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Every town name tells a story Exploring the origins of some familiar places in So. Md.
Friday, Aug. 31, 2007
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Gary Smith
Former state delegate Samuel C. Linton Jr., above, takes a boat ride past an old wooden piling jutting out of the Potomac River at the end of Route 6 in Nanjemoy, where a 500-foot wharf received steamships loaded with commercial goods, including pulpwood and tobacco, for 200 years.
An old Linton photograph, left, shows the Riverside Wharf as it looked in the 1930s.
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Native American territory
Charles County, named after Charles Calvert in the 1600s, was inhabited by Native Americans when the British first anchored along the county’s Potomac River shoreline.
Many of the names of towns in the county reflect the names of Native American cultures, such as Pomfret, Pomonkey, Nanjemoy, Port Tobacco and Chicamuxen.
Some places were named after prominent families who settled in the county, such as McConchie, Dentsville, Marbury and Marshall Hall, while others were named simply to reflect geographical features, including Rock Point, Hilltop and Riverside.
Nanjemoy — known as Crossroads before 1832 and Nanjemoy Crossroads before 1890 — is an Algonquin Indian name that means ‘‘they go down the river.” Nanjemoy and the village of Riverside hug the Potomac River shoreline in western Charles County and harbor a history rich in commerce that has now fallen by the wayside.
Nanjemoy was once the center of commerce for the county, said former state delegate Samuel C. ‘‘Buddy” Linton Jr. From 1730 to the 1930s, the 500-foot long Riverside Wharf received steamships that carried goods such as tobacco and pulpwood to ports around the region.
‘‘It was one of the main ports in Southern Maryland,” Linton said. ‘‘Now, there’s nothing there except a beacon to warn boaters of underwater piling.”
District 3 in western Charles County recorded the county’s largest number of residents in the 1910 U.S. Census, Linton said, adding the river’s shoreline had hotels, stores and Clifton Beach Amusement Park. ‘‘More people lived there than in any other district in the county,” he said.
The shoreline holds artifacts of a Civil War encampment and a World War II prisoner of war camp, Linton said.
The village of Riverside, named because of its proximity to the Potomac shore, was first spied by Capt. John Smith in the 1600s, Linton said.
‘‘The earliest mention of Riverside was when Capt. John Smith sailed up the Potomac and wrote about the beauty of the river before the area was settled and was still inhabited by Indians,” he said.
Marshall Hall was named after William Marshall, an early settler who arrived in Charles County in 1641. The town, at the end of Marshall Hall Road near Bryans Road, became popular in the late 19th century when Marshall Hall Amusement Park opened. Steamboats used to ferry visitors to the park from Washington, D.C., throughout the summer, said Pat Buckley, who captained a steamboat with the Wilson Line from 1965 until the park closed in 1978.
The park sported a wooden roller coaster, large carousel, a miniature train and other amusement park rides.
The attraction also had hundreds of slot machines, a swimming pool and miniature golf course, Buckley said.
‘‘I have good memories of the place,” he said. ‘‘There is never a spring that comes that I don’t get itchy feet to go out on the river. There’s nothing better than going down the Potomac on a summer day.”
A popular folk tale claims the name of the Charles County town of Indian Head sprang from a feud between the Piscataway and Algonquin Indians when a young warrior fell in love with a beautiful maiden, said Warren Bowie, former town mayor and current judge of the Charles County Orphans Court.
An Algonquin chief promised his daughter to the son of a chief of a nearby Piscataway village, as the legend goes. But the maiden met a young hunter who paddled across the Potomac River from a village in Virginia. The two fell in love — and that’s when trouble erupted.
The story says that when Capt. John Smith arrived in the area, he spotted a Native American’s head stuck on a bloody spear, Bowie said.
‘‘The chief said he didn’t want the two of them to get together and told the young hunter to not come back,” he said, but the warrior did not heed the warning. ‘‘The town’s name was born of love and war. We’ve always used this.
‘‘The legend is pretty neat,” he added, laughing. ‘‘It has character to it, and charm.”
Another version of how Indian Head got its name is found in local historical accounts that note the peninsula looks like the silhouette of a Native American from the air.
The popular version of how Waldorf — originally called Beantown and Bean Station — got its name in 1880 is disputed. But the general belief is it was named to honor German railroad financier John Jacob Astor and his great-grandson, William Waldorf Astor, said Dick Gregory, a La Plata resident who serves as the president of the Waldorf Jaycees Foundation Inc.
Some historical accounts say the name Waldorf was used to describe ‘‘a town in the woods.”
Port Tobacco did not get its name because it was a major tobacco shipping port in Charles County, said Vivian Malczyk of the Society for the Restoration of Port Tobacco.
Originally, it was called Chandler Town, and then Charles Town before an act of the Maryland General Assembly deemed it Port Tobacco, she said. The name is Native American in origin, Malczyk said, adding it is perhaps a corrupted version of Potopaco, which through the years had been pronounced Portafacco, Potobac, Potobag and Porttobattoo.
Port Tobacco was once a bustling village that held three hotels, a post office, general store, several houses — some of which stand today — and a courthouse.
