Historic Sites in the Greater Kingsville Area

Kingsville

Kingsville takes its name from Abraham King who came to Maryland from Pennsylvania. He acquired 280 acres in 1816 from parts of the original grants of "Leafe's Chance" and "William the Conqueror". The family lived in the mansion later known as the Kingsville Inn, where his son continued to live after Abraham died in 1836. This building was an inn as early as 1750. It is now the Lassahn Funeral Home. Abraham's daughter Eliza married Mr. Haven Wilson, who owned a property called the "Tuileries", on which the Kingsville Volunteer Fire Company is now located.

Gunpowder River

Although Captain John Smith extensively explored the Bay in 1608, he apparently missed discovering the Gunpowder River, although he probably assumed that a river was there. In older records, the two branches were known as The Little Falls of Gunpowder or the north branch and The Great Falls of Gunpowder or the south branch. The Gunpowder River itself was the larger part connected to the Bay into which these "branches" emptied. In early days, Gunpowder was the settlement in the fork at the mouth of these falls. There are several stories of how the river got its name, the most likely being that early explorers found saltpeter deposits near its mouth, being one of the ingredients of gunpowder. In fact, Salt Peter Creek flows into the Gunpowder River from the south.

Heathcote's Cottage

In 1678, Nathaniel Heathcoat was granted a tract of land by this name which ran from Sweathouse Road (now Mt Vista) to the Big Gunpowder Falls (on both sides of Belair Road). When he died, it passed to his nephew John Heathcote and then to John's son John and then to John, Jr's daughter Sarah. Sarah sold it to John Baldwin who sold in to Stephen Onion in 1747. Stephen Onion was constructing many iron mills at the time.

A descendent of Nathanial Heathcoat, known as Heathcoat Pickett, was arrested during the Revolutionary War, along with John Paul, for selling flour to the British from Paul's mill on the Big Gunpowder River. Paul and Pickett were locked in the jail in Joppa for execution the next day, but John Paul managed to escape during the night. When John Paul learned that his partner Heathcoat had indeed been hung, he hid out for some time in a cave along the Little Gunpowder River, but then went to North Carolina to sit out the war, as many British loyalists did. After the war, John Paul returned to the area and owned the inn in Kingsville, which Abraham King would later buy (see above).

Ishmael Day House and Harry Gilmore's Raid

Confederate Major Harry Gilmore of Baltimore County, under orders from General Johnson, lead 130 men of the First and Second Maryland Cavalry through the area in July of 1864, passing the farm of Ishmael Day on Sunshine Avenue. Day hung out an American flag and was ordered by one of the advanced guard, Ordinance Sergeant Eugene Fields, to take it down. As Fields dismounted to remove the flag himself, Day fatally wounded him with a shotgun and escaped into the woods. In retribution, Gilmore's men burned Day's house and barns. After staying over night at the stage stop (still at the corner of Old Joppa Rd and Mountain Rd), they then raided Lee's store (the actual location is not certain, but it may have been near the stage stop). After that, they moved on to capture a train at Magnolia Station, removing the passengers and luggage, and, after learning that the engineer had disabled the engine, set fire to the train. An hour later they seized another train, using it to aid in destroying the bridge over the Gunpowder River, and then paroled five Union officers who had been taken as prisoners. Gilmore went on to raid the Union remount station on Gunpowder Neck (now part of Aberdeen Proving Ground) for horses before turning back.

Later, Harry Gilmore was Baltimore City Police Commissioner from 1874 to 1879. He died in 1883 and is buried in Loudon Park Cemetery.

Newspaper account     |     The Ballad of Ishmael Day

Historic Jerusalem Mill Village

This historic site, listed on the National Register, is centered around a grist mill built in 1772 for David Lee on a tract called "Bond's Water Mills". The mill was operated continuously until 1961 when the state purchased the site as part of the Gunpowder Falls State Park. Later purchases have added to the site, so that it now consists of an entire village of eight 19th century and earlier buildings, including one of the four covered bridges in Maryland. In the mid 1800's it was named Jerusalem for the nearby tract patented in 1687 and then partly owned by the Lee family.

Expectation

This 1500 acre tract was patented in 1683 to Thomas Lightfoot. It stretched from Kingsville north to the Little Falls of the Gunpowder. The western corner can still be seen as a large, inscribed stone marker next to US Route 1 in front of Celebrie Vet Clinic. It is presumed to have been set by Edward Day about 1810 and it is referred to in an 1836 deed from Edward Day to David Gittings.

The stone reads:

This stone is in place of a
double poplar tree
a boundary of expectation
francis freedom alias youngs escape and the
second boundary of onions prospect hill
the latter now owned by
EDWARD DAY
cursed be he who removeth his neighbors landmark
and all the people shall say amen.
chap 27 verse 17

This "curse", taken from Deuteronomy, seems to have prevented the stone from being moved to this day.

Baltimore County's Second Court House

The Greater Kingsville area has the distinction of being the location of the oldest court house in what is now Baltimore County. In 1674, when Baltimore County included what are now Harford and Carroll Counties, the city, and parts of Cecil, Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, the Council ordered that a Court House be built on the north side of the Gunpowder River. However, the first court house was established instead on the east side of Bush River in what is now Harford County. When that location was abandoned about 1693, the second Court House, clerks's office, and jail were built up the hill from the Gunpowder River on the eastern third of "Simm's Choice" close to and northward from the "Wee Bit". Locating these tracts today indicates that this second Court House was located 1/2 mile east of the intersection of Jones Rd and US 40 near Kingsville. When the Court House property was deeded to the County in 1701 by the builder, Michael Judd, it contained 2 acres and was bounded at the four corners by pear, peach, apple, and cherry trees. In 1707, a new court house was ordered to be built in Joppa and the county offices moved there in 1712.

The Cold War

Kingsville was the location of one of the Nike missile batteries set-up during the Cold War for the protection of the Washington-Baltimore area. There were 16 in Maryland. Known as BA-09, the launch site was located at the end of Stockdale Road off of Mt Vista Road and the fire control center was at the end of Hutschenreuter Lane. It was built in 1955 and manned by D Battery of the 4th Battalion of the 1st Artillery Brigade. Another site was located in Jacksonville.

Long Calm - Ridgely's Forge

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the main road from the Patapsco River to the Susquehanna generally followed the present path of Philadelphia Rd through our area. The road had to skirt the headwaters of most of the streams such as White Marsh Run and Winters Run so that fording the streams was possible. The Big Gunpowder presented a larger obstacle. Until the first bridge was built in the late 1700's, the crossing was at a place always knows as "The Long Calm". Old Long Calm Rd off of Pfeffers Rd and Old Landing Rd off of Mt Vista are certainly fragments of the original roads leading to this crossing, which was just above the present-day I-95 bridge. The map to the left is a portion of the 1821 survey of a road from Towson to the Long Calm where the Ridgely Forge was located (now Joppa Rd and Forge Rd). It shows some of the forge structures. Two shafts, each weighing 18,000 lbs, were made here in about 1840 for a Russian steamer being built in New York, which was one of the first transatlantic steamers.