Site History

The Howard-McHenry Mill was a relatively small-scale commercial enterprise that was established by a farmer named Cornelius Howard Jr. in the late 18th century. Howard’s father had been the first surveyor of Baltimore County and the Howard family owned several parcels of land in the Pikesville area by the time Cornelius Howard Jr. established himself as a prominent farmer who earned money raising livestock and renting slaves out for their labor. After Howard’s death in 1844, the mill went to his great nephew James Howard McHenry, another prominent farmer who had a great interest in incorporating the new inventions of the industrial age into his home and farm life. There is no further record of the mill after McHenry’s 1888 death.

The occupants of the Howard McHenry Mill site were a series of tenants of whom little is known other than a few names. The first tenants were probably the Marsh family, since Nathaniel Marsh is listed as a tenant in a 1798 account, and a Nelly Marsh was credited on the mill account in April 1813. In September 1813, Cornelius Howard’s account books recorded the transfer of the tenancy to a William How. Although the mill continued to appear in Howard’s account book in terms of livestock born or killed there, no more mention was made of the names of tenants until after he died and McHenry took over the operation. In 1856, a Jacob Hyland rented the farm, but Aquilla Parrish was also associated with the mill in some way, and he may have been a tenant. By 1877, R.N. Weller was listed on a map as the occupant of the property, but by that time the mill was referred to as “old g. mill” and it may not have been operating any longer. In 1898 neither the mill nor farm structures appeared on the parcel on the Bromley Atlas map, indicating that the site was probably not in use anymore.

Archaeology

A Phase I archaeological survey identified the Howard-McHenry Mill site in 1973. Phase II investigations conducted by the Maryland Geological Survey followed in 1981 and 1982. The Phase II evaluation included recordation of features evident on the surface and the hand excavation of 344 shovel test pits, six 1 x 1 meter units, one 1 x 2 meter unit, and one 3 x .5-meter trench. Soil chemical analysis was conducted during the shovel test survey to look for evidence of specific activity areas. Mechanical stripping was then employed to expose features, and these features were sampled.
The Phase II study identified the flour mill and its associated mill race, tail race, and stone weir, as well as domestic structures associated with a farm, including two dwellings, a dairy, a stable, and fences. The resulting artifact assemblage consists of over 13,300 artifacts which are primarily associated with the domestic activities of the tenants at the mill site. Phase II excavations were considered sufficient recovery of the site when it was threatened by construction of a highway interchange, so no Phase III took place.

References

The Howard-McHenry Mill archaeological collection is owned by the Maryland Historical Trust and curated at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.