Talk:Monocacy, Maryland

There was no original "town" of Monocacy!

In the historical tome of "Pioneers of Old Monocacy: The Early Settlement of Frederick County, Maryland, 1721-1743", by Grace L. Tracey and John P. Dern (pub. in 1987 by Genealogical Printing Co. for the Historical Society of Carroll County[Maryland], which documents the first couple of decades of settlement in western Maryland, the authors definitively conclude that the claims of an original settlement village named Monocacy, founded by Germans in the 1720s, are unsubstantiated.

Here is the page in the publication (p. 45) that directly discusses and refutes this claim: "Before we come to the story of the actual settlers, the people who lived on the land at Monocacy, it might be well to sweep away the misconception that the term "Monocacy" once upon a time referred to a village, a ghost village which somehow existed and then disappeared without a trace. The misconception no doubt arose from modern minds unaccustomed to distinguishing between place names which refer to a given area and those naming a specific town or village. One must visualize that before any village could evolve from so large a region previously inhabited only by Indians, families had to clear the forest wilderness and begin earning their livelihood through farming on their separate parcels of ground. They lived nearby one another, of course, but distant enough to allow for the acreage required for each one's self-sufficiency. Thus Monocacy represented a rather extensive area of beginning agriculture, not an isolated urban village in the midst of a wide wilderness.

"The records show this to be true[, as documented in these earliest instances of "Monocacy" being mentioned in the provincial land records]: John Hanse Steeleman, a trader "of Menawkos in Prince George's County" in 1724 located his trading post midway between today's New Windsor and Union Bridge in Carroll County. In 1726 the "Monoquesey" Quaker Meeting began at the home of Josiah Ballenger. He lived near present-day Buckeystown. John Tredane "of Monachasie,"...was living in 1732 where today's Union Bridge in Carroll County now stands. Joseph Hedges, Sr. of "Manaquicy" in 1732 took up land near Biggs Ford in the neighborhood of present-day Hanson ville. His sons initially lived near Yellow Springs. Susanna Beatty settled near today's Mt. Pleasant but held land as far west as Ceresville. In her will she identified that locale as "Monocksey." Cornelius Carmack lived near present-day Libertywtown and in his 1746 will stated that we was of "Monocksey." Peter Hoffman from "Tasker's Chance" [a large land grant surveyed & patented on the west side of the Monocacy River in 1725] near today's city of Frederick wrote his 1748 will at "Manakesen." Joseph Hedges, Jr., who was located on leased "Monocacy Manor" land [a large land grant surveyed & patented on the east side of the Monocacy River in 1724], declared in his 1753 will that he was "of Monocacy." Frederick Unselt lived on "Beauty" west of Fredericktown and wrote his will in 1755 from "Monksey." Arnold Livers' farm, in the forks of Owen's Creek near present-day Thurmont, was described to the Maryland Assembly as being "at Monococy." And perhaps most significant was the agreement of March 28, 1746 between the Reverend Joseph Jennings, Clerk rector of "All Saints Parish in Monocksesy," with Robert Debutts and Kennedy Farrell.

"Thus in the early history of Frederick County, the Monocacy River's entire watershed area was known as MONOCACY. It was not a single German village as claimed by Pastor George A. Whitmore, Edward T. Schultz, Daniel W. Nead, Folger McKinsey, James A. Boyd and others. Most assuredly it was not a forerunner of Creagerstown, where a small monument on the Craegerstown-Woodsboro Road about three-quarters of mile from the town center, attests to the misconception. Nor was it at a location nearby at the mouth of Hunting Creek. Both are still too often claimed as sites of the Germans' "Old Monocacy Log Church in the village" of the same name...

"The Creagerstown claims can be effectively refuted by reference to the land records. These show that until after 1759 only three persons, none of them German and none a Lutheran, owned land between today's Creagerstown and the Monocacy River."

The book provides substantial references for the above refutation, not just on this one page, but throughout the book where the authors trace and chronologically document the land records for the Monocacy area. The earliest land grants were warranted in 1723, along the Potomac River, by Charles Carroll, Attorney General for the Proprietor (Lord Baltimore); further grants were warranted in the area around Fredericksburg in 1724 by other notable figures of the Lord Baltimore's administration. Bumblemouse (talk) 21:27, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

The authors elsewhere note that "traders" (which this article asserts were the earliest "settlers" in this mythical village) did not typically establish permanent settlements - they would typically set up a "base camp" for a few months at a time from which they could trade with the indians; and, when concluded, they would tear down their camp and head back east to sell their goods and replenish their supplies. The base camps would often move from year to year, depending on where they found the indians.

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The only source which I could verify online, source 5., Maryland Historical Magazine. Baltimore, MD: Maryland Historical Society. 1920. (this is an article about The Old Indian Road of the Monocacy Valley), actually refutes the claim of the village having existed! (Interesting to find the phrase "monocacy md never existed." at the end of the reference.) The source is available on-line; the reference to the village of Monocacy is mentioned in a footnote on p. 366, where it is noted as unsubstantiated hearsay: "In February 1721/2, two Conestoga [PA] traders murdered an indian "at Monocasey." (Archives, xxv, pp. 379, 380, 383.) In 1732, Charles Carroll, who the same year had taken up a tract called "Carroll's Delight" on Tom's Creek of Monocacy River, in what was then supposed to be Maryland, complained to the Pennsylvania authorities that, while he was at the house of John Hendricks on [the] Susquehanna River, several persons came there with a warrant to arrest "John Tredane of the Province of Maryland resident at Monochasie." ("History of York County," by John Gibson, p. 49.) It is extremely doubtful whether the foregoing references to "Monocacy" refer to one definite place, or if "Monocacy" meant vaguely any place in the Monocacy Valley. Williams, in his "History and Biographical Record of Frederick County, Maryland," and Schultz, in his "First Settlement of Germans in Maryland," both assert that there was an early settlement of Germans called "Monocacy," and that it stood on or near the site of Craegerstown; but although a town of this name appears to have existed in that place, there is no reason to suppose that it was the same as the "Monocacy" of 1721-1732. The earlier Monocacy, if such a place really did exist, was probably a small settlement of Indians and traders of Maryland and Pennsylvania."In the year 1725 -- the date of the foregoing reference to the Conestoga Path -- the valley of the Monocacy and its affluents was still, in all likelihood, an almost unbroken wilderness into which white settlers were just beginning to penetrate."

I also have to note that the photo of a log building included in the article is not a photo of the claimed original village "log church", but is included as a example of what the original log church "may have looked similar to this early structure in Pennsylvania"! WTF?!? No idea how the article authors would know that. Bumblemouse (talk) 21:59, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I looked up the edit in which that reference that includes the "monocacy never existed" quote was first added. It looks like that bit ended up there because the link to the Google Books included a search query to highlight those words. My guess is that Higher Ground was looking for evidence that the town didn't exist? I'm not sure. Another of the other references that I had found to the town was removed at the same time, likely for readability and clarity sake. I'll include it here again in case it is useful to you. I'm going to go ahead and remove the quote from the Maryland Historical Magazine references as it was added in error by a bot that misunderstood the link. All of the physical print sources can be found in the archives of the Frederick County Historical Society located in Frederick, Maryland or in the Maryland Room in the C. Burr Artz Library in Frederick, Maryland. Or at least they could be a decade ago when I read them.

If there are other sources that say the town doesn't exist, I think that is wonderful and it should be added to the article. I don't think a deletion is appropriate here as there are clearly notable sources discussing the topic. Zell Faze (talk) 05:11, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

References