The story of Granite’s changing railroad – Article: John Brantley, Treasurer
The Old Main Line
On May 24th, 1830, tickets went on sale for the first passenger train service between Mount Claire in Baltimore and Ellicott Mills, a distance some 13 miles. Three Years earlier 25 Baltimore bankers and merchants had met in the home of George Brown, a director at Alex Brown & Sons, to charter the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company with a 25-million-dollar stock issuance.
The first trains were horse-drawn. At the half-way point Between Baltimore and Ellicott Mills tired horses were swapped with fresh ones; the town which grew up around this swapping point was appropriately named Relay. In August of 1830 the famous race between a horse-drawn train and a prototype steam engine, the Tom Thumb, designed by Peter Cooper, would take place along that route. The horses won the race that day (as readers probably remember from their elementary school days), but only because a drive belt on Tom Thumb broke loose. Soon newly designed steam engines were replacing horses on the railroad tracks. The first of these went into service in 1832. It was named “the Grasshopper” because the distinctive vertical motion of two long rods reminded onlookers of grasshopper legs as they moved up and down and back and forth. The engine was designed by Phineas Davis, previously a well-known clockmaker. Ironically, Davis was killed while riding a B&O train on the Washington DC line when defective track caused his Grasshopper to derail.
The original goal of the B&O directors in 1827 was the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia (the state of West Virginia did not yet exist), a distance of about 300 miles. But in the short term, the B&O set its sights on the Potomac River. In short order rights-of-way had been acquired and road beds were being prepared between Ellicott Mills and Point of Rocks. The route traveled northwest through the Patapsco River valley to Marriottsville and then west along the South Branch to Mount Airy and then southwest to Point of Rocks on the Potomac, some 60 miles. In 1835 another track opened going from Relay to the nation’s capital. That route was soon extended to meet with the original line at Point of Rocks and then the B&O headed northwest to Wheeling, first to Harper’s Ferry, then on to Cumberland and finally to the Ohio River at Wheeling in 1852. Over the next two decades the B&O extended west from Wheeling to Chicago (1875) and, by a more southernly route, from Cumberland to St Louis (1873). After 2 more major routes were added, one from DC down the Shenandoah Valley and the other from Baltimore to New York (not until 1888), the final reach of the B&O was complete.
Once the line from Relay to Point of Rocks through Washington, DC was complete it became the preferred route for passenger trains. The original route looping through the Patapsco Valley was then named the Old Main Line, a name still in use today (abbreviated OML), and was given over mostly to freight trains, a sort of by-pass for slower-moving traffic. However, passenger trains still operated on the OML. If you remember this writer’s presentation on the history of the Woodstock College, you’ll remember that the B&O was the main form of transportation for Jesuits going to and from Woodstock until at least the 1920s. Well into the 1940s this writer’s grandfather and great-uncles rode the OML trains. They used to catch an eastbound at Woodstock, then transfer at Relay to attend Washington Senators baseball games at old Griffith Park. It was in 1950, when the stations at Ellicott City and Sykesville were closed, that passenger trains stopped running and the OML became what it is today, a route for coal cars, container flatbeds and car carriers.
The 2nd Division
Construction of the OML was divided into 5 segments, constructed simultaneously. The segments were called divisions, each about 12 miles in length. The 1st Division ran from Relay to Elysville (later known as Alberton and then Daniels), and the 2nd Division, of most interest to Granite historians, ran from Elysville to Sykesville. By 1830 Hugh Riddle and True Putney (both from New Hampshire) had taken over operations at The Branch (later named Waltersville Quarry) and they provided stone for the construction of bridges and viaducts on the initial section of the railroad line to Ellicott Mills. In 1832 they contracted with the B&O to produce stone stringers and other building stone for the 2nd Division (see Figure 2). At the same time they were under contract to provide stone for the C&O canal. To aide in the transport of stone, Putney and Riddle built their own railroad from the quarry to the river, a distance of about 2 miles, and they built a bridge across the Patapsco to the OML. The bridge was appropriately named Putney’s Bridge (see Figure 3) and Granite residents affectionately named Putney & Riddle’s railroad “The Dinky Track” because of its narrow-gauge (2 ½ feet between rails instead of the standard 4 foot and 8 inches).
Figure 2: Discarded Granite Stringers and Strap Iron Found along the Old Main Line 1st Alignment Near Daniels
As part of the 2nd Division the B&O also constructed a siding from Davis Branch going west to Woodstock, a distance of almost 2 miles (the siding is still there today). Railroad cars parked on the siding were loaded with granite from The Branch and the siding also served the Fanny Frost Quarry and the Eureka Mine, both located on the south side of the Patapsco near Davis Branch. These quarries produced feldspar rock which was shipped by railroad to the plants of the Eureka Mining Company and Goldings Sons Company in Trenton, NJ where feldspar rock was crushed for use in the manufacture of pottery. The Davis Siding also served Fox Rock Quarry, operated by John Emery and Cyrus Gault on land leased from Nicholas Owings in 1836. Fox Rock Quarry also produced stone stringers and building stone for the B&O. In fact, the B&O built the mile-long road which led from the quarry down the steep face of the northern edge of the Patapsco valley to the bridge crossing to Woodstock. Stone was hauled along that road to the OML by mule and wagon.
