Federation Blog

Anyone who has spent time doing historical or genealogical research recognizes that there's "low hanging fruit", information which is relatively easy to come by, "high hanging fruit", more difficult to discern elements, and pieces of information which, when compared against all the other facts, just don't make sense.  For the most part, the "What's In a Name" entries presented here to date have been relatively low hanging fruit.  The rest, by and large, appear to be more difficult to verify.  One name, however, has given me fits from the start: the so-called "Tarnans Branch."   The waterbody itself currently runs basically from the southwest to the northest, just above Route 50, and eventually tying into the North River drainage that feeds the uppermost reaches of the river (see below from the 1993 USGS map).    

 Despite considerable searching and investigation, the name "Tarnan" or "Tarnans" didn't turn anything up.  But the name "Tarman" did appear a few times, and finally, looking closely at the 1878 Martenet map, a "Mrs. Tarman" shows up as a landowner on what is today known as Maccubbins Cove, between Gingerville Creek and Broad Creek (see below).

 Then, member John Koontz brought in an 1928 Anne Arundel soils map (see below).  Imagine my surprise to see what is today called "North River" listed as "Tarmans Branch."   Unfortunately, I haven't been able to turn up additional details on the Tarman family, but I now believe that the current name "Tarnans" is a result of a transcription error or miscopying at some point in the past and that the proper name for the waterway is, in fact, "Tarman's Branch."

Meeting with a landowner last week, I came across this 1970s era photo of their farm above Bacon Ridge Branch. The photo is taken looking southeast towards the river, with St. Stephen's Church Road in the lower right-hand corner.  It really gives a great sense of how little development there was in the headwaters during that time, and just how rolling and dramatic the topography is throughout that entire area.

Did you know that in the period before the Revolutionary War Catholic churches were illegal?  Apparently one of the earliest Catholic Churches in the region stood near the old graveyard on Priest's Farm near where Route 2 (Solomons Island Road) crosses the South River.  According to "A History of Anne Arundel County in Maryland: Adapted for Use in the Schools." (1905). By Samuel Elihu Riley, the Farm bordered what is now called Church Creek and gave the creek its name.

The church that once stood on the shores of Church Creek may have looked something like the one shown above.

Much of the top of Warehouse Creek is now a mudflat at low tide, but believe it or not, it got its name because it was once a local hub of commerce.  Agricultural products were brought up from south county and delivered to the warehouses along the creek where deepwater vessels loaded up and carried the goods to points north and elsewhere. 

 A friend of the Federation with family roots that go back several hundred years in the region passed along this anecdote about Warehouse Creek:

 Aunt Adelaide the last of the family to own the whole Ivy Neck told my father that she would ride in a horse and buggy under the bow sprits of the big boats. That would mean where the water treatment plant (pumping station) on the edge of Mayo Road is, was the edge of the original creek and the largest of the boats could sail all the way to the end. - Allen Calhoun (2009)

 Given the ages of those involved, this account likely describes the situation in the early 20th century.

 So how much of the South River watershed was forested and what type of forest was it before European settlement began?  By most accounts, virtually the entire (~95%) Chesapeake Bay watershed was forested in 1650.  For the new settlers, trees represented a obstacle, both slowing moving across the land and occupying valuable ground that could otherwise be planted as tobacco.   At least one early settler was prompted to complain, "This is not a land of prospects.  There is too much wood."

In the South River watershed, by 1700, that was no longer an issue: The virgin forest had been cleared.  So what was the composition of the primeval forest in this area?  Based on pollen studies, the local forests were dominated by oaks (see below), pines, hickory, American chestnut, and American holly.  Interestingly, these same studies show a much wetter landscape in the period leading up to European colonization, hinting at the wider expanse of wetlands that once occupied the landscape.  In many cases these areas were filled, either intentionally or through sedimentation, or were ditched, in order to de-water the land for agricultural.  This wetland loss has had untold consequences for the health of tidewater that persist to this day.

 White Oak, West Virginia, 1913; Photo: McClain Printing Company

Beard's Creek is another of the local waterways named after an early, prominent landowner.  In this case, it was Richard Beard.  Mr. Beard received Anne Arundel County's first land grant in 1650 and occupied a homestead on the creek called "Beard's Habitation" after moving up from Virginia with his brother-in-law, William Burgess (for whom Burgess Creek (now Glebe Creek) was named). 

At the time, Mr. Beard constructed a mill on the creek, an undertaking that would become increasingly popular over the coming century as hydropower was one of the few free sources of energy for grinding grains or running machinery.

