CHAPTER 1

Table of Contents

History

    Humans lived here well before our explorers and fur traders. Fertile land with seemingly endless game and a river flowing by made this area attractive to the native Indians.

    The Susquehannans, under many other names, including Conestogas, were from the Iroquois stock. The Susquehannans were large and aggressive. Hunting was not only a necessity for surviving, but doing it well was a passage into manhood.

    Although the women were servile to the men, they played an important role beyond serving. They took part in tribal government, had some power in family relations, and were treated affectionately.

    The tribe had its chief, a less powerful assistant, and the tribal council. These, plus the medicine man and distinguished warriors, made up the council. The medicine man was important because illness, both physical and emotional, was considered a weakness. Only the medicine man could recommend the treatment.

    These Indians had religious worship and ritual, a god, and animal or crop sacrifices. They buried their dead with precious mementos and carefully tended their burial sites.

    Fishing, farming, hunting, trading and warring all played a role in their survival. Their word for their nearby river, which ultimately they called "Potomac," meant "something bought" or "trading place" in the Algonquian tongue.

    The men hunted; the women farmed. Warriors were important to this warlike people, who fought native and white alike. Yet the white settlers succeeded in pushing them west, and their life and demise has yet to be accurately written.

    Yet the settlers could not have survived without learning the war methods they acquired from the Susquehannans. Corn was a crop of the Europeans, and corn sustained them from the beginning of their life in these lands. The use of leather as a clothing material came from the natives.

    Two Indian village archaeological digs along the Potomac were made by the Smithsonian, and scouts of the first half of the century, like Charlie Utterback and Austin and Glenn Cooper, found many tools, utensils, shards, and weapons in the vicinity of Brunswick.

(The book staff is grateful to H. Austin Cooper for his many years of research into the history of Brunswick and sharing results of his exhaustive investigation.)

    An Indian trader named Abraham Pennington ran a trading post and ferry. He built his log cabin trading post on a tract of land named "Coxon Rest," near where the C&O Canal Lock 30 now stands, establishing 1728 as the date of Brunswick's first settlement.

    The second trader was Henry Roth, Jr., of York County, Pennsylvania. In 1744 he lived in what is now Burkittsville. That year he purchased Pennington's trading post and ferry, which Roth operated until 1760, when he removed to Brothers Valley, Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
 

    By 1741 John Hawkins, Sr., began operating a ferry. As the Germans continued heading for settlement in Virginia, many crossed here. At Hawkins' ferry, migrants from Pennsylvania went to German Settlement (now Lovettsville, Virginia), and then south along the Blue Ridge Mountains to the iron works in Orange County, Virginia. Brunswick was then called 'German Crossing."

    By 1750 "Potomac Crossing" (an early name for Berlin) had several permanent families.
 

    The Highland Indian Trail, now Route 17, ran north-south directly through this tract across the Potomac and all the way to Florida.

    By 1759 people were still passing through this tiny village and traversing the Potomac on their journey to Virginia. Across the river, nearby Lovettsville had grown to a town of over 250 residents.
 

    About the time that the white man came into the area in 1728, the Iroquois tribes, including the Susquehannans Indians, had cleared the other Indians from this region and were trading here when the earliest trappers and hunters arrived. The early settlers lived at peace with the Indians, but were cut off from all conveniences of life and had to struggle with nature for a livelihood. The trading post became the only connection between the settlers and the outside world.
 

    On August 10, 1753, a grant of 3100 acres from George II, King of England, to John Hawkins, is the first record of a transfer of this land. The picturesque name of this grant, "Hawkins' Merry Peep O' Day," gives some idea of the pleasure Hawkins must have received from the view that greeted him in the morning.

    This expanse bordered Merryland Tract to the north, near present-day Souder Road, today's northern boundary of Brunswick. South Mountain was to the west. To the east was "Haw Bottom," in the Boss Arnold area.
 

    The 3100 acre grant was divided between Hawkins' sons in 1758. The western half passed through three more owners until November 7,1780, when it was deeded to Leonard Smith (born in England, 1734).

