The history of Montgomery County, Maryland begins prior to 1688 when the first tract of land in what is now Montgomery County was granted by Charles I in a charter to the first Lord Baltimore (head of the Calvert family). Much later, the creation of Montegomery county became the goal of colonist, Thomas S. Wootton when, on August 31, 1776, he introduced a measure to form a new county from Frederick County, Maryland to aid area residents in simplifying their business affairs. The measure passed, thus creating the new political entity of Montegomery County in the Maryland Colony.
Early history
Before European colonization, the land now known as Montgomery County was covered in a vast swath of forest crossed by the creeks and small streams that feed the Potomac and Patuxent rivers. A few small villages of the Piscataway, members of the Algonquian people, were scattered across the southern portions of the county. North of the Great Falls of the Potomac, there were few permanent settlements, and the Piscataway shared hunting camps and foot paths with members of rival peoples like the Susquehannocks and the Senecas.
Captain John Smith of the English settlement at Jamestown was probably the first European to explore the area, during his travels along the Potomac River and throughout the Chesapeake region.
These lands were claimed by Europeans for the first time when George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was granted the charter for the colony of Maryland by Charles I of England. In 1688, the first tract of land in what is now Montgomery County was granted by the Calvert family to an individual colonist, a wealthy and prominent early Marylander named Henry Darnall. He and other early claimants had no intention of settling their families. They were little more than speculators, securing grants from the colonial leadership and then selling their lands in pieces to settlers.
18th century Around 1715, the first British settlers began building farms and plantations in the area.
These earliest settlers were English or Scottish immigrants from other portions of Maryland, German settlers moving down from Pennsylvania, or Quakers who came to settle on land granted to a convert named James Brooke in what is now Brookeville. Most of these early settlers were small farmers, growing wheat and a variety of other subsistence crops in addition to the region's main cash crop, tobacco. Many of the farmers owned slaves. They transported the tobacco they grew to market through the Potomac River port of Georgetown. Sparsely settled, the area's farms and taverns were nonetheless of strategic importance as access to the interior. General Edward Braddock's army traveled through the county on the way to its disastrous defeat at Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War.
Like other regions of the North American colonies, the region that is now Montgomery County saw protests against British taxation in the years before the American Revolution. In 1774, local residents met at Hungerford's Tavern and agreed to break off commerce with Great Britain. Following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, representatives of the area helped to draft the new state constitution and began to build a Maryland free of proprietary control.
Founding
By 1776, there was a growing movement to form a new, strong U.S. federal government, with each of the Thirteen Colonies retaining the authority to govern its local affairs.Farquhar, Roger Brooke (1952). Historic Montgomery County, Old Homes and History. Baltimore, Maryland: Monumental Printing Company. p. 20. Member of the Maryland Constitutional Convention Thomas S. Wootton thought that dividing large Frederick County into three counties, each governed by elected representatives, would result in greater self-government.
When Wootton discussed his idea with the residents of southern Frederick County, the residents supported his idea for a different reason. At some point, almost everyone had needed to travel to the courthouse in Frederick Town, and the travel cost and time was prohibitive. The residents wanted a county courthouse to be located closer to them.
On August 31, 1776, Wootton introduced a measure to form a new county from the southern portion of Frederick County.
Wootton proposed naming the new county after the well-known Major General Richard Montgomery, who had served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Eight months earlier, Montgomery had died in Quebec City while attempting an ultimately unsuccessful invasion of the Province of Quebec. Montgomery had never actually set foot on the land that would bear his name.
Wootton also proposed forming a new county from the northwestern portion of Frederick County, named Washington County, named after another well-known leader of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, General George Washington.
Several members of the Maryland Continental Convention opposed Wootton's proposal, and it was tabled. Six days later, Wootton pressed for his proposal again, and it passed by a slim majority. As a result, Montgomery County came into existence on October 1, 1776.
In 1777, the leaders of the new county chose as their county seat an area adjacent to Hungerford's Tavern near the center of the county, which became Rockville in 1801. When deciding its name, the original idea was to call it Wattsville, after Watts Branch, a stream that runs through the land. Because Watts Branch is a small stream, the idea was reconsidered, and the area was ultimately named Rockville after the nearby and larger Rock Creek.
