This is an excerpt from a document in the Maryland State Archives on Howard County Mills. It mentions Charles A. R. Earp who owned the Brumbaugh House before the Brumbaughs. Sorry the paragraph starts did not copy with the text. I (Tina Barton) have placed them where they seem to fit rather than going back and forth with the original. It also seems to have been OCR’d and there are some strange things in it. I want to go back and verify all this. It is a work in progress.
One of the rare statistics from that era was, “The amount of pig iron made at ElkRidge Furnace from 1761 to 1766 per Exhibit D4 . . . 2974 tons,” according to a paper in Chancery Papers No. 4549, October 15, 1766, MSA. This document was filed in the case of John Scott, Jr., and Elizabeth-vs.-Edward Dorsey, Jr., Dr.Michael Pue, William Goodwin, Eleanor Dorsey, re Caleb Dorsey’s estate, Anne Arundel County, 1789. Also recorded in Chancery Records, 41:842; 42:1, re the properties called Timber Ridge, Dorsey’s Delight Enlarged, and Mill Frog. Caleb Dorsey, Jr.’s sons, Samuel (1741-1777) and Richard “Ironhead Ned” Dorsey, continued the business. Edward (1758-1799) was the brother-in-law of Charles Ridgely of Hampton.
Before his early death, Samuel Dorsey received orders from the Council to cast 24-pounders and swivels and to forge bayonets; a letter addressed to him and John Onion at Elkridge appeared in Arch. Md., 16:275. Five or six potters were wanted immediately “for the Air Furnace at Elk Ridge Landing by Daniel Hughes and William Russell, Md. Gazette, March 7, 1780. [The Howard Tilting forge that has been confused with Elkridge village was in Montgomery County.] An air furnace used a natural draft to fan the flames rather than a water-powered bellows. The 1798 tax list of Elk Ridge Hundred listed Edward Dorsey of Caleb with parts of the tracts Caleb and Edward’s Friendship and Elkridge Landing, along with one Old Brick House, 30 by 26 feet, two stories.
In 1826, Andrew Ellicott, Jr. and brothers erected a furnace 32 ft high by 8.5 ft wide at the bosh; it had a water-powered blast and was capable of an output of 1400 tons pig iron/annum for the manufacture of water and gas pipe. In 1840, the furnace was being worked by J. Barker and Sons, MHM, 48:39. 33 The 1850 census valued the Ellicott Brothers Blast Furnace and Foundry at $40,000; there were 12 employees, steam and water power, 3 cupolas, and 1 blast furnace. The works was consuming both charcoal (300,000 bu) and anthracit (600 tons). The flux was oyster shee1 ($600 worth). Annual output was 2400 tons cast iron pipe ($96,000) and 2000 tons pig iron ($30,000).
Elkridge Furnace was advertised by John Glenn, trustee, in American, March 8, 1850; the furnace and foundry were located. on the tract called Caleb and Edwards Friendship and other lands. It was advertised again by Robert Howard as a foundry with 3 cupola furnaces at Elk Ridge, American, October 2, 1854. The furnace was rebuilt in 1854 and operated by the Great Falls Iron Company; this configuration was a steam and hot-blast furnace, 32 ft high by 9.5 ft wide. R. Howard & Company advertised the foundry and three cupola furnaces for rent at Elk Ridge Landing, American, January 26, 1855. During the Civil War, it was leased to Brooks and Moore. After the war, it was run by James P. Ellicott, and later by Howard Brown until 1872, RIOM, p. 169.
The 1880 State business directory listed Thomas Brown’s iron furnace. Howard County deeds show that Joshn S. Hayes was president of Great Falls Iron Company when they sold the property to Robert H. [Howard] Brown on April 18, 1887 (LJW 52:47). The Ellicott City Times of June 8, 1895, reported on “Elkridge Iron” . . . “Mr. James Bates has at his iron foundry, at the southeast corner of Pratt and President streets, Baltimore, three pieces of pig iron which are among the first produced in the State of Maryland. They average in weight about 100 pounds each, being but parts of a pig. One is stamped ‘Elkridge, 1755”; another “Elkridge, 1769,” and the third “Principio,” the date being obliterated. Mr. Bates bought these pigs about two years ago as old iron, and he knows nothing about their history, with the exception that of the furnaces at which they were cast. ….”
An anonymous article called “A Suburb of Baltimore Older Than Baltimore Itself,” Sun, February 21, 1909, stated, “The relics of the old iron foundry in Elkridge are near the river, below the railroad station. They consist of a dismantled old stone wall with several grim staring windows, and some old pieces of junk . . . Above the foundry [was] the old Howard House, the Elkridge Hotel.”
