Histories

1942 History of Baltimore County

For more than a hundred years Baltimore County and Baltimore City were one; that is the reason for the Marylander's habit of referring to his metropolis as Baltimore City. Many and loud were the complaints of the city that it could not secure proper representation in the Maryland Assembly, but it was not until 1847 that it was permitted to incorporate itself and elect a Mayor. Baltimore City is still complaining that it does not enjoy due representation in the State Legislature. As half the inhabitants of the state live within the city limits the county members, naturally, are reluctant to yield their advantage. Baltimore County is the largest and richest in the state. It reaches a long arm down on either side of the city. At one end of it is the vast plant of the Bethlehem Steel Company at Sparrow's Point on the Patapsco. This is the largest steel plant on tide-water. It builds ships also. At the other end of the county are the steep green hills adjacent to the Pennsylvania line, occupied by a plain farming folk, mostly of German origin. Where is one to begin in describing so various a community?

The long road from Baltimore down to Sparrow's Point runs through the Neck between the Patapsco on one side and Back River on the other. The shores of both rivers are honeycombed with tortuous inlets and creeks in the characteristic Chesapeake style, and fingers of water come stealing up to the road first on one side, then the other. The countryside is flat and green with many little farms where truckers, surely the hardest-working people on earth, labor from dawn until dark. The road ends at North Point where the British landed their troops in 1814 while the fleet went on to bombard Fort McHenry. The Point is now occupied by the military reservation of Fort Howard. The big coast-defense guns were shipped to France in 1917 and used for railway guns. Later an infantry unit was stationed at the Fort. It is now a military hospital.

On the way back one may detour through Sparrow's Point where the steel plant presents a grimly picturesque ugliness. At night the chimneys belching flame and the pouring of molten slag make gorgeous effects. Some of the finest motion-pictures in color, taken to advertise Baltimore, were made here.

The middle of Baltimore County is largely suburban in character. All the main roads are thickly settled for considerable distances out of the city. The great exodus of citizens to the suburbs during the last few years has become a matter of serious concern to the city tax-collectors. Only the districts to the east of the city are unfashionable; Baltimore County in general is synonymous with an opulent country life. The estates of the very rich are scattered all over to the north of the city; the western districts are comfortable and well-to-do.

Catonsville with its thickly settled environs is on the west side. Long ago they called it Johnnycake in compliment to an inn, famous for its cornbread. The Caton who gave the place its official name was Richard, son-in-law of Charles Carroll. Catonsville is the sort of place where everybody appears to be well off. Great developments are being laid off with attractive little homes for aspiring young couples in such numbers that one wonders where enough prosperous young couples can be found to fill them. Times are changing and: on the main street of the town the big old frame houses behind their wide lawns are now divided into apartments.

Among these clapboarded and shingled structures of the early nineteen hundreds stands one little house that deserves to be noticed. Born in an age of ugliness, it is charming and will always be, however styles may change. It was built in 1908 for Mrs. M. L. Brinkman, by architects Wyatt and Nolting.

At the edge of Catonsville stands Mount de Sales, a convent of the Sisters of the Visitation, who conduct a girl's school. When I asked my Catholic friends which of the many "institutions around Baltimore was. most characteristic and charming, the answer was Mount de Sales. Several women of my acquaintance who graduated from the school told me that the years they spent there were the happiest of their lives. I requested permission to visit Mount de Sales, which was courteously accorded. The Visitation is a cloistered order; once they have taken their vows, the nuns never leave their own precincts again. They speak to those who visit them through a grating in the entrance hall. Two of their number called "outsiders" who are not subject to the same vows, do their shopping. I have heard it said that the Visitation is rather a snooty order, and that none but young ladies of good family are welcome. This is probably not true, but I will say that the two sisters who received me and showed me all that an outsider may see, had in the best sense, the manner of great ladies. Not in the least put about by the visit of a man, they were entirely au fait with worldly matters. We became friends at once. At their request I suppress their names.

The sisters own a tract of ninety acres which is now almost completely surrounded by the town. It must be enormously valuable, but they assured me that however they might need money, they were not open to offers from realtors. Once inside the gates, you are completely cut off from the sights and sounds of the city. The sisters mentioned with a smile that sometimes on quiet evenings they could hear radios and telephone bells in the nearest houses. In front of their building there is a meadow with rail fences and cows grazing; behind, an untouched wildwood. The long building with its big portico is plain and harmoniously proportioned. The front is stuccoed and painted yellow; in the rear the naked bricks show with many bays and iron galleries that lend a quaint effect. The sister said: "We have a Queen Anne front and a Mary Ann behind."

It was vacation time and the school was being renovated. It appeared to me to have everything that a school ought to have, though the physics and chemical laboratories might cause a scientist to smile. The sisters described their problems; they have steadfastly set their faces against a gymnasium and a swimming pool, though funds for them have been offered, because they say they have noticed that such things only make the pupils restless and dissatisfied. I honor them for it and hope that they may prevail in a world where everybody must have what everybody else has. On the second floor is the big airy chapel, its altar hung with the priceless embroideries worked by the nuns. The scholars worship in front of the altar; for the cloistered sisters a second chapel stretches away at right angles behind a grating.

