Loch Raven in Baltimore County

Maryland Historical Society

Baltimore County (population 2005 est. 786,113; 2000 754,292) is a 599-square-mile political subdivision stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to the Pennsylvania line. The county is entirely distinct in jurisdiction from Baltimore City. Baltimore County was established about 1658 or early 1659 although there is no known documentation of its origin.

Geography and Early Government
Named for the Lords Baltimore, the county began as a very large area that included present Harford, Cecil, and Kent Counties, parts of the present day Carroll and Howard Counties, and all of present Baltimore City. The earliest growth took place in what is now Harford County and the first county seat was Old Baltimore on Bush River, today only an archaeological site. Successive county seats were at Gunpowder Town on the Gunpowder River estuary in 1692 and, in 1714, at the port of Joppa Town on the opposite shore.

In 1768, the citizens voted to move the county seat to Baltimore Town, and that inspired the residents of the eastern half of the county to set up a separate Harford County, which took place in 1772. Baltimore County lost its Eastern Shore expanse early in its history, its foothold south of the Patapsco in 1727, and, in 1837, lost its western fringes when Carroll County was established.

The rural area was managed by a county commissioner system started in 1826. Farm deeds and city lots were all recorded in the same ledgers. Unsatisfied with this method, the County citizens voted in 1850 to separate entirely from Baltimore, leaving it to become essentially a free city. At that point, a separate county courthouse town was needed for the rural areas. Towsontown (later Towson) was selected as the county seat in 1854, and a new courthouse and jail were ready for use by the first week of 1857. In 1888 and 1918, Baltimore City annexed various strips of county territory.

Farming Followed by Industry
Agriculture was the main occupation in the1600s through the 1800s. The earliest cash crop was tobacco, and farmers stuck with that product despite Virginia tobacco bringing higher prices. By about 1750, Baltimore County farmers turned to wheat as their money crop because millers in or near Baltimore Town, as well as the town commission merchants, could buy entire crops to ship overseas.

In 1731, investors began building iron furnaces to supply the British market with pig iron, creating a more varied economy. A road network was developed to reach the productive farmlands of York County, Pennsylvania. The economy depended on slavery in the early times except in the north end of the county where people of Pennsylvania German stock were settling. A paper-making industry started in 1772 in the north end.

In Revolutionary times, the county supplied flour and provisions to the French and American armies and witnessed the transit of George Washington’s and Lafayette’s forces along the Philadelphia Road on their way to corner Cornwallis at Yorktown. Baltimore County also figured in the formative days of Methodism in America, with worship services held at times in clearings in the woods, for example near Perry Hall.

The nineteenth century saw a great build-up of cotton and woolen factories, distilleries, and more advanced kinds of iron furnaces. Baltimore investors built the great web of hard-surfaced turnpike roads and the early railroads through Baltimore County to tap markets on the Susquehanna and beyond.

Baltimore County had long provided rural settings for the homes of persons who became prosperous in Baltimore City. Many of the great estates were showplaces for scientific agriculture, and county farmer and suburbanites restored the soil battered by a century of tobacco farming. By 1840, most of the exhausted county farms had been revitalized.

Invasion and Battle
Baltimore County largely missed the violence of the Revolution, but it was the scene of an invasion by the British in the War of 1812. In the Battle of North Point on September 14, 1814, American forces held the British back from overrunning and burning the city of Baltimore. The county also suffered slightly from the Civil War, once being raided by Confederate forces in July 1864; the invaders burned the suburban mansion of Maryland’s governor, Augustus W. Bradford.

The Civil War created deep splits, with many socially prominent men volunteering for the Confederacy, many plain people volunteering for the Union. Union forces guarded the railroads from Confederate saboteurs all during the conflict. When Lincoln’s funeral train passed through the county in 1865, there was genuine sympathy from crowds along the route.

The Rise of Suburbanism
Mid-nineteenth century horse car lines and the later trolley car lines helped turn parts of Baltimore County into commuter suburbs and swelled the populations of Towson, Parkville, Pikesville, and Catonsville. Many large estates were suburbanized in the trolley car and early automobile era. Suburban development continued as dairy farms were converted into row house development in the late 1920s at locations such as Rodgers Forge.

During the first half of the twentieth century, manufacturing was very successful, and the cotton mills, declining, were supplanted by aircraft manufacturing and electrical and electronic product manufacturers. Sparrows Point had been a booming steel mill and shipyard starting in 1889. The two world wars spurred both production and industrial population.

After World War II, the new arrivals found new jobs and stayed in the county, joined by people making an exodus from Baltimore City’s crowded streets. The whole second half of the twentieth century was a story of more suburbs, more roads, more schools, and more public services.

Towson Courthouse

Maryland Historical Society

Growth Areas and Education
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there are efforts to slow growth, restore fading communities, find new industries to make up for the decline of the steel industry, and to save open space and guarantee the survival of agriculture. The county now has a large nonindustrial sector of hospitals and colleges.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Towson University have spacious campuses, numerous students, well-stocked libraries, and highly respected faculties; only slightly less famous are the three branches of the community colleges at Essex, Dundalk, and Catonsville, plus the private Goucher College and Ner Israel Rabbinical College.

Starting in 1956 with no park land at all, other than the courthouse lawn, Baltimore County developed a chain of parks and recreational areas, nature centers, and preserved landmarks of great variety and beauty. The county parks are supplemented by scenic State-owned stream valley parks that incorporate many of the suggestions of the Olmsted Brothers’ early 1900s plan for a perfect urban environment.

Brooks, Neal A. and Eric G. Rockel. A History of Baltimore County. Towson, Md.: Friends of the Towson Library, Inc., 1979.

Gunnarson, Robert L. The Story of the Northern Central Railroad. Sykesville, Md.: Greenberg Publishing Company, 1991.

McGrain, John. From Pig Iron to Cotton Duck. Towson, Md.: Board of Library Trustees, 1985. Clemens, S. B. and C. E. From Marble Hill to Maryland Line. Monkton, Md., 1976.

The Heritage Committee. The Limestone Valley. Timonium, Md.: The Greater Timonium Bicentennial Committee, Inc., 1976.

Harwood, Herbert H., Jr. Impossible Challenge: The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Maryland. Baltimore: Barnard, Roberts and Co., Inc., 1979.

Frank, Beryl. A Pictorial History of Pikesville. Towson, Md.: Baltimore County Public Library, 1982.

Sharp, Henry K. The Patapsco: Cradle of the Industrial Revolution in Maryland. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2001.

Hollifield, William. Difficulties Made Easy: A History of the Turnpike Roads of Baltimore County. Cockeysville, Md.: Baltimore County Historical Society, 1978.