    Leonard Smith had made the survey of New Town (Jefferson) in 1774. He had surveyed Berlin on January 26, 1775. These experiences had inspired him to buy the land that Hollyday subsequently deeded to him in 1780, and to begin planning his own town. In 1780 Smith proceeded almost immediately to lay out the first section of what was to become the town of Berlin.

    By 1787 Smith laid out the town of Berlin in 96 lots, most of which were one-half acre in size. Perched on the sharply -rising foothills of the Catoctin range along the north shore of the Potomac River, it is located at the eastern base of a great gap formed by the wind and water as they cut through the Appalachian Mountain chain to form the Potomac River.
 

    By April 6,1822, Jacob Waltman, Jr., had begun operating a "heavy" ferry between Berlin and Loudoun County broad enough to carry a wagon with two horses, plus a number of people, thus the title "heavy ferry."

    Potomac River navigation, which intersected this route, included small craft and convoys of large flatbottom wooden rafts, carrying grain, flour, bacon, and whiskey among its cargo downstream, east to Georgetown. Berlin became a thriving port. (The Potomac River was deeper than it is today and had a greater flow.)

    Berlin's growth was very slow until the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal reached the small village in 1834.

    Berlin was a tranquil area even after the railroad and canal passed through, parallel with and north of the river, in 1834. The railroad left at Berlin only a tool shed and a small section gang to care for the right-of-way at the time.'

    The original settlement was built on the lowland near the river. As the railroad tracks and yards developed, the town pushed up the rounded hills, and the buildings between the tracks and the canal eventually disappeared by 1924.

    Primarily a canal town until 1888, most of Berlin' s buildings sprang up in the area bordered by the present railroad tracks. Then the railroad began supplanting the water transportation system in young America. The boom town's explosion of growth came from 1890, when the town incorporated as Brunswick, to 1896, when the B&O yards were built; the population increased tenfold from 300 to over 3000 during that period.

    As the railroad prospered, it displaced the town south of the westbound railroad tracks, and people and businesses moved north of the tracks, and onto the three large and rolling hills: New York, Wenners, and Sandy Hook.
 

    In 1859 a covered wooden toll bridge, the first bridge across the Potomac in this area was built at Berlin. It was burned by Confederate troops in 1861. Because it was a focal point, Berlin was used as a supply depot by the Union Army after the Battle of Antietam, September 17-19,1862. A ferry was again relied on for crossing the river until 1893, when an iron truss bridge was erected by the Lovettsville and Brunswick Bridge Company.

    Weakened by periodic floods, this bridge was replaced in 1955 by the present concrete bridge, which has thus far escaped damage from the ravages of the flooding Potomac.

    In the 1950's the town remained stable in population. In the middle of that decade the steam locomotive was replaced by the diesel engine, which was capable of much longer trips than the former, and could pull longer and heavier trains. Brunswick's importance as a railroad town declined as the giant snakes of iron passed through the small town with hardly a glance, seeking Cumberland, Maryland, for refueling and repairs.

    Brunswick temporarily regained some of its former importance when the Chessie System, which gained control of the B&O in 1962, invested millions in its Brunswick facilities. A shockwave hit Brunswick when CSX (the owner's next identity) closed the car repair yards in 1988 and left only a skeleton crew at the machine shop.

    Today, Brunswick is predominantly a bedroom community. With the real estate development over the last 20 years, Brunswick's population, stable around 3700 for three quarters of a century, will probably be around the 5000-figure when the 1990 census is completed.

    'Titus Atlas (1873) clearly shows a "Tool House" beside the westbound track at the foot of Second Street (later Maryland Avenue) on the east side, across from the Gross Store. Could it have been in the same location 39 years earlier?

w - H. Austin Cooper
 

    "Brunswick" it is today, but this town has had an assortment of names over the years. Most of the names - but not all - had a reason for being. Long before European civilization reached the shores of the Potomac River where Brunswick is now located, Indians settled here, and the river furnished much of their food. To catch the fish, the Indians made "eel pots" in the river. These angled traps caught the fish and prevented their escape. At that time eels were abundant, and the area became known as "Eel Pot;" later when the white man settled, 'Eel Town" was used and is still recognized by many as referring to Brunswick.

