Mill Green Historic District

Last updated

Mill Green Historic District
Mill Green MD 1.JPG
Old mill building in Mill Green Green Historic District in 2013
USA Maryland location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
LocationJunction of Mill Green and Prospect Rds., Street, Maryland
Coordinates 39°39′50″N76°19′34″W / 39.66389°N 76.32611°W / 39.66389; -76.32611
Area110 acres (45 ha)
Built1770 (1770)
Architectural styleLate Victorian, Federal
NRHP reference No. 93000445 [1]
Added to NRHPJune 3, 1993

The Mill Green Historic District is a National Register of Historic Places listed community located in Harford County, Maryland. The district consists of a small cluster of privately owned historic homes and buildings including a historic mill. The district is located at the junction of Mill Green Road and Prospect Road. Broad Creek flows through the district. [2] The historic district designation was established in 1993. [1]

Contents

History

Before the Revolutionary War, around 1770, William Ashmore built a house and mill in the area, which was inherited by his son John Ashmore in 1798. At that time, he owned 1,208 acres and five slaves. The area was initially known as Ashmore's Mill. The mill generated wheat flour, which was generally sold in Baltimore. The mill led to the expansion of the area into a 100-acre village with a general store, post office, saw mill, a cider mill, and an undertaker. The businesses, generally combined within the owners' residences, served Mill Green and area farmers. In 1801, a road was built that led to the county seat in Bel Air and north towards York County, Pennsylvania. [2] John's daughter, Susanna married Nathan Bemis. The couple was deeded 1,600 acres in land by John and Margaret Ashmore in 1821. An arrangement was established between Nathan and Susanna Bemis and the Ashmores in which the Ashmores lived in the original stone house, received a $10,000 bond, and received enough meat, produce and other food for three people. They also had a horse and two cows. [2]

Built in a distant and rural area, it became a self-sufficient community into the 19th century, with the establishment of a doctor's home and office, purchase of vacant land by farmers, and settlement of additional skilled tradesmen. [2] Nathan Bemis, replaced the original mill with a new 3 12 story mill in 1827. No longer needed, the sawmill closed about 1933. The miller's house, the original house built by William Ashmore, was made a lodging. [2] In the mid-20th century, a new road was built west of the village which led to Dublin and Darlington, Maryland and up to Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal at Havre de Grace. [2] The post office was later moved to Street, Maryland.

The buildings in the district include the Mill Green Mill and Mill Race (ca. 1827), Miller's House (ca. 1770), William G. Roberts House (ca. 1866), Biles House / Mill Green Hotel (ca. 1852), Biles Tenant House (ca. 1852), Treakle House (ca. 1873), Robinson-Huff-Famous House (ca. mid 19th century), Huff / Famous Tenant House (ca. third quarter of the 19th century), Mill Green Store and Post Office (ca. 1850), and Dr. William E. Arthur House (ca. 1898). [2]

Prigg v. Pennsylvania

Stone house on the ridge above the mill Mill Green MD 2.JPG
Stone house on the ridge above the mill

John Ashmore's widow, Margaret, and Natham Bemis became embroiled in what the Pennsylvania courts saw as a kidnapping and the Maryland courts saw as a lifetime enslavement of Margaret Morgan by John Ashmore's heirs. The case was heard in county, state and ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States case Prigg v. Pennsylvania . [3] Margaret Morgan may have been enslaved as a girl and young woman, but she and her parents were not included in the 1824 inventory of John Ashmore's property [3] [4] for the adjudicating the estate of Ashmore following his death in 1823. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland</span> Town in Maryland

The town of Bel Air is the county seat of Harford County, Maryland. According to the 2020 United States census, the population of the town was 10,661.

Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited blacks from being taken out of the free state of Pennsylvania into slavery. The Court overturned the conviction of slavecatcher Edward Prigg as a result.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Veazey</span> American politician (1774-1842)

Thomas Ward Veazey was a Maryland politician that served in a variety of roles. The zenith of his career was being the 24th Governor of the state from 1836 to 1839, when he was selected to serve three consecutive one-year terms by the Maryland General Assembly. Veazey was the last Maryland governor to be elected in this fashion and also the last Whig Party member to serve as Maryland governor.

Cardiff is an unincorporated community in Harford County, Maryland, United States. The zip code for the area is 21160. The community name is taken from the Capital city of Wales.

Street is a rural unincorporated community in northern Harford County, Maryland, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baltimore metropolitan area</span> Metropolitan area in Maryland, United States

The Baltimore–Columbia–Towson Metropolitan Statistical Area, also known as Central Maryland, is a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in Maryland as defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It is part of the larger Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area. As of 2022, the combined population of the seven counties is 2,985,871, making it the 20th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the nation.

Deer Creek is a 52.9-mile-long (85.1 km) river in Maryland and Pennsylvania that flows through the scenic areas of Harford County and empties into the Susquehanna River, roughly halfway between the Interstate 95 bridge and Conowingo Dam. Its watershed area is 171 square miles (440 km2). Its watershed area in MD is 145 square miles (380 km2), with 3% impervious surface in 1994. It serves as a divider between the agricultural and urban/suburban areas of Harford County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marietta (Glenn Dale, Maryland)</span> Historic house in Maryland, United States

Marietta is a historic house and former tobacco plantation located in Glenn Dale, Prince George's County, Maryland. On the National Register of Historic Places and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, Marietta House Museum includes a federal era house, a cemetery, the original root cellar, and harness room, as well as Judge Gabriel Duvall's original law office building. The historic site sits on 25 acres of Marietta's original 690 acres. Today, visitors can walk the grounds and tour the plantation buildings and sites where free and enslaved people lived and labored. 