After viewing the school, we sat down to talk things over in a big round living-room decorated with a valuable collection of Audubon and Rex Brasher prints. The sisters told me with laughter how their predecessors came from Georgetown in 1852 to open the new house in Catonsville. It was at the height of the "Know-Nothing" agitation when Catholics were subject to attack in the streets. The sisters were therefore advised to leave off their habits, and they made the journey by stage-coach in hoop skirts and smart bonnets. The experience gave them something to talk about for the rest of their lives. The hatred of Catholics is a thing of the past. 'But even nowadays," said the sister, "people are apt to think that nuns are queer people. We have found it advisable once a year to conduct the pupils through the convent so they may tell their parents that nuns live like anybody else."

Even in an hour's visit I was sensible of what the former pupils had tried to describe to me as the happiness of Mount de Sales. Here was peace and security in a distracted world. Every sister we met on our tour of the building greeted us with the same confident smile. These happy women with their well-bred voices and rippling laughter made one envious while at the same time they raised the old unanswerable question: Is happiness in this world only obtainable by turning one's back on one's fellow-creatures? And if so, is it justifiable to forsake the world? Whether the question is answered or not, the glimpse of such a haven of peace leaves a delicate fragrance in the mind,

On this, the westerly side, Baltimore County is bounded by the Patapsco River which flows through a deep cleft in the earth so beautiful and unspoiled that the city might be a hundred miles away. Unfortunately there is a railway line, but there are not many trains to destroy the illusion of beauty and solitude. The greater part of this place, too narrow to be a valley, too open to be a gorge, is now reserved as a state park. The loveliest spot is called Orange Grove, though there are no oranges; it can only be reached on foot. In 1854 Washington Irving visited Pendleton Kennedy in this neighborhood and wrote that he would have liked to destroy the mills and the railroad and build chateaux along the river. "All the cotton lords," said Irving, "should live in baronial castles on the cliff; and the cotton spinners should be virtuous peasantry of both sexes in silk shirts and small-clothes and straw hats with long ribbons, and should do nothing but sing songs and choruses and dance on the margin of the river."

Towson, the seat of Baltimore County, lies so close to the northern city limits that it is rapidly losing the character of a county town and becoming just another suburb. At the same time its court-house built of native stone with a white tower and a Doric portico is the most dignified and beautiful in the state. This building dates from 1855, shortly after the separation of city and county had been completed. The Federal Government has lately built a new post-office which conforms to the style of the court-house and greatly enhances the beauty of the square. Why is it not done oftener? There is also a new armory on the corner which somehow avoids the excessive ugliness of such buildings.

Another thing in Towson worth remarking is the office of the local newspaper, the Jeffersonian. Newspaper men are supposed to labor and have their being in the midst of ugliness and squalor. In Towson the tradition has been broken; the little building of the Jeffersonian stands in the middle of a garden with flowers and a pool. The interior, lined with framed photographs of the great and the near-great, is no less attractive. "Why should newspaper men have to work in a mess anyhow," asks Logie Bonnett, the editor.

The villages of Baltimore County, old and picturesque, show a new briskness nowadays. Nearly all have the same character—Lutherville, Timonium, Cockeysville, Pikesville, Reistertown, and so on—a simple village life contrasting with the sophisticated country estates outside. The village stores are full of luxuries. The smartly dressed people in station-wagons seem to come from a different world. It is more like England than America. The Timonium fair which begins on Labor Day every year is an important fixture in Baltimore County. Some of the spirit of the old-time county fair has been preserved,

Country life in Baltimore County, though it may appear frivolous, has its roots deep in the past. From the beginning of the city it was the practice of her merchants to build country homes as soon as they were rich enough to do so. Nowadays so many wealthy horsemen from other states have established their stables here, that it is not now so much a Maryland community as a National center for horse-breeding. The condition of the piedmont, they say, grass, water, and climate, are perfect for the purpose. The new-comers being horsemen find the Maryland tradition much to their taste and have not sought to change it. They eat well, drink deep, and ride hard. The love of horses gives this community an excuse for being which the very rich elsewhere often seem to lack.

If you breed horses you want to race them. Horse-racing in Maryland goes back to 1695. In all the county seats during early days there would be racing during Court Week. The Civil War almost ruined it, but it was revived by the sport-loving farmers. Many of the big places in Baltimore County have their own private running tracks and one or two have gone so far as to build a covered track for exercising their horses. Among the great show stables are those of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, "Sagamore Farms." Young Mr. Vanderbilt is now president of the Maryland Jockey Club, which goes all the way back to the famous Governor Ogle in 1745. The Jockey Club owns Pimlico, Maryland's premier racetrack, known from one end of the country to the other. It is within the Baltimore city limits. Its greatest fixture is the Preakness, which has attracted as many as sixty thousand people, pays more than fifty thousand dollars, and constitutes one of Baltimore's red-letter days. Pimlico was one of the first tracks to adopt the pari-mutuel system of betting, the totalizator, and the starting gate.