    The route of Maryland Highway 17 was once the buffalo trail from the highlands of Pennsylvania to the Potomac River. Buffalo on the other side of the highlands gravitated to the Susquehanna River. The buffalo gathered at an area that extended down river from 'The Gut" to the present Brunswick Campground. This area was called "Buffalo Wallows." Austin Cooper recalls that as a youngster he worked occasionally on a farm at the lower end of the wallows. One day he and his companion dug up a buffalo skull.

    In 1728 our area was called "Coxson Rest," the title of a small land plot used as a trading post by Abraham Pennington, the first known settler. The name 'Tankerville" was applied in 1778 because of the northernmost corner of a tract of 17,000 acres owned by the Earl of Tankerville.

    As people began settling the nearby area of Virginia at the enticing offer of that state's Governor Dinwiddie, many crossed the Potomac at the area we know as Hawkins' grant. The name 'German Crossing" appears in papers written by Dr. Charles Zahn.'

    This name was possibly attributable to the Germans who were crossing the Potomac in their journey to "German Settlement," which was later named Lovettsville.

    "Potomac Crossing" also came into use to identify the place where travelers forded the river. East and west of this area there were dangerous, deep water holes in the river, but here, where the bridges were later built, was an area that could be forded and crossed safely.

    The original land grant from the Crown, King George II of England, was for 3100 acres, conveyed to John Hawkins of Prince Georges County, and was dated August 10, 1753. The grantee named it "Hawkins' Merry Peep-O-Day," in deference to the happy sunrise above the surrounding hills.

    After John Hawkins' death, his grant was equally divided between his two sons. Thomas E. Hawkins received the eastern half, and John S. Hawkins received the northwestern portion, where Brunswick later developed.

    A deed of July 31, 1766 transferred John's portion after his death to Thomas Gantt of Prince Georges County. Gantt's portion was deeded to Thomas Gantt, Jr., on January 1, 1773, after the grantor's death. Young Gantt in turn sold his land to Clement Hollyday with a deed dated July 3, 1776.

    After Hollyday conveyed the land to Leonard Smith on November 7, 1780, Smith assigned three or four lots that year to his children. (This was the same Leonard Smith who had surveyed New Town for Mrs. Eleanor Medley. New Town is now called Jefferson.) In 1787, Smith completed the platting of Berlin. From 1787 the name 'Berlin" identified the area of Hawkins' land. Among the many references to Frederick County found in York County (PA.) is one stating that "Berlin" was used in deference to the Germans who lived in the area after migrating from Berlin, Germany. Use of the name Berlin, however, confused the U. S. Postal Service, since there was already a Berlin on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and on April 26, 1832, the name of the post office here was changed to Barry. Of course, the name Berlin continued in use, but for purposes of mailing, "Barry, P.O." was used.

    This story appears in America's Educator Encyclopedia, Volume A, page 347:

    There were many Irish men working here, building on the railroad. There was an Irishman - but not in this area - named John Barry (1745-1803). He became wealthy in ship-building- but not here. He was cited as the first American officer to capture an English ship (1 776), and he built a strong American Navy.

    Rev. H. Austin Cooper's grandmother used to tell the same story, and there are people who believe this origin of the name Barry.

    A great change occurred on April 8,1890. The presence of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was causing the town to grow and incorporation was accomplished that year. According to one written account, a B&O official was asked to suggest a fancy name to replace Berlin, and he suggested "Brunswick." Some think this choice was made because of the many residents living here who came from Brunswick, Germany, to work on the railroad.

'Dr. Charles Zahn papers, in York County Historical Library, York, Pa.

S - Austin Cooper

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5/22/07