Old Harford Road, one of the oldest continuously used rights-of-way in central Maryland, United States, is a southwest–northeast thoroughfare in northeast Baltimore City and eastern Baltimore County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauraville, Baltimore</span> United States historic place

Lauraville is a neighborhood in northeast Baltimore, Maryland. The neighborhood is bounded on the east by Harford Road, on the north by Echodale Avenue, on the south by Argonne Drive and Herring Run Park, and on the west side by Morgan Park and Morgan State University, with East Cold Spring Lane passing through the center of Lauraville.

Dublin is an unincorporated community in Harford County, Maryland, United States. Dublin was founded in the early 19th century by George McCausland and a friend who migrated from Dublin, Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. James Church (Monkton, Maryland)</span> Historic church in Maryland, United States

St. James Church is a historic Episcopal church located at Monkton, Baltimore County, Maryland, US.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivory Mills</span> United States historic place

Ivory Mills is a 14-acre (5.7 ha), historic grist mill complex located at White Hall, Harford County, Maryland, United States. It consists of six standing 19th century frame buildings and structures: mill, miller's house, barn, corncrib, carriage house, and chicken house. The property also includes the ruins of a stone spring house, and the stone abutments of a frame, Federal-era covered bridge. The focus of the complex is the three-story stone and frame mill building built about 1818. The ground story is constructed of coursed stone rubble and the upper stories are clapboard. The family first started a mill on this site in 1781, and this mill ceased functioning in the 1920s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerusalem Mill Village</span> Historic district in Maryland, United States

Jerusalem Mill Village is a living history museum that spans the 18th through early 20th centuries. One of the oldest and most intact mill villages in the U.S. state of Maryland, Jerusalem is located in Harford County, along the Little Gunpowder Falls River. It also serves as the headquarters of the Gunpowder Falls State Park. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 20, 1987. Also on the National Register of Historic Places and located nearby are Jericho Farm and the Jericho Covered Bridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heighe House</span> Historic house in Maryland, United States

Heighe House is a historic home complex and national historic district at Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland, United States. The complex consists of a Colonial Revival, 2+12-story stone main house built on and incorporating the stone foundations of the Moores Mill, built in 1745; a 1+12-story frame chauffeur's cottage; garage; and a 1+12-story stone and frame guest house. They are all located on a steeply sloping 17-acre (69,000 m2) site along Bynum Run. The property was developed in 1928 as a country estate for Anne McElderry Heighe, a woman widely regarded as the "first lady of Maryland racing."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lower Deer Creek Valley Historic District</span> Historic district in Maryland, United States

Lower Deer Creek Valley Historic District is a national historic district near Darlington, Harford County, Maryland, United States. It comprises approximately 15,020 acres (60.8 km2) in north central Harford County. The primary building material is stone taken from local quarries and used to construct houses, mills, schoolhouses, and churches. Also constructed of stone are many dependencies including springhouses, stables, tenant houses, meathouses, ice houses, and barns. The district's contributing standing structures date from the mid 18th century to the 1940s, and mostly built in vernacular styles. The valley contains approximately 350 separate historic properties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitaker's Mill Historic District</span> Historic district in Maryland, United States

Whitaker's Mill Historic District is a national historic district near Joppa, Harford County, Maryland, United States. It includes three early- to mid-19th-century buildings: the 2+12-story rubble stone Whitaker's Mill built in 1851, the 1+12-story rubble stone miller's house, and the log-and-frame Magness House, begun about 1800 as the miller's house for the first mill on the site. The district also includes an iron truss bridge known as Harford County Bridge No. 51, constructed in 1878, and the oldest such span in the county. The grist mill closed operations about 1900.

Bemis is a former company town in Madison County, Tennessee, United States, now part of the city of Jackson. The Bemis Brothers Bag Company established the town in 1900 to be the site of a cotton mill and housing for the mill workers. A 450-acre (180 ha) area of Bemis was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 as the Bemis Historic District. Much of the area is also a local historic district.

Margaret Morgan was an African American woman who was born to former slaves. They were considered free by their slaveholder, but they had not received an official deed of manumission. They lived on their former slaveholder's property, where they then had a daughter, Margaret. After she was married and had children, her family was taken from her home in the middle of the night around late March 1837 at the request of the former slaveholder's widow, Margaret Ashmore. Morgan became the subject of legal cases at the county, state and national level from 1837 to 1842. Prigg v. Pennsylvania was tried before the United States Supreme Court and the four men who apprehended Morgan and her children were found to be not guilty.

The Dover Eight refers to a group of eight black people who escaped their slaveholders of the Bucktown, Maryland area around March 8, 1857. They were helped along the way by a number of people from the Underground Railroad, except for Thomas Otwell, who turned them in once they had made it north to Dover, Delaware. There, they were lured to the Dover jail with the intention of getting the $3,000 reward for the eight men. The Dover Eight escaped the jail and made it to Canada.

References

  1. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Christopher Weeks (May 1992). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: Mill Green Historic District" (PDF). Maryland Historical Trust. Retrieved January 1, 2016.
  3. 1 2 "Margaret Morgan, MSA SC 5496-8784". msa.maryland.gov. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  4. Vought, Allan. "'Sacrificing Margaret Morgan,' Harford's little known role in the origins of the Civil War". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  5. "Edward Prigg MSA SC 5496-051268". msa.maryland.gov. Retrieved March 28, 2021.