But professional racing is not a distinctively Maryland sport, whereas steeple-chasing is. It developed as the result of rivalry between the two principal Hunt Clubs in Baltimore County in 1894. The members of the Elk Ridge Fox Hunting Club and the Green Spring Valley Hunt were accustomed occasionally to hunt with each others' hounds. On the way home the hard riding Marylanders frequently fell into impromptu "pounding" races. Out of this came a regular challenge from the Elk Ridge Club to the Green Spring Valley Club to meet them in a cross-country race to be known as 'The Maryland Hunt Cup." The Elk Ridge Club put up the first cup. Every year since the race has been run, and the design of the cup has never been changed. In 1913 a gold challenge cup was donated by Mr. Ross Whistler to be awarded to the first horse who should win the race three years in succession. Blockade, a son of Man O War, the property of Mr. E. Read Beard, captured it in 1940.

The Maryland Hunt Cup provides Baltimore with its greatest field day of the year. The amateur status of the race has been carefully guarded; the jockeys are "gentlemen," there is no money prize, and no admission is charged. Consequently the people of Baltimore turn out in their thousands on the fourth Saturday in April. The course is a "natural" one laid over the fields and brooks of the Worthington Valley, starting and finishing on the estate of J. W. Y. Martin where a convenient hill provides a vantage point for thousands of spectators. The distance is four miles and there are twenty-two breathtaking jumps. Spills are frequent but serious accidents have been rare. There is betting, of course, or it would not be Maryland, but the bookies are no longer allowed to put up odds boards nor otherwise call attention to themselves. On the day of the Maryland Hunt Cup race more cocktails are consumed in Baltimore than on any other day of the year; the day ends with the Maryland Hunt Cup Ball which is also in the Maryland tradition.

This is the oldest steeplechase fixture. Other important events are the Junior Cross Country Race at Glyndon on the first Saturday in April; the Point-to-Point Race at "My Lady's Manor" on the second Saturday, and the Grand National Steeplechase near Hereford on the third Saturday. The last-named race offers the Astor Gold Cup which also must be won three successive years for permanent possession. These affairs run on successive Saturdays, and have a cumulative effect. If the same horse wins one or more of the earlier races excitement reaches a feverish pitch upon the day of the Maryland Hunt Cup race.

Perhaps it should be spoken softly, but cock-fighting is still an important item in the sporting calendar of Baltimore County. The mains, naturally, are not advertised, but every - young sport in Baltimore seems to: know where there is one to be held, and all who can afford it have a "bird" in training somewhere in the County. Several times a year there are regular competitions between the champions of Baltimore and Pennsylvania.

There is, of course, another Baltimore County which has nothing to do with the world of sport—of politicians, farmers, store-keepers; closer to reality no doubt, and more truly representative. I had a long talk with Judge Duncan in Lutherville during which horse-racing was never mentioned. The only horse in Judge Duncan's story was an old blind mare which belonged to Landregan, a track inspector on the railway. The horse used to pull Landregan's hand-car up the grades, then climb aboard at the top and coast down with his master on the other side. Judge Duncan told me how the village of Cockeysville failed to get the county seat because of the determined opposition of an apple-grower whose orchard adjoined that village. He was afraid those who came to court would steal his apples.

The Judge told me of the case of a young white man who was tried before him for rape. The '"'victim's" story was absolutely convincing and the young man was headed straight for the gallows, when his attorney saved him with a single witness to whom he put a single question. It was an old woman on the stand and the lawyer asked her: "Did you ever before see the necktie that the prisoner is wearing?" The answer was: "Yes, sir. I seen Mrs. So and So (the complaining witness) making it, and afterwards she sent it to the prisoner by me for a present."

The most famous trial that ever took place in Towson was that of Euel Lee. In 1931, this Negro murdered a family of four whites in Worcester County, and excitement ran high throughout the whole Eastern Shore. A Baltimore attorney who volunteered to defend Lee was badly beaten by the mob before he could be rescued. Lee was then carried over to Baltimore County for safe-keeping. He was tried twice in Towson, a verdict of guilty in the first trial being upset because there were no Negroes included in the jury. In the second trial, Negroes included in the panel were successfully challenged by the prosecution and this verdict held. Lee was finally executed in Towson on October 27, 1933. Judge Duncan said that the riff-raff of Baltimore was attracted to the scene; he had never seen such horrible-looking people nor such shameless behavior. As a result, the Judge, assisted by his friend the editor of the Jeffersonian, was instrumental in getting a law passed that hereafter all executions in Maryland should take place privately, within the walls of the State Penitentiary.

Contributed 2024 Dec 4 by Norma Hass, extracted from 1942 Maryland Main and the Eastern Shore by Hulbert Footner, pages 83-92.