 "Upstream from London Town, however, nearly every major tributary of South River had a mill. During the 1730's boom, no less than eleven mills or mill dams dotted the parish map. On Flat Creek alone there were four mills including two water mills, one fulling mill for cleaning wool, and one grist mill. Nearby, probably on Beard's Creek, Richard Moore erected both a water mill and bolting mill..." - C. Earle (1975). Evolution of a Tidewater Settlement System: All Hallow's Parish, Maryland, 1650-1783.

 Richard Beard Jr., the son of the namesake of Beard's Creek, was a surveyor and is credited with having made the first map of Annapolis, in the late 1600s.

Out on a site visit to check out an eroding ravine, we turned up a pretty cool set of fossils embedded in a piece of limonite (or bog iron).  Turns out a poorly designed and executed stormwater management pond routinely blows out the downstream channel with such force that it has scoured down to "bedrock" (this material is the closest we come to such a thing in the Coastal Plain) unearthing these former ocean dwellers.

I'm definitely not a fossil expert, but from what I can find on the web, the six impressions in this stone all appear to be from some sort of gastropod (i.e. snail).  Even though this site was 50 to 60 feet up from tidewater, this kind of find is a good reminder that at one time, this whole area was underwater, part of the primeval Atlantic Ocean.

Believe it or not, figuring out the origin of the Almshouse Creek name is one of the easier searches on the river once you know what an almshouse is and where it stood (and stands).  In the days before welfare programs and broader government assistance, the almshouse (or in more common parlance, the "poor house") was a place that destitute people (often the elderly or widows) could live, provided for by the charity of others.

 So where was Anne Arundel County's almshouse?  In 1823 it was moved from Strawberry Hill Farm near Annapolis:

The trustees (of the poor) then purchased the commodious house and ten acres on the south side of South River now in use as the Alms House from Mr. Larimore. This is on the site of a town projected in the early history of the province under the ambitious title of New London.  (from The Ancient City: A History of Annapolis in MD, 1649-1887 - Elihu Samuel Riley (1887))

It turns out, the site described above is what we now refer to as the London Town Public House and Gardens (see below).

 Amazingly, according to Greg Stiverson, former Executive Director of Historic London Town and Gardens, the structure was used as Anne Arundel County's almshouse until 1965.  The use as an almshouse no longer remains, but the creek still retains the name which hearkens back to the area's rich history.

Almshouse Creek was formerly known as Shipping Creek, presumably because London Town was an important landing for tobacco ships in the mid-18th century.

There are a lot of interesting names around the river, and many interesting stories behind each of those names.  This will be the first of several posts dedicated to unearthing some of the river's history by better understanding its stories.

 In the mid 17th century, Edward Selby was given a land grant of 490 acres in the area of the south side of the South River that then came to be known as "Selby's Marsh."  The area is currently very low-lying and it isn't difficult at all to believe that it was, at one time, comprised largely of swamp and tidal and non-tidal wetlands.  It is reported by some of the locals that the developers of Selby on the Bay actually trucked sand in during the early 20th century from elsewhere to create the expansive beach that serves the community today.

One of the great things that I discovered doing historical research on the watershed was that in the early 1950s each of the county's public elementary schools undertook a "Discovering Our School Community" report, where they went through reference  materials, sought out the oral histories of old timers in the community, and pulled it all together in reports that are available at the public libraries.  One of the revealing passages I came across from the kids at Mayo Elementary, the school that served this area in the 1950s, was this one: "The seafood industry, which once played a big part in the economy of Mayo, is on the decline.  There is, at present, a scarcity of fish, oysters, and crabs; Therefore, people are unable to earn a living from this work alone."

 This was when the County's population was less than 150,000 (it's currently about 500,000) and most of the people living south of the South River were involved in agriculture.  Often times, we look back to the mid-1950s as a considerably better time for the South River and the Bay.  Accounts like these show that by that period both we were well on their way to decline. 

Additional history can be found here.

The Magothy has Dobbins and Little Dobbins, the Severn has St. Helena's, and the Rhode has Big and Flat Islands.    The South has very few true islands of note and most of those called out as "islands" (e.g., Turkey Point Island, Little Island, and Smith's Island) are connected to the mainland via causeways, ala Gibson "Island".   Until relatively recently though, there was a true island located north of the Riva bridge called "Goose Island." Below, it is called out on a 1993 USGS map of the river, near the mouth of Flat Creek, just off the shore of Glen Isle (perhaps it was the inspiration for the name of the community).  

Presumably, as a result of wave action, subsidence, and sea level rise,  Goose Island was lost to the tides at some point in the past couple of decades.   Oddly enough, though now beneath the briny depths, its phantom is still called out on the google earth aerial maps, with its silhouette clearly visible.

 To this day a shoal - a shallow, sand bar - still remains where the island once stood, a popular place for party goers and water lovers to gather on a hot, summer day.