The furnace was mentioned in a Johns Hopkins paper of the 1930’s by Angela Carroll Donegan and Cathryn Gordon Carroll, “Elkridge.“ The authors met an ex-slave, Robert Hawkins, who remembered the Ellicott Pig Iron Furnace and showed them the ruins. It had been destroyed in the flood of 1868 along with the Avalon works. Hawkins showed them the ruins of a gristmill; he had also dug nails out of the furnace race. According to the Hopkins paper by Isobel Eney, the flood waters came when the “lead” was molten and resulted in an explosion at Elkridge that destroyed the puddling mill and boiling works. 34
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The 1860 Martenet map showed the furnace on west bank of Deep Run, close to south bank of Patapsco, at the end of a long race, and north of present Furnace Avenue near the terminus of Race Road; the last of the ruins are apparently gone. Data from other Johns Hopkins economic history papers on Elkridge by Rosena Id. Coppo1etti and Michael J. Kitt (in EPFL, Maryland Room VF). Also, WPA Guide, p. 309, and U. S. One, p. 171. Also, RIOM, p. 168f. “Belmont, Howard County,” by John H. Scharff, F.A.I.A., MHM, “March 1953. 48:37.) Catonsville, March 10, 1967.
Accounts and business papers of Caleb Dorsey and Company or the Elk Ridge Company are among the Hanson family papers, MHS Special Collections, Ms. 720. See also, Ronald W. Fuchs II, “At Elk Ridge Furneis As You See, William Williams He Made Me, The Story of an Eighteenth Century Maryland Iron Furnace,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 12 (Winter 1996): 40-59. ADDENDA ON ELKRIDGE FURNACE: 1. A chimney back owned by Nathaniel Ellicott was washed out of his Ellicott City house in the 1868 flood; it bore an inscription, variously quoted: “At Elk-ridge furnace, as you see William Williams, he made me, In the Year of ’63.” 2. “Mr. Robert Long is impowered and desired to remove the Cannon at Indian Landing to Elk Ridge Landing,” Journal of the Council of Safety, Archives of Maryland, 16:362, (Sept. 4, 1777). 3.
Advertisement for an air furnace at Elk-Ridge Landing estate of Samuel Dorsey, Maryland Journal, August 18, 1778 4. “The Hermitage … formerly owned by Col. John Dorsey… on Elk Ridge 4 miles from Elk Ridge Landing on the main road leading to Bladensburg … iron works, two merchant mills …850 to 900 acres — LUTHER MARTIN,” –American, April 29, 1783 5. “Elkridge Landing, Jan. 24th, 1849 The furnace has considerably contracted its operations, most of our mine-banks are suspended, and business generally is at a stand … the present low price of iron not compensating for its manufacture.– PHILO,” –Howard Gazette, 1849 (Reprinted in Ellicott City Bicentennial Journal, p. l4-A, 1972.) 35 6. “Elkridge Furnace for sale The Patapsco is navigable to the works,” –American, April 18, 1851 7. “Prospectus of the Great Falls Iron Company” (ca. 1858): Includes paragraph: “The Elkridge Landing Property on the Patapsco with Furnace, Store House, Farm and Dwelling Houses, &c., and 985 Acres of Land adjoining or in the vicinity of the same, at $59,900.00 –Typed copy in manuscript paper in Enoch Pratt Free Library, Maryland Department, “The Locust Grove Furnace.” 8. The trade journal Iron Age, 16 (June 5, 1873):21 listed all U.S. furnaces, and showed: Elk Ridge Furnace Bituminous Coal… in blast in 1872.” 9. “Ellicott City, Aug. 20, 1873 . . . storm of Wed., the 13th
A short distance below the Patapsco flooded the furnace, and the molten iron caused an explosion and the gas being ignited the building caught from the flames and was seriously damaged,” – -Maryland Journal, Towson, August 23, 1873 10. In 1835, Messrs. Ellicott & Bro. made cast iron water pipe at this furnace for the Croton Water Works of New York. The furnace was rebuilt in 1855, but has been out of blast since 1874. –Maryland, Its Resources, etc., (1893), p. 105. 11. Irvin Lowe of 5741 Furnace Avenue, Elkridge, was interviewed in the Evening Sun, April 12, 1976, p. C-4, “House With a History/ Homeowner on Search,” by Ron Howell.
“Pridefully, Mr. Lowe pointed to the remnants of a 200-year-old furnace that lies a little beyond his property.” Also a reference to a cast-iron fireback marked “Ellicott:1833. Also a mention of a Mr. Smithson, age 63: “Although he does not know when the house was built, Mr. Smithson can explain that the long snake-like depression along the side of the Lowe property is the remnant of a ‘millrace’–a channel ’10 feet or more deep’ on which flat-boats carrying iron ore from the mines were transferred to the furnace.” “The depression which is now barely one foot deep, runs toward Race Road, which is named after the mill race.” 12. Steve Israel, working as an archaeologist for the Corps of Engineers, told John McGrain that he had visited Irwin Lowe and his wife at the Elkridge mansion on May 15, 1977. The furnace then consisted of only about one course of stones. Mr. Lowe had a large collection of data.