For tax purposes, Montgomery County was divided into eleven districts, called hundreds. The names and areas of each hundred carried over from when the area was still part of Frederick County. The eleven districts were:
Linganor Hundred (now Clarksburg, Damascus, and Hyattstown); Upper Newfoundland Hundred (Brookeville, Laytonsville, Olney, Sandy Spring); Lower Newfoundland Hundred (Ashton, Brighton, Burtonsville); Rock Creek Hundred (Colesville, Layhill, Norbeck); Northwest Hundred (Kensington, Wheaton, Silver Spring, Takoma Park); Lower Potomac Hundred (Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Georgetown); Middle Potomac Hundred (Potomac, Rockville); Upper Potomac Hundred (Darnestown, Dawsonville, Seneca); Seneca Hundred (Gaithersburg); Sugar Loaf Hundred (Barnesville, Beallsville, Germantown); Sugarland Hundred (Poolesville).
The first court was held at Hungerford's Tavern on May 20, 1777. Court was held by Charles Jones, Samuel W. Magruder, Elisha Williams, William Deakins, Richard Thompson, James Offutt, and Edward Burgess, with Brook Beall as clerk. Clement Beall served as the county's first sheriff. The county's first courthouse was built soon thereafter, and the court was held at the new courthouse beginning in 1779.
According to the 1790 census, the county's first, 18,000 people lived in the county, of which about 35 percent were black.
Montgomery County supplied arms, food, and forage for the Continental Army during the Revolution, in addition to soldiers.
In 1791, portions of Montgomery County, including Georgetown, were ceded to form the new District of Columbia, along with portions of Prince George's County, Maryland, as well as parts of Virginia that were later returned to Virginia.
19th century
In 1828, construction on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal commenced and was completed in 1850. Laborers were primarily Irish immigrants. Throughout the 19th century, agriculture dominated the economy in Montgomery County, with slaves playing a significant role, though the vast majority of farmers owned ten slaves or fewer rather than large plantations. In the first half of the 19th century, low tobacco prices and worn-out soil caused many tobacco farms to be abandoned. Crop production gradually shifted away from tobacco and toward wheat and corn. Prior to the Civil War, Montgomery County allied itself with other slaveholding counties in southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore. Montgomery County was important in the abolitionist movement, especially among the Quakers in the northern part of the county near Sandy Spring. Josiah Henson grew up as a slave on the Riley farm south of Rockville. He wrote about his experiences in a memoir which became the basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). A slave cabin where he is believed to have spent time still stands at the end of a driveway off Old Georgetown Road.
Until 1860, only private schools existed in Montgomery County. Initially, schools for European-American students were built. A school in Rockville for free African Americans existed until 1866. Another school for African Americans was opened by 1877 in Rockville.
Montgomery County's proximity to the nation's capital and split sympathies to North and South resulted in it being occupied by Union forces during the Civil War. The county was "invaded" on multiple occasions by Confederate and Union forces.
In 1855, work on the Metropolitan Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began, in order to provide a route between Washington, D.C., and Point of Rocks, Maryland. In 1873, the railroad opened. The railroad spurred development at Takoma Park, Silver Spring, Kensington, Garrett Park and Chevy Chase. By providing a much-needed transportation link, it also greatly increased the value of farmland and spurred the development of a dairy industry in the county.
Formerly enslaved African Americans formed the community of Emory Grove in 1864.
During the Jim Crow era, masked mobs of local white men carried out two separate lynchings of African-American men in Montgomery County on Rockville's courthouse lawn. John Diggs was violently lynched in 1880 and Sydney Randolph similarly murdered in 1896. Neither man was found guilty in a court of law, nor was anyone punished for the lynchings. No memorial exists for victims of Montgomery County's lynchings.
20th century In 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy donated a statue of a Confederate soldier to the county, part of the group's effort to promote the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy. County officials erected the statue on the courthouse lawn where the 1890 and 1896 lynchings took place, declaring that it was appropriate to display a monument to people who took up arms against the United States because Montgomery County, like the rest of Maryland, was divided over the issue of secession. (One vocal sociologist has disputed this claim, arguing that the county's residents were not, by and large, welcoming of the Confederates during the Civil War.) The statue was maintained by the Maryland Historical Society as a monument to the Confederate army as "heroes of the thin grey line".
Law enforcement duties rested in the Montgomery County Sheriff and designated constables until on July 1, 1922, when the Montgomery County Police Department was established with three to six officers appointed to two-year terms by the Board of County Commissioners, one of whom would be appointed as Chief. In 1927, the police department was enlarged to 20 officers.
The remains of F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of the novel The Great Gatsby, are interred at St. Mary's Catholic Church Cemetery in Rockville.
Home rule
The county began with most legislative power in the hands of the Maryland state government, with a five-person Montgomery County Board of Commissioners who oversaw the administration of the county but could neither pass county laws nor enact policies.