The Ellicott Family and Their Gift to America

They were called ‘dreamers and half-hearted fools’ at the time, but yet they changed the course of American history.

A bird's eye view of Ellicotts Mills, Maryland (later called Ellicott city) surrounded by small images of various buildings and factories in the town, 1854, by E. Sachse & Co. Library of Congress. Public Domain

One day in 1772, three brothers stepped onto the bank of the Patapsco River in what is now Howard County, Maryland. They had come from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, floating their heavy milling machinery down the Chesapeake Bay and then up the Patapsco to Elkridge Landing. Navigating past the great coastal plantations, they pushed upstream to the unchartered wilderness.

As the brothers hacked a six-mile track up steep, rocky terrain along the river, the large planters dismissed them as “dreamers and half-hearted fools.” Joseph, John, and Andrew Ellicott might have been dreamers, but they were not fools—and it must be said that anyone who staked a claim on undeveloped wilderness in the 18th century should never be dismissed as half-hearted.