Ellicott’s Mills – Overview of an Historically Significant Regional Role
The earliest known images of the village of the Ellicott’s Mills community appeared in a lithograph that was first printed in circa 1854 by Baltimore Lithographers, E. Sachse & Company. The print is described as ‘showing a bird's eye view of Ellicotts Mills, Maryland; small images of various buildings and factories in the town surround the central image.’ Full-size lithograph image can be found in the collections of the Library of Congress.
Ellicott’s Mills began as a commercial grain milling company located in the area of present-day Ellicott City, about 16 miles west of the City of Baltimore, Maryland. The mills that were located there, and the proprietors of those mills, are largely credited for the growth and prominence of the area and for much of the early expansion and settlement westward from the region. The mills, and the town that was built up around Ellicott’s Mills, were first established in 1772 on the banks of both sides of the Patapsco River at the great falls, in a location chosen by three entrepreneurial brothers, John, Joseph and Andrew Ellicott. The Ellicott brothers were the sons of Andrew Ellicott, a man who first emigrated to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, about forty-years earlier in the 1730s. The Ellicott brothers were raised in the family business of milling. Wanting to establish themselves, they traveled south into Maryland and founded not only an enterprise of their own, but also a community that today still bears their surname. The Ellicott brothers envisioned a great milling operation at the location they found in Maryland and in just two years, by 1774, they had built Ellicott’s Mills to rival the best of similar mills to the north in their birth state of Pennsylvania.
The location the three brothers specifically selected and purchased for Ellicott’s Mills was at the time of Ellicott’s Mills founding in 1772, in the pristine wilderness of untouched northern Maryland countryside of upper Anne Arundel County. Other than a few Native American trails through the area, there were no roads or any man-made improvements. The owner of the land then considered it useless and it is said that he was apparently happy to sell the land to the Ellicott brothers for about three dollars per acre. The three brothers thought otherwise and saw the potential of that location, where the river water was clear and strong enough in flow, to power the mill that they planned to build there. Sure, of the capabilities and with a vision for the possibilities, the Ellicott brothers purchased a large area of valley land spanning acreage reaching two miles up-river above their chosen mill location to acreage two miles down-river below their chosen mill site at the great falls of the Patapsco. Their chosen location for Ellicott’s Mills was then in upper Anne Arundel county near the Baltimore County line. Later, in the 1830s, the area became part of what was known then as the ‘Howard District’ of Anne Arundel county. The location is today formally part of Howard county, which was officially established separately and apart from Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties in 1851.
Purchasing the land was probably the easy part for the Ellicott brothers. Initially establishing Ellicott’s Mills at the location was probably the hardest part of their venture. The brothers probably realized that the abundant nature of the area would provide them with all the necessary human sustenance and raw building materials needed to support their construction of Ellicott’s Mills with plentiful old growth forests for lumber and granite for stonework being available in the immediate area. Natural springs provided good drinking water and wildlife was plentiful to feed them, their construction crew, and the laborers hired to move supplies into the area. The area, known as ‘The Hollow’ was and is still protected by steep surrounding hills. The area’s raw scenic beauty is documented in several early descriptions of the Ellicott’s Mills location and other accounts about the Ellicott brothers and their founding of milling operations at the location. Initially, because the land was untouched and unimproved; all the tools and everything else needed to begin building at the site of Ellicott’s Mills had to be brought from Pennsylvania or produced onsite. Much of the initial gear needed at the location was sent by boat from the Philadelphia area and then man-packed to the site of the chosen mill location from nearby river landing points.
Hired labor was important to the success of the Ellicott brothers from that beginning and it remained even more so thereafter. While slavery then existed in Maryland, as Quakers the Ellicott brothers did not agree with the practice and did not own slaves or use slave labor. The initial movement of supplies needed to move into and build at the site of Ellicott’s Mills required the Ellicott brothers to hire a workforce of laborers. As construction of the first mill got underway, more goods were shipped and carried into the site as the Ellicott brothers undertook construction of other structures there. Those initial laborers were the first of many more that the Ellicott brothers eventually hired and brought to work, and eventually to live, at or near the location of Ellicott’s Mills. In 1772, when the Ellicott brothers came on the scene, that region of upper Anne Arundel county was sparsely populated. Most of the land there had long before been parceled out to just a few landowners. It has been estimated that fewer than forty families resided in the whole area of upper Anne Arundel county at the time. So, in addition to hiring laborers, the Ellicott brothers also encouraged those laborers and others to move into the area with promises of work and prosperity. As Ellicott’s Mills expanded, the community also grew. By 1800, the number of villages in the area of upper Anne Arundel county could be counted on one hand, but by 1825 the population of Ellicott’s Mills alone was counted at over 3000. In a large part, much of the population growth can be attributed to an influx of farmers that moved into the area after Ellicott’s Mills was established.
The location of Ellicott’s Mills was also chosen for its proximity to quality land which the Ellicott brothers believed could be successfully farmed with crops of wheat, rye, barley, and corn which would be ground at their Mill into flours and other products. Before the mills, farming in the region was mostly tobacco and not widespread as at that time there were only a few farms in that area of upper Anne Arundel county. To prove their beliefs about the quality of the land, the Ellicott brothers hired men to undertake the hard work of clearing land that the brothers owned and then they hired farmers to cultivate that cleared land with the first grain crops grown in the area. The Ellicott brothers were correct in their vision of the capabilities of the land. Their grain crops were successful and by doing so they had effectively used their own land to prove to others that good crops could be raised in the region. Their example successfully encouraged other landowners then to hire tenant farmers bringing them and their families into the area.