Figure 3: Ruins of the Putney & Riddle Railroad Bridge Across the Patapso, North Side Abuttment Right, South Side Abuttment Left. The Bridge was built in 1832 to Service a Narrow Gauage Railroad Leading from Waltersville Quarry. Abandoned in about 1928. The Patapsco Flood of 1932 Brought the Bridge Down
Two of Woodstock’s most famous residents, both fathers of future US Senators, were contractors in the construction of the 2nd Division. The first of these was Caleb Dorsey Davis. Born in Woodstock, he married Louisa Brown, a 3rd great-granddaughter of Thomas Brown, the famous “Patuxent Ranger”. Caleb spent 10 years or so as a merchant in Baltimore, where he became so enthused with the future potential of steam power that he joined as an early investor in the early investor in the B&O project and then moved back to the Davis family farm in Woodstock and signed on as a B&O contractor. The Davis farm dates back to 1740 when Caleb’s great-great grandfather, Thomas Davis, bought land from the Brown family for his son Robert. The town of Woodstock actually began life with the name of Davis Tavern (sometimes spelled Davis’s Tavern). That was also the name of the first post office, started in 1836 (the name Woodstock first appeared in print in 1838).
Which of Thomas Davis’s descendants started the tavern and where exactly it stood is lost to history, Henry Gassaway Davis, Caleb’s 2nd oldest son, worked as a railroad brakeman and advanced to executive status with the B&O and he served for a time as station master at Wheeling. He finally quit the railroad to start a coal company around Elkins, West Virginia (the nearby town of Davis, West Virginia is named after him) and eventually he served for 2 terms as a US Senator representing West Virginia. He was a vice presidential candidate in 1904. His ticket lost to Teddy Roosevelt.
The second of Woodstock’s famous residents associated with the 2nd division is Peter Gorman, a first generation American born in Philadelphia to Northern Irish parents. How and why he came to Woodstock is not known, but by 1834 he had married Elizabeth Brown, another 3rd great-granddaughter of Thomas Brown, and was involved in the construction of the 2nd division. Peter’s famous son, Arthur Pue Gorman, the future US senator, was born in 1839 in the two-story stone house Peter built right along the railroad tracks in Woodstock. The house was built on a lot leased in 1838 from Dr. Thomas Herbert; the lease was for 99 years at $12 a year rent.
Gorman was also involved in granite quarrying. Sometime before 1845 he operated a quarry owned by John Warfield along the middle branch of the Patuxent and by 1850 he and another son, Henry, were operating 2 granite quarries near Savage and supplied stone for the B&O. In 1851 he sold all of his holdings in Woodstock (most of them inherited by Elizabeth from the Brown family) and moved to his Fairview estate north of Laurel (the lease on his Woodstock stone house was assigned to Henry Davis). In 1861 Gorman was arrested by the Mayor of Richmond while on a business trip and sent to Libby Prison. He was arrested for sedition after publicly speaking out against secession. The Mayor refused to release him despite offers by some of Gorman’s friends in Maryland to post bail. It seems that he was at Libby for some months before John Letcher, governor of Virginia, secured his release. Gorman’s death in 1862, it was said by his family, was the result of nervous disorders developed while in Libby Prison.
Gorman family lore has it that in 1834 Peter, along with one of his supervisors, John Watson, were nearly beaten to death when a riot broke out between German and Irish railway workers on the 2nd division near Davis Branch. Two days later poor John Watson actually was killed near Savage by workers on the Relay-to-Washington track. This wasn’t the first riot along the 2nd division. In 1831 an angry mob of mostly Irish workers, it was said, tore up track between The Forks and Sykesville and brought down rock and debris from the surrounding hills with charges of black powder. The workers claimed that they had not been paid by the contractor, a fellow named Truxton Lyon from Pennsylvania, who was soon dismissed by the B&O. A local sheriff couldn’t handle the situation. A militia unit, the Baltimore Light Brigade, was called in and 68 arrests were made.
Libby Prison - Unknown author or not provided - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration AND A map of the 3 divisions of the Old Main Line
The Woodstock Train Station
In 1884 the train station sitting along the tracks just to the west of Woodstock Road opened for business. Everyone in Granite who knows anything about local history knows about that station; plenty of photographs still exist. It was designed by the well-known E Francis Baldwin, the designer of the B&O Warehouse (now Camden Yards), Mt Royal Station, Point of Rocks Station and about 100 other train stations around the country, including the Sykesville Station, also opened in 1884. In fact, the Sykesville & Woodstock stations are almost exact copies, as are a number of the other B&O stations attributed to Baldwin. The station was closed to passenger service in about 1950 and demolished during the following year. The B&O purchased the land for the Baldwin Station on July 10th, 1883, about 4/10s of an acre, from the 3 adult children of Dr. Thomas Herbert, one of whom was James Rawlings Herbert, the famous Confederate Civil War Colonel and later the Brigadier-General in the Maryland National Guard.
Some local history sources say that the B&O presence in Woodstock (then called Davis’s Tavern) dates to 1835. One of those sources is the Woodstock Letters (published at the Woodstock Jesuit College starting in 1872). The writer of one of those Letters speculates that a train station was first located within the Davis Tavern. In 1848 the B&O bought an acre plot of land for a station from Peter Gorman. That plot was located just south of the tracks and just to the east of Woodstock Road, the northwestern corner of a tract of land called “Good Fellowship” given as a land patent to Christopher Randall in 1728. Whether there was an actual station building on this lot between 1848 and 1884 is not known. It seems likely that there was, but this writer has never seen any mention of it or any photos or drawings to confirm that and there’s no mention of Woodstock before 1884 in any of the B&O archives available online. So it’s possible that the station in Woodstock before 1884 was just a stopping point or maybe a platform.
Horse Show 1936 - Reverend John Brosnan (See Train station in the background) and Abandoned B&O Station around 1950 - Unknown Photographer
Architectural Drawing of the Dorsey Tunnel, and the Dorsey Tunnel today (Photograph Roy Danz)
