By Tina Barton

There is a curious plat map of two acres in the EHS archives. We never knew exactly where it was. It shows a property line for James Rowles, who owned a large swath of what was once part of the Rockburn estate, so named by Daniel Murray Sr. (1778-1842). At one time, Rockburn extended from near Belmont where the Rockburn manor house is all the way across Route 1 beyond the carwash. It also went almost to Levering Avenue. The Rowles Property ended up being split by I-95, and on it are built Elkridge Elementary and Elkridge Landing Middle School on the east side of 95, and Tutbury House on the west side. The plat also shows a property line for Walter Clement. So we deduced the property was on or near the original Rockburn estate.

Thinking the property WAS Walter Clements because his name is inside the trapezoid, but not being sure the name WAS Clements in the above map, we did a general web search on Rockburn History. HO-151 is about the Rockburn manor house, which didn’t say anything about this tract. The next document was HO-837, Jacob Fuchs House on Rockburn Hill. We looked at one of the older deeds for this house and saw that it bordered Walter Clements’ property. So we had a clue that this land was on Rockburn Hill.

Searching on Rockburn HIll led us to The Brown House, HO-542. In there was a plat of area properties, one of which was a piece of property which had the above shape on the bottom of it. It was owned at the time by Cordelia Hanson (died 2012), and a deed number. It was never Walter Clements’ property so we thought we were down the wrong rabbit hole.

We tried an index search on Walter Clements in the Maryland Land Records thinking he bought this land from Rowles. There is a deed involving Clements and Rowles (7-1/19) but it involved 16 acres of Rockburn land, not two acres. There were deeds between Clements and the Earp family involving Rockburn land but it was 20 acres (the first is 7-2/310). So we realized Clements bordered the 2 acres. He didn’t own it.

Searching now on Clements, Rowles and Rockburn, we landed on HO-452, Rowles’ house, Tutbury. This document has some errors but it was the clue we needed.

We see that it talks about James Rowles as having bought 141 acres of land from Mary Murray, Daniel Murray Sr.’s widow (Deed 8/143). Then Charles White bought 123 acres of the property (deed 10/61), which deed also mentions deed the 1847 deed 7/19 (7-1/19 on line) in which Rowles sold 16 acres to Walter Clements. Rowles sold two acres to William Young in 1850 as well (123 + 16 + 2= 141) (deed not given) – HO-452 says that White sold the land to Young, but it appears James Rowles sold the land to Young. So this was not Clements’ property but Young’s. Young then sold it to the Earps a few years later, but Rowles had to be on the deed with him because there was an issue with the original deed (which we cannot find) (16/124).

Realizing we’d been on the wrong track thinking it was Clements’ property, we went back to the Brown House document and revisited Cordelia Hanson’s deed trail. In it is described two deeds of land that were joined to form her lot. One was two acres and it led to the William Young deed. So the pointy outcropping on Cordelia’s plat, is indeed this little parcel of land that had us so stumped.

Cordelia Hanson was an activist in Elkridge. She was a force to be reckoned with and was not afraid to ruffle feathers. She got things done! She helped form the Elkridge Heritage Society, according to her obituary.

Sometimes a little luck and detective work is all you need, even when you do not have a surveyor’s skill to figure out what pieces of land each deed is talking about! And a picture speaks a thousand words.

One may wonder, out of all the important plots that came out of Rockburn, including the schools and a lot of Lawyers Hill properties, we fixated on this little 2-acre one. The reason is that there was a mystery to be solved. We wonder if there is more of a story behind it. Who was William Young that Rowles cared enough to separate out a measly two acres for him? Genealogy on Mr. Young escapes us at present.

Here is what went on our display sign for the map room, which also includes the original land grants of what became Howard County:

The 2-acre lot depicted in this survey was once part of the Rockburn 

tract, which in turn was part of the Moore’s Morning Choice land grant 

shown in the map above. In 1847, James Rowles (born 1815) bought 

141 acres from Mary Murray, widow of Daniel Murray Sr. of Rockburn 

(liber EPH8 folio 143). In 1847, Rowles sold 16 of these acres to

Walter Clements, (deed 7-1/19). Then Rowles partitioned the remaining

125 acres in 1850, sold the two acres in the plat to William Young

(deed 10/100), and the remainder to Charles R. White (deed 10/61).

Young sold his two acres in 1855 to James Earp (deed 16/124). The survey

shows Rowles’ property line on the left and Clements’ property line on the bottom.