Quick Trip to Ellicott City #4 - Howard County Jail (tie to Underground Railroad)

The old Howard County Jail

This is the fourth and final blog about our short walk through the streets of Historic Ellicott

Rob and Tom mask wearing in Ellicott City

City on July 5. We discovered a building associated with the Underground Railroad that we had never seen before. It was on one of the hills overlooking the city. It appeared that it received a brand new historic marker (which is why we didn't remember it).  It was the 1851 Howard County Jail.

ABOUT THE HISTORY AND TIES TO UNDERGROUND RAILROAD -
The Howard County Jail, located at 1 Emory Street, in the Historic District of Ellicott City, Maryland, was the location where freedom seekers and those charged with encouraging enslaved persons to run away or rise up against their masters or similar charges during the age of enslavement were held from January 1852 through the end of slavery in Maryland on November 1, 1864. 

The Maryland General Assembly passed an act authorizing the Board of Commissioners of Howard District to levy taxes to create the jail. The jail was accepted for use on December 16, 1851. Among the prisoners held were runaways like Augusta Spriggs and Richard Martin, held as a fugitive without a pass.

INSIDE ALMOST TOTALLY RENOVATED- According to the Maryland Historical Trust, "The interior has been completely altered, with concrete floors, new metal cells, and a commercial kitchen in the ell. The only historic feature found was a barred door between the ell and the main block on the basement level."

back side of the Old Howard County Jail (1851) 

ABOUT THE ARCHITECTURE - The Howard County Jail is a two-story, five-bay by three-bay structure of a coarse granite ashlar that faces southeast and has a gable roof with slate and a southwest-northeast ridge. There is an ell on the rear that is two stories tall, with a raised basement that is banked into the hill on the southwest, and is three bays by two bays. It is of rubble stone on the basement and first story and frame with German siding on the second story. It has a gable roof with asphalt shingles and a northwest-southeast ridge. The site is a hill that has been excavated, with two-story tall rubble stone retaining walls built to the northwest, southwest, and northeast of the jail. The main block of the jail, on the southeast elevation, has a pavilion front in the center bay that has finely-cut
quoins and a cross gable roof. The first story has double doors of iron bars. The second story of the center bay has a large, round-arched window with a finely-cut, plain granite surround and iron bars.

STONE CITING DATE AND ARCHITECT - Above the 2nd story window is a marble date stone with "John Laing C. E., Architect; James Rowles, Robert Wilson, Builders; 1878."