Elkridge Furnace Inn

Elkridge Furnace Inn. "Neighborhood Parlor" for Healing. , On May 5, 1861, the 8th New York and 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiments and Cook's Boston Battery of light artillery occupied the heights around you. Their mission was to prevent Confederate sympathizers from sabotaging the strategic Thomas Viaduct. This railroad bridge was considered the most important and vulnerable target for saboteurs in central Maryland because it was the only rail link to Washington, D.C., from the north. Several other U.S. Army regiments and batteries later occupied fortifications on both sides of the river, where they remained in the area until the end of the war., During the Civil War, passions ran high here as in other parts of the nation. Afterward, Judge George Dobbin donated land for the Lawyer's Hill Assembly Hall near the former Union camp. Judge Dobbin envisioned the hall, built about 1870, as a "neighborhood parlor" where divisions caused by the war might be healed. The hall soon became the favored location for social and cultural activities that were previously held in homes on the hill before the war. By 1860 this complex included over a dozen buildings owned by the Great Falls Iron Company. The furnace continued production through the Civil War and was destroyed by floods in 1868 and 1873., The Elkridge Furnace Inn here was established as a tavern in 1744. In 1810, the Ellicott brothers purchased the furnace and tavern, attaching an elegant dwelling to the inn for their families.,

"The men now under Gen. BUTLER's orders are here encamped on one of the most beautiful spots the eye could rest upon." , , New York Times, May 11, 1861