Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland Genealogy

County Courthouse
Ellicott City is the County Seat of Howard County Maryland. See Howard County, Maryland for information on the Courthouse and county records.

Parent County, Anne Arundel County
In 1839 Howard County was designated the Howard District. It was named in honor of John Eager Howard, Maryland's fifth governor. In 1851 Howard County became the 21st of Maryland’s 23 counties.

History
In 1772 John, Andrew, and Joseph Ellicott of Quakers from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, chose the beautiful wilderness area upstream from Elk Ridge Landing on the Patapsco River to establish a flour mill. The brothers helped revolutionize farming in this area by persuading farmers to plant wheat instead of tobacco, and by introducing fertilizer to revitalize the depleted soil. Charles Carroll was one of the first and the most influential landowners to switch from tobacco to wheat. It was to his estate that the Ellicott brothers built the first part of a road that was later to become the National Road, America’s first interstate highway.

The Ellicotts made significant contributions to the area and the era. They helped create Ellicott’s Mills (now Ellicott City), one of the greatest milling and manufacturing towns in the east at that time. They built roads, bridges, and a wharf in Baltimore, introduced the wagon brake, erected iron works, a furnace, rolling mills, schools, a meeting house, shops, and beautiful granite houses. (Information courtesy Howard County Tourism)