographic Fall Line, but such loca- Falls, each successive mill using the water that had passed tions meant rocky terrain, and the builders had to route their through the water wheels of the one upstream, each mill water system through stony places, digging, burrowing, and located on a plane higher than its downstream neighbor, the blasting with black powder. John Davis (1770-1864), self- entire works powered by an engineering marvel called the PAGE 2 BALTIMORE COUNTY HISTORY TRAILS 2001 —Baltimore County Office of Planning Map of Calverton Heights from G. M. Hopkins 1877 Atlas of Baltimore County, Maryland. Note the convoluted millrace. The five mills probably fitted within grids 35-D-17 and 35-D-12 of the modern ADC atlas maps of Baltimore City and County. trained engineer and millwright, was surveyor and superin- 1731 to about 1786. tendent of the route and possibly millwright of the first four The only way to keep track of the shifting ownership of mills built. Merchant mills were capitalist enterprises where the Five Mills is to construct a chart with columns for the the owner or miller would pay cash for crops of wheat and names of the owners found on successive editions of local corn, grind the grain, and sell it to city commission merchants maps and atlases. The last column has to be reserved for the and exporters. A country mill or custom mill, on the other sad demise, usually by fire, of each great building. Oddly hand, was a rural enterprise where a miller could grind grain enough, the lot numbers were assigned in north-to-south for a farmer and keep a fraction of the product as his commis- order rather than numbering them from downstream to sion; usually no cash changed hands between a farmer and upstream. country miller. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the Shenandoah Valley Gwynns Falls was almost as intensely used for industry, were the wheat belt of America in the 1790s, feeding the east- as was Jones Falls. The total number of waterpower sites ern cities and much of Europe, Brazil, and the West Indies. reached 26 in the 19th century, each site reusing the same free No midwestern States could bring their crops to Eastern mar- supply of energy that had powered all the industries upstream. kets so readily; the Louisiana territory had yet to be pur- By comparison, the Catoctin Creek of Frederick County's chased, much less settled with farmers. Roads from the Ohio Middletown Valley supported 67 different mill sites. country were yet to be built, and the mountain barriers made Downstream of Calverton there were five more mills, grain shipments uneconomical before canals and railroads including the cluster of the Three Mills built by the second provided a path. Baltimore was the leading grain and flour generation of Ellicotts at Frederick Turnpike Road and below port of the United States until 1827 when New York forged that the Millington Mill of James Carroll just south of present ahead with products shipped over the Erie Canal and down Wilkens Avenue, and finally James Carroll's Mount Clare the Hudson. Mill in what is now Carroll Park Golf Course; Mount Clare Baltimore merchants had it all to themselves for a brief Mill was known in its last days as the Woodyear Mill. Barely golden age and even after competitors got into the game, they short of tidewater at the Middle Branch of Patapsco was the did very well until the mass-production mills of Minneapolis last possible location for a water-powered works, disused in came on line in the 1870s and 1880s. There was almost a cen- the 19th century but a hub of activity in the 18th century, tury of prosperity for the go-getters of Baltimore. when the Baltimore Iron Works Company cast pig iron from 2001 BALTIMORE COUNTY HISTORY TRAILS PAGE 3 The Five Mills were founded in 1813 by Messrs. Worthington, Jessop, Cheston, and others, who according to historian J. Thomas Scharf "built mills within a few perches of each other." Scharf claimed in his History of Baltimore City and County that the works was originally intended for cotton production. Two of the founders of the mill company, Thomas and Samuel Hollingsworth, already owned a plant, the Holly Mill, as shown in the tax list of 1798. The name Gelston Carpet Factory "Holly" was