One of the first large landowners in upper Anne Arundel county to switch from tobacco cultivation to the farming of grain crops was Charles Carroll of Doughoregan Manor and Carrollton, later a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His estate and manor home were very near the location of Ellicott’s Mills and he saw first-hand the Ellicott brother’s successful growth of wheat crops on land very near his own. Carroll quickly realized that wheat and other grain farming paid better than tobacco because the Ellicott brothers in their efforts to further encourage a transition to grain farming, were offering to pay and continued to later pay, fair prices to the landed estate owners and anyone else who farmed grain to supply the growing grain needs of Ellicott’s Mills. As such, Carroll and other large area landowners then began to invest in the clearing of more land on their large family estates, to farm more grain for sale to the Ellicott brothers. It was not long after the establishment of Ellicott’s Mills that grain farming replaced tobacco cultivation as the more profitable crop causing grain farming to quickly spread regionally. In part, as a result of income earned from grain farming, Charles Carroll and the other upper Anne Arundel county owners of large land tracts became some of the most prominent men in Maryland.
As grain farming in areas surrounding Ellicott’s Mills grew in production, the Ellicott brothers came to recognize that they also needed to improve water access for crop irrigation in some areas. That realization led the Ellicott brothers to fund labor for the digging of ditches to better move water into the planted areas of their farms. The Ellicott brothers also realized a need for and funded the establishment of spring water reservoirs for farming use during periods of drought. Combined, the multiple efforts undertaken to keep grain coming into their mills, made the efforts of the Ellicott brothers largely responsible, first, for the growth of grain farming and the influx of a growing population of farmers and laborers into upper Anne Arundel county and then, secondly responsible for continued growth beyond the boundaries of Anne Arundel county to the West. Scotch-Irish tenant farmers accounted for a large part of the farming growth that spread across the region towards the western frontier. The influx also included a good number of English Quakers as well as Pennsylvania Germans. Most of those who moved into Maryland came south out of Pennsylvania, with later new arrivals into the growing population coming directly from overseas. As Ellicott’s Mills flourished, farming of grain continued to grow as did the population. Then, with most of upper Anne Arundel county already in the hands of large family landowners, the demand for farmland shifted westward in both Pennsylvania and across northern Maryland.
Accessibility to and from the growing farmland west of Ellicott Mills was another factor that the Ellicott brothers wisely considered as crucial to the success of their milling operations. They quickly recognized that wagon roads and road infrastructure would be needed for grain farming growth to continue westward. When the Ellicott brothers was first built Ellicott’s Mills, for the most part travel in the region was only possible on foot or on horseback or by navigable water routes using boats. At that time there were no wagon-capable roads into the growing farmland of the region that could be used to move grain to Ellicott’s Mills. Cognizant of the need, the Ellicott brothers invested heavily in building their own regional infrastructure of wagon roads and bridges to put the farmers they needed as suppliers within reasonable reach of Ellicott’s Mills. Roadways constructed at the expense of the Ellicott brothers eventually reached westward to the City of Frederick (then known as Frederick town). The roads they financed and built also included wagon capable routes to Baltimore and other major towns in the region where products produced at Ellicott Mills were transported and then sold to merchants supplying the growing regional population. Other roads built by the Ellicott brothers connected Ellicott’s Mills to surrounding river and Chesapeake bay seaports where the Ellicott brothers purchased water rights and built wharfs for shipping terminals from which the flour and other products produced at Ellicott’s Mills were exported to more distant markets up and down the eastern seaboard.
The vison of the Ellicott brothers also included thoughts about the needs of the community that grew up around Ellicott’s Mills. As the success of their mills brought more and more laborers and craftsmen into the area, the brothers recognized that they needed to invest money to improve the adjacent community established in concert with their mill’s enterprise. With the financing and backing of the Ellicott brothers, a village of homes were constructed for their mill’s workforce, and the families of that workforce, in their version of a company-town. That investment in the community also grew as the Ellicott brothers expanded their millwork operations. Eventually, schools were built in the community for the children of the workforce and they were good schools which the Ellicott brothers ensured were staffed with good and talented teachers who were paid well. Meeting places for religious followers were also built as the community grew-up around Ellicott’s Mills. And while the Ellicott brothers were Quakers and followed Society of Friends tenets in their faith, as did many of the workers that they hired, the Ellicott brothers also supported the building of churches in the community for other faiths to allow everyone in the community to live and worship as they wished freely and without reservation. Within just a few years after first establishing themselves at the location, by the time the Revolutionary War erupted, Ellicott’s Mills was not only growing as a business enterprise, but also growing as a community, newly established in upper Anne Arundel county.
After the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, growth continued, and production increased at Ellicott’s Mills as the prominence and recognition of the area grew rapidly. The Ellicott brothers and their vision for Ellicott’s Mills played an even larger role in western progression across Maryland and the growth of the Baltimore-Annapolis-Frederick region. Products from Ellicott’s Mills began to be exported overseas. And as the ships carrying those exports returned to the ports, they brought with them imported items of the finest quality that were then offered by a growing merchant class for sale in the retail stores in and near Ellicott’s Mills, Annapolis, Baltimore and Frederick among others. Growth continued and by the 1790’s banking institutions were being established in the area of Ellicott’s Mills. Investors attracted to the area by the workforce and the infrastructure that the Ellicott brothers had created began to establish other supporting industries which also flourished and prospered in the growing community centered around Ellicott’s Mills.
In the long run, over time, the historic foresight and business success of the Ellicott brothers founded the community that has become present-day Ellicott City. The Ellicott brothers alone are to be credited with having been the primary engine that began the growth of the prominence in the region with the location they chose to establish Ellicott’s Mills at its center.
Bibliography:
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