Bel Air Chronicles

By Carol Deibel

When Bel Air was chosen as the seat of Harford County in 1782, it was a small commercial hub surrounded by green pastures and farms. With industrialization and the advent of the Ma & Pa Railroad and nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground, the quiet town was transformed into a bustling urban center. Through a series of fascinating vignettes and using firsthand accounts, local author Carol Deibel renders a portrait of a proud community that rallied around its own when hard hit by the Great Depression and one that gave tirelessly on the homefront and abroad during the wars of the twentieth century. From Friday night dances at the armory to the pounding of the turf at the Bel Air Racetrack, join Deibel as she recalls readers to hazy, cicada-filled summers and the glow of the hometown lights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Sep 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781614236740

Carol Deibel

Carol Deibel served as the Director of Planning and Community Development for the Town of Bel Air for 26 years, and developed the town's first historic preservation program. She is on the board of the Historical Society of Harford County, and she edits and writes for several local publications.

Book preview

2012

PREFACE

Writing Bel Air Chronicles was truly a labor of love. After working in and for Bel Air for more than thirty years, I thought I knew its stories and wanted to share its legends with others. What I discovered in my research was a far richer, more complex history than I ever imagined. While this is in no way a comprehensive history of Bel Air, I hope these stories will entice you to explore its history, particularly its people and their adventures, and to better understand its journey from frontier to modern suburbia.

I need to thank many people who helped make this book a reality. First, Hannah Cassilly at The History Press, who took a chance on a first-time author and helped every step of the way, and the volunteers at the Historical Society of Harford County, Inc., who routinely provided news clippings, articles, photographs and background information from the society’s vast archives and beyond. I also need to express sincere gratitude to two incredible Bel Air artists. The first is the cover artist, Alexandra Kopp, who took a very sketchy idea of what I hoped to illustrate and turned it into reality, and the second is Dave Gigliotti, a Bel Air photographer who provided photographs of the armory and patiently worked on the artist’s photograph. I also need to thank my sons for guiding me through the numerous issues with the computer and picture scanning. Their technological expertise was invaluable. Without their patience and understanding, this book would never have seen the light of day.

Finally, I would like to thank my friends, who patiently listened to my stories and read the numerous drafts of each chapter for accuracy and content, and my family, for their patience as I disappeared for hours and hours of research, writing and editing. I hope you, the reader, enjoy the journey.

I

FROM WILDERNESS TO COUNTY SEAT

THE HARSH REALITY OF FRONTIER LIFE

England’s King Charles I, a friend of the Calvert family, granted Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, the land now known as Maryland in the 1630s. Lord Baltimore established the colony as a Palatinate, a form of government similar to the European feudal system. The Calverts hoped to replicate the landed aristocracy of earlier times. Based on this grant, the proprietor and General Assembly, composed of freemen or their delegates, could enact laws, punish violators in the province or on the high seas, take life or limb, confer dignities and tithes, raise and maintain a military force, wage war in the event of sedition or rebellion, proclaim martial law, establish ports of entry, impose taxes on merchandise, constitute manors, establish courts and barons, confer citizenship and trade with England and all countries with which it was at peace. Maryland’s proprietary system gave ownership of the soil and complete jurisdiction over it to the Lord Proprietor himself, just as in a medieval fiefdom.

Anxious to establish his colony, Lord Baltimore began attracting colonists primarily from England. The high unemployment rates, periodic famines and depressions and an emerging European middle class, prohibited from purchasing land in England, helped his efforts. This New World opened up opportunities for prestige and property. The Calverts made the most of this, publishing broadsides extolling the colony as a virtual Eden with food and livestock just for the taking. Some of the more outlandish claims included descriptions of parrots, oranges, gold, pearls and even peas that grew ten inches long in ten days. As further enticement, in 1633 the Lord Proprietor offered two thousand acres of good land and profits for anyone sending or bringing five men to take up land. Popularity of the offer quickly led to a modification, first to one thousand acres for every adventurer and then to one hundred acres per man, one hundred acres per woman and five hundred acres per child under sixteen.

Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the Lord Proprietor of Maryland. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Harford County.

The Palatinate charged an annual rent of twelve pence, similar to the ground rent still found in parts of Maryland today. By 1683, these inducements were unnecessary. New settlers paid two hundred pounds of tobacco for two hundred acres of land, tobacco being the main form of From Wilderness to County Seat currency at the time. Upon arrival, all colonists took an oath of allegiance to the king. This was a way for Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, to show his loyalty and was necessary because of the suspicion surrounding all Catholics in England.

The assembly, the colony’s governing body, told colonists how to build houses and what to plant and advised them to avoid Virginia. Generally, there were two classes of colonists: gentlemen adventurers (mainly Catholics) and indentured servants (mainly Protestants). If a man could make a living without doing manual labor, he was considered a gentleman. An indentured servant was any person who contracted to work for a certain period of time in exchange for his passage to the New World. The contract for indentured servants in Maryland was usually for four to seven years and could be sold. There was also a third group among the early emigrants. These included low- to middle-class shopkeepers, artisans and a few farmers.

The journey from England was arduous, making it impossible for those in poor health to survive. Those who could afford the passage fee and survived the two- to three-month transatlantic crossing and the daunting prospects of finding shelter, fighting disease and establishing a farm were still plagued by isolation, the grueling daily routine of planting food and tobacco crops and the fear of Indian attacks. Even with such hardships, colonists continued to arrive, some escaping political upheavals in Europe and others fleeing for economic or personal reasons. As one colonist explained, The world’s in a heap of troubles and confusions and while they are in the midst of changes and amazes, the best way to give them the bag is to go out of the world and leave them.

