Extract from Worthington Manor: A Report on its History, Significance, and Preservation by Dr. Joseph N. Tatarewicz, published October 1, 2001. Please see full report for citations.
The Land Grants show Worthington Purchases, dated 1736, extending along the current Davis Avenue area to the current Old Court Road, adjoining the chief quarrying area. Thomas Worthington, father of Noah and Rezin, would have arrived sometime before his marriage to Elizabeth Hammond in 1761, which took place in Baltimore County. Rezin is said by Scharf to have been born on his farm, so Thomas and family by 1794 had moved from the original settlement house (remains located just North of Old Court Road) to the main family land described in this report. The original Worthington Manor House had burned down sometime before Scharf visited Rezin in the late 1870s, replaced by a second Manor House. Neither structure was found in a 1999 Archeological survey of the complex. A house, now abandoned and dated as 1912 in real estate records, stands in a location between the main complex and the remains of a suspected “Cadet House”, and was probably built by Thomas Chew Worthington. It is known as the “Kahler House,” after the most recent owners and residents. It was under Thomas and then Rezin that the Worthingtons added to their original holdings and operated one of the largest plantations in the county. If they followed the pattern prevalent in Baltimore County, their main cash crops would have been dominated by tobacco in the early years, with a gradual transition to cereal grains as the soil was exhausted. The arrival of Quaker millers, such as the Ellicotts, in the early part of the nineteenth century expanded the capacity for milling and depressed the enthusiasm for the “stinking weed.” The arrival of the railroad in 1830 then provided convenient and substantial transportation to Ellicotts Mills, although there was already a profusion of local mills taking advantage of the Patapsco’s falls and even those of tributaries such as Ben’s Run and Brice’s Run. The Ellicotts eventually opened their own shipping pier and warehouse in Baltimore to export the grain. A steam-powered saw mill, located near Marcella Chapel on an 1877 map, suggests forest harvesting as well.
It is clear that some time before Rezin was born the family moved to a [different] site … A complex of ruins from at least the early nineteenth century very near the Family Cemetery is suggestive, but does not imply the scale of residence for such a large operation. Taken as a whole, the remains in the archeological survey area suggest an operational complex of scale consistent with the plantation, which at that time would have included all land from current Old Court Road South to Ben’s Run, and everything between the current Ridge Road and running nearly to the power line easements that bisect Davis Avenue and terminate at the substation on Old Court Road. At its Civil War height, the plantation would have encompassed some four or so thousand acres. If only a quarter were cultivated, then simply farming tobacco and grain on nearly a thousand acres would have required a headquarters complex, managerial force, and laboring force of vast extent.
- Rezin H. Worthington portrait from J. Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County, from the earliest period to the present day: including biographical sketches of their representative men (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts, 1881; reprinted Baltimore: Regional Pub. Co., 1971), between pp. 832-833
