|
| Back to Historic Oella |
This granite house stands opposite the large modem Wilkins-Rogers flour
mill (the former "doughnut factory") and is the last of many Ellicott houses
and stores that lined the old route of Frederick Road near the mills built in
1772 by the Ellicott brothers. Although Howard County's most famous city
grew up near the mills, all the Ellicott enterprises were located on the
Baltimore County side of the river. An old drawing dates construction at 1789.
The George Ellicott house was visited at Christmas, 1807, by the Indian
Chiefs Little Tunle and Rushville of the Miami Nation, along with other
Chiefs of the Beaver, Crow, Delaware, Potowatamies, and Shawnees. George
Ellicott had gone West on Indian affairs for the National government. He was
an accomplished mathematician and amateur astronomy, and had helped
Benjamin Banneker stan his career in astronomy; he also laid out the lines
for a road from Baltimore to Frederick. George Ellicott died in 1832 at age 73.
His daughter, Manha Ellicott Tyson, wrote the family's history, Settlement of
Ellicott's Mills . George Ellicott's widow, Elizabeth Brooke Ellicott, was the last of
that family to remain in the town, residing in the house until her death at 91 in 1853.
The simple lines of the house were at one time obscured by a front porch,
later removed. The house was well maintained by the owners of the large
flour mill until the June 1972 flood filled the rooms with silt and debris and
did other structural damage.
S.H. Rogers, Jr., president of the Hamihon Investment Company whim
now owns the property on which the George Ellicott house stands, contemplated
restoring the house, but three years later, in 1975, the house again sustained
further heavy flood damage resulting from the hurricane Eloise. As the
structural damage is so extensive and the house is located on a flood plain,
restoration on its present site probably is not feasible. There has been some
consideration given to relocating this historic house on a safer site or making
it an historic ruin where it now stands.
|