later applied to one of the new generation of mills, the one on Lot No. 4. Incidentally, the "perches" men- tioned by Scharf were a measure of distance familiar to old 1. Joen time surveyors: a perch, pole, or rod, were the same, and Vickers i equaled 16.5 feet. 2.Hazlehurst & A mill on Gwynns Falls described as "quite new, with ____PJaela_n one pair of 5-foot stones, 4 miles from Baltimore," was 3. S. McDonald advertised for sale by Hollingsworth and Worthington in the Baltimore American on July 18, 1813. The owners advertised that one building contained "a variety of machines, which 5. Geo. Hebrew might at a small expense be adapted to grinding paint." In the Vicker Orphan American of January 3, 1815, Andrew and Thomas Ellicott, Assylum James Cheston, and partners Hollingsworth and Worthington Edmondson Ave. .„....."- advertised for sale both Holly Mill and a new, three-story —Anne Roane, Baltimore County Office of Planning stone gristmill with one pair of 6-foot stones, then being used Map of the mill lots and millrace redrawn from E Klemm's as a manufactory by the Linen Manufacturing Company. 1873 map of Baltimore City and vicinity. Klemm. merely In 1816, the owners of the five mills incorporated a turn- copied the owners shown on William Sides' map of 1853. The pike road from Frederick Road and charged tolls for travelers, street grid showed the "Western Liberties of Baltimore City," a move that could have added to farmers' costs when taking a street layout extending into the county and authorized by grain crops to sell to the Calverton owners. On March 4, the General Assembly in 1852. 18]6, David Winchester of the mill company purchased sur- plus water from the owners of Windsor Mill in a deed that The 1820 Census of Manufactures listed the mills with mentioned the "mill now erecting on Mill Lot No. 1, being the following technical and financial data: part of . Lot No. 74 on which certain mills are now erect- ing and others are intended to be erected . to be supplied William Jessop. Annual consumption of 35,000 to with water . from the said Pool lately erected through the 50,000 bushels; nine employees; three pair of six- said race or canal." foot burrs; bolting gins, elevators, hopperboys, The next week, Winchester executed a deed of partition screens; $60,000 investment; output of $60,000 to whereby the five mill lots were assigned to the individual $120,000 in flour. The mill house was four stories, founders of the firm: 50 by 45 feet with two water wheels 16-foot diam- eter by 9 feet wide with iron gearing; the bolting Lot No. 1 William and Dominic Jessop "are now erecting chests were 30 feet long. a mill." James Cheston. Consumption of 50,000 bushels Lot No. 2 Francis Hollingsworth, Charles Worthington, wheat; three employees; output of $51,000 in James Cheston. "On which lot it is intended to flour, bran, shorts, etc.; $50,000 investment; four erect a Grist mill." pair of six-foot millstones. Lot No. 3 Dennis A Smith. "The said Dennis Smith is now erecting a Grist Mill." Solomon Betts, Calverton Mill. Consumption of Lot No. 4 Francis Hollingsworth, Charles Worthington, 50,000 to 80,000 bushels wheat; 20 employees, James Cheston. including waggoners, coopers; $50,000 capital; Lot No. 5 Andrew and Thomas Ellicott "contemplate four pair of six-foot burr stones, two to four building a mill." generally in operation. Flour selling at $4 to $10 per barrel. Another partition in 1823 assigned Lot No. 2 to James Hollingsworth & Worthington. Cheston and Lot No. 4 to Hollingsworth and Worthington. Consumption of 40,000 bushels a year; four employees; output of Francis Hollingsworth's executrix sold Lot No. 4 to Charles Gwynn and James Cheston, and in 1829, Gwynn sold out to $45,000 in flour, bran, shorts, ship stuff; costs of Cheston, reserving a road through Lot No. 4 to the "cloth buildings exclusive of seats, $20,000; four pair of burrs. factory." After partition, the individual histories of the mills became even more complex due to frequent change of S. & J. E. Carey, Consumption of 30,000 bushels owners, part owners, and tenants; the old Holly Mill of 1798 wheat; three men, three boys employed; output of became the site of Gelston's Calverton Carpet Factory $14,000 in flour at $4 to $5 a barrel.