Carroll County, Maryland: History
Prior to European colonization, the land that now makes up Carroll County was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years. Numerous Native American archaeological sites and archeological artifacts have been located across the county. Native Americans used the land for permanent settlements, seasonal visits and journeys, and as hunting grounds.
At the time of European colonization, the Susquehannock and the Lenape were the predominant indigenous nations in the area. They spoke Iroquoian and Algonquian languages, respectively. Present-day Manchester, which was inhabited by the Susquehannock nation until around 1750, was where the two important Native American trails intersected. An ancient trail that was used by Algonquian and Iroquois nations, named the "Patapsco-Conewago (Hanover) Road" by colonists, stretched from the Susquehanna River to the Potomac River. Main Street in Westminster was built on a portion of the trail between the two rivers.
By the end of the 18th century, most roads in Carroll County followed trails that had been established by Native Americans.
Maryland Route 26 (Liberty Road) was built over what was originally a Native American trail, which passed through the Freedom area of southern Carroll County and was used by Native Americans to travel from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Chesapeake Bay. The trail was developed as a road and renamed "Liberty" by an act of the Maryland General Assembly in the early 1800s. The land of what is now Sykesville was used by the Susquehannock and the Lenape as hunting grounds.
Taneytown was inhabited by the Tuscarora people during the early to mid-1700s. The Tuscarora, also Iroquoian speakers, hunted deer, wolves, wildcats, and otters in the woodlands of what is now Taneytown.
Due to the Six Nations land cessions, the Tuscarora were expelled westward by European Americans across the South Mountain of the Cumberland Valley.
Carroll County was created in 1837 from parts of Baltimore and Frederick Counties. The county was named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who was one of 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia who unanimously signed the United States Declaration of Independence.
The earliest European settlers in Carroll County were predominantly Pennsylvania Dutch from southeast Pennsylvania and English from the Tidewater region of Maryland. German was the predominant language of Carroll County until the Civil War. German was most heavily spoken in the northern and western parts of the county. Despite their English namesakes, the towns of Hampstead, Manchester, and Taneytown had German majorities. English-speakers were a minority and were concentrated in southern Carroll. English was not adopted as the official language of Carroll County until 2013.
During the American Civil War, the population of Carroll County was sharply divided between supporters of the Union and the Confederacy. In 1863, there were significant troop movements through the county as part of the Gettysburg campaign. On June 29, 1863, the cavalry skirmish known as Corbit's Charge was fought in the streets of Westminster, when two companies of Delaware cavalry attacked a much larger Confederate force under General J. E. B. Stuart.
During the 1970s, Carroll County was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan and the Klan regularly held rallies and cross-burnings. The KKK held rallies and handed out leaflets on Main Street in Westminster and in Manchester until the late 1980s. …