An arson fire in 1892 destroyed the main wing of the structure, and the courthouse was moved to La Plata, Malczyk said. Some suggest that the fire was deliberately set to force the relocation of the courthouse to what is now the Charles County seat, she said.
‘‘The funny thing is none of the land records were destroyed by the fire,” she said, smiling. ‘‘Somehow, all of them were saved.”
A regal background
Calvert County, named after Cecil Calvert, has always taken advantage of the miles of water that surround it. Two of its most popular spots, Chesapeake Beach and Solomons Island, are nestled along the Chesapeake Bay, and their histories are deeply entrenched in commercial seafaring and tourism.
Chesapeake Beach was established as a bayside getaway for folks in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area in the late 1890s when Otto Mears and a group of Denver railroad tycoons decided to run a rail line from the city to the town, according to the Calvert County Historical Society. Mears and his cohorts built beachfront hotels, a racetrack, casino, bathhouses and a 1,600-foot boardwalk along the edge of the Chesapeake.
The amusement park featured a roller coaster that raced visitors across the water, a dance pavilion and a carousel, which is now located at Watkins Regional Park in Prince George’s County.
Solomons Island was originally part of Eltonhead Manor, and the name was changed to Bournes Island in 1680, said Karen Sykes, Calvert County Historical Society archivist. In 1740, the name was changed to Somervell or Somerville Island, and between 1827 and 1865 the name transformed to Sandy Island.
Isaac Solomon purchased the island in 1865 for $6,000, and the name was officially changed to Solomons Island in 1870 when a post office was established there, said Paul Berry, a librarian at the Calvert Marine Museum.
Solomon and a group of investors built and operated an oyster-canning factory on the island, then quickly built houses for people who worked at the plant, Berry said.
A school and small stores sprang up on the land to support the work force, Berry said. Solomon also lived on the island to be close to his investment.
‘‘It fairly quickly became an established community,” Berry said, adding the venture soon stopped turning a profit, and the island was purchased by John Farren and Thomas Moore in 1879. ‘‘The cannery closed in the early 1880s; it just wasn’t a success.”
The island was a hub for wooden shipbuilding by the turn of the century, but the industry died off in the 1960s.
Broome’s Island was named after the Broome family, which had extensive land holdings in Calvert, St. Mary’s and Dorchester counties in the 1600s, according to the Calvert County Historical Society.
‘‘They were one of the most prominent families in the county,” said Richard Dodds, curator of maritime history at the Calvert Marine Museum. ‘‘They owned a lot of land.”
The island was home to watermen who plied the nearby waterways for a living, Dodds said.
Prince Frederick — the seat of Calvert County — was named in honor of the eldest son of King George I of England, according to the Calvert County Historical Society.
Calvert County’s original courthouse site was at Battle Creek off the Patuxent River, but soon a more central location was needed. A second courthouse site was established in the early 1720s at what was originally known as Prince Fredericktown, Sykes said.
A blessed start
St. Mary’s County was named after Mary, the mother of Jesus.
The county seat of Leonardtown, originally called Seymour Town by an early governor, was renamed to honor Leonard Calvert, a provincial governor in the early 1700s, said Roy Guyther, a retired physician and local historian who lives in Mechanicsville.
Lexington Park, originally known as Jarboesville, was given its name after World War II in memory of the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier downed during the Battle of the Coral Sea, said local historian Pete Himmelheber.
Hollywood was not named after the movie mecca on the West Coast, Himmelheber said. Rather, the town was named to commemorate an old holly tree that stood at an intersection nearby.
California was established by a group of settlers from the state of California in the 1870s, Guyther said. The name of the village was originally Benitia, but was changed shortly after the Civil War, according to local historical accounts. Lumber was shipped to the area from California to build an estate in the area, ‘‘California Farmstead.”
Mechanicsville got its name because it was a village at a junction where a variety of services were provided to settlers, including a blacksmith, wheelwright, carpentry and shoe shops and a saw mill, Guyther said.
Charlotte Hall was named after Queen Charlotte of England in the 1600s, Guyther said. When the first post office was established in the 1700s, local officials decided it was time to build a school to provide a formal education for the growing number of young people who lived in the area.
The first board of trustees for Charlotte Hall School was established July 1, 1774, Guyther said. The school facility, a military academy when it closed in 1976, was built near a spring known for its healing powers.
‘‘The school was built on the site of the springs, known as ‘ye coole springs of St. Maries,’” said Guyther, who graduated from the academy in 1937 and served as the school’s doctor from 1950 to 1965. ‘‘The Indians used it for its medicinal value, and relics have been found in the vicinity.
‘‘Father Andrew White found out about the springs in 1634, and he visited them,” he said. ‘‘He thought there was some truth to the legend about the springs and recommended that the colonists use the spring water because of the area’s questionable water table.”
Charlotte Hall School was torn down in 1976 to make way for Charlotte Hall Veterans Home. A couple of the original campus buildings, along with the springs, are still on the grounds.
‘‘You can still see the springs,” Himmelheber said. ‘‘They’re supposed to be healing springs. People would go to them and get their magic elixir.”
E-mail Nancy Bromley McConaty at nmcconaty@somdnews.com.
