Poplar Springs, Maryland | |
|---|---|
  Poplar Springs  Poplar Springs | |
| Coordinates: 39°20′55″N77°05′55″W / 39.34861°N 77.09861°W Coordinates: 39°20′55″N77°05′55″W / 39.34861°N 77.09861°W | |
| Country |  |
| State |  |
| County |  |
| Population (1888) | |
| • Total | 48 |
| Time zone | UTC-5 (Eastern (EST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
Poplar Springs is a town located in western Howard County in the state of Maryland, United States.
Howard County is a county in the central part of the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2010 census, the population was 287,085. Its county seat is Ellicott City.
Maryland is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east. The state's largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, and the Chesapeake Bay State. It is named after the English queen Henrietta Maria, known in England as Queen Mary, who was the wife of King Charles I.
The town is named for the "Poplar Spring Branch", where Levin Lawrance settled in 1741 and Captain Philimon Dorsey settled in 1750 on a land patent named "Dorseys Grove". [1]
Old Frederick Road was built through the town, following a Native American foot trail. By 1783, two weekly stagecoaches traveled the road. As of 1835, eight daily coaches traveled through town. In the summer of 1843 and 1844, Samuel Morse used Poplar Springs as a vacation spot while experimenting with the single wire telegraph.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was an American painter and inventor. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of Morse code and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.
After the Civil War, members of the 1st Maryland Infantry, CSA would hold regular reunions at the hotel in town. [2] By 1888, the town population was 48.c [3] [4]
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The Civil War began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. War broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States. The loyalists of the Union in the North, which also included some geographically western and southern states, proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights in order to uphold slavery.
The 1st Maryland Infantry, CSA was a regiment of the Confederate army, formed shortly after the commencement of the American Civil War in April 1861. The unit was made up of volunteers from Maryland who, despite their home state remaining in the Union during the war, chose instead to fight for the Confederacy. The regiment saw action at the First Battle of Manassas, in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, and in the Peninsular Campaign. It was mustered out of service in August 1862, its initial term of duty having expired. Many of its members, unable or unwilling to return to Union-occupied Maryland, went on to join a new regiment, the 2nd Maryland Infantry, CSA, which was formed in its place.