The first settlers located along the shores of the Chesapeake from St. Mary’s north to the mouth of the Susquehanna. The coastline, broken by frequent rivers and bays, about which were swamps and marshes, made communication other than by water onerous. Although George Alsop, who served Thomas Stockett as an indentured servant at Point Conquest in the 1640s, later wrote of the comfort and ease of life in the area, subsequent evidence does not bear out his reports. In truth, later journals indicated that the main body of settlers lived isolated, often primitive lives subsisting on wholesome but coarse food and strong drink.

New arrivals went to the secretary and keeper of the acts and proceedings of the Governor’s Council to record their entry into the province and to establish their rights to land. These land grants often overlapped because of the surveying techniques of the time and the scarcity of surveyors. From St. Mary’s, the colonists set out by boat with their limited possessions to find their allotted shelters and to clear massive first-growth trees to make way for essentials such as corn, peas and tobacco. Tobacco was essential because it was the main currency in the colonies. All salaries, fees, fines and taxes were paid in tobacco at first. It was also a highly labor-intensive crop that quickly depleted soils. Tobacco farming was ideally suited to the early settlements in southern Maryland, but the northern settlements lining the shores of the Bush River could not produce the same amount or quality of tobacco. The area did, however, offer fertile soils, abundant hunting grounds, fish and fur trading posts.

In 1638, four years after the settlement of St. Mary’s City, Havre de Grace or Stockett’s Town became the first settlement with any degree of permanency or legitimacy in Baltimore County, or what is today Harford County. This settlement was part of an area identified as Spesutia Hundred. A hundred was an English term initially designating a civil division for representation to the assembly. After 1654, it was also used to designate military and fiscal districts. Over time, the county included thirteen designated hundreds. The governor appointed a high constable, commander of the militia, overseer of roads and tobacco inspectors. The people of the hundred elected a tax assessor.

The original houses located along the shores were often cellar houses, very small, mostly wood. Generally, these were impermanent and could be torn down and moved as soil gave out. There were no rooms for specific purposes. By the end of the seventeenth century, styles changed. The assembly required more substantial buildings and towns. Settlers started using brick as well as wood. There was generally a keeping room, a hall that was the best room, a parlor used as a borning room or for courting and a separate building for cooking. The fireplace was at the center of the house and used fifteen to twenty cords of wood a year (about three acres). By our standards, the early colonists were young, small, tough, rum drinking and somewhat weathered looking. They died young and were often in poor health.

Before European settlers arrived, several Native American tribes lived and hunted in the area now known as Harford County. The Susquehannocks traded with the English, Swedes and Dutch settlers and, based on an agreement with Lord Baltimore, provided a frontier outpost to protect settlers from the Senecas, who repeatedly attacked early settlements along the Bush River. In 1630, the Susquehannocks numbered approximately 1,300. They were tall, well-built, industrious people who unfortunately had little resistance to diseases brought by the white settlers. By 1670, the tribe was reduced to about 300 people. Finally, in 1673, a war between the Susquehannocks and the Iroquois proved the final blow. Similar fates befell several other tribes who once hunted and farmed in the area.

A Susquehanna brave, as depicted on a map by John Smith in 1608. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Harford County.

A SHIFTING COUNTY SEAT

The Maryland Assembly, attempting to ensure orderly settlement, ruled that the county seat for what was then Baltimore County be established on the west side of the bay. This provided good port access and a central location as the assembly confined all settlements to the shoreline for safety and accessibility, or as George Van Bibber explained in A Trip to Old Baltimore and Other Points in the Bush River Neck, No wayfarer could venture into the unbroken forest to head the streams without risking his scalp. The forests surrounding the settlements provided wild game and fearsome adventures. This aboriginal forest enveloped interlopers with a darkness so deep no light could penetrate, even on the brightest days. Snakelike roots and years of debris lay on the forest grounds. Eerie sounds drifted through the woods, which harbored deer, bear, fox, rabbits, raccoons and other wild beasts. The shrill cries of birds, the hunted and the hunters, echoed through this unknown wilderness making every sound, every movement a potential threat. Still, the settlers came.

Initially, Baltimore County included present-day Baltimore, Harford and Cecil Counties. The assembly’s first requirement for the county seat was the establishment of a court. Old Baltimore was located about a quarter mile from the elbow of Romney Creek on the site of what is now Aberdeen Proving Grounds. A courthouse, several taverns, an inn and a few houses stood near what was then a transatlantic port where cargo ships delivered and transported goods and ferries brought travelers from the north and south. This settlement was totally different from England or even New England. Settlers were cut off from daily contact with the world. The climate was similar to England’s; the difference was the abundance of wood, fast-moving streams and limitless vacant land. Settlers girdled trees and used snake fences to keep animals out of gardens. Farmers shipped crops to English markets from the port at Old Baltimore and used rolling roads to bring hogsheads of tobacco from local farms to the port.

Once the settlement along Bush River filled up or became untenable due to depletion of the forest area and soils, settlers started moving inland along the streams and rivers. Settlers faced a stark existence compared to that in the home country. With no central village, they left behind holidays, traditional market days, festivals and most social gatherings. Everyday routines revolved around work and family. Water was often unfit to drink, so early settlers depended heavily on hard cider and ale. Meals consisted of stew, milk and molasses. Pork was the primary meat, and settlers learned to eat beans, succotash, hominy and grits from the Native American inhabitants.

Baltimore County boundaries, which originally included present-day Harford and Cecil Counties. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Harford County.

In 1691, the assembly ordered that