Germantown: A Very Brief History

This being our inaugural issue of the Germantown Patch, one might wonder about the beginnings of Germantown itself.  Where did we as a community come from?  I did some digging and extracted this brief sketch of the roots and growth of our town.  The more I've read of the rich body of material on the subject, the more I've realized just how minimal this account will be.

The earliest human residents of what would become Montgomery County were the native tribes of "paleo-Indians," who hunted buffalo, mammoths, mastodons, and other game, supplementing their diet with wild plants.  They were nomads, following the migrations of the herds, and having no permanent settlements.  By the time of the arrival of the first Europeans in the early 1600s, these tribes had developed agriculture and given up their nomadic ways in favor of permanent villages. 

Within the Montgomery County area, the largest tribe was the Piscataway, whose domain extended from the Monocacy River down into southern Maryland.  More warlike tribes lived to the north (the Seneca) and to the east along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and Maryland (the Susquehannocks).  A major Piscataway village thrived at the mouth of Rock Creek.  At the mouth of the Monocacy River, another village served as a great trading center for many tribes. Three main roads were used by the Indians to move between these two villages, and these roads would survive to become present-day River Road, Rt. 355, and Clopper Road (see image of Indian trails).  The Susquehannock Indians would come down Ridge Road, southwest from Pennsylvania, to trade here.

The area that would become Germantown was mostly uninhabited, being at some distance from the Potomac and other large bodies of water.  But this area was a valued hunting ground, occasionally sparking fights between the tribes.  The Piscataway sought to align themselves with the Europeans in hopes of counterbalancing their competitors, and so were largely peaceful toward the settlers, sharing their survival skills and seeds for native crops suited to the New World, such as maize, squash, and alas, tobacco. 

Their strategy succeeded to a point:  Lord Baltimore drove the Susquehannocks out of Maryland, but then he turned his attention to doing the same with the Piscataway.  Those who did not leave either retreated to a small area in southern Maryland, or died of the diseases, such as measles and small pox, that were brought by the settlers.

As the Indians were declining in Maryland, more Europeans arrived.  The first settler in what would become Germantown was George Buchanan, probably an Englishman or Scot. In 1732, he received a large parcel of land from Lord Baltimore that he named "Chestnut Ridge," located in an area that today includes the MARC Train station. This land was eventually subdivided through sale and inheritance of smaller lots. 

The first major influx of Germans into our area occurred from 1835-1850.  Those not arriving directly from Germany were typically from Pennsylvania, which had a large German immigrant population. Among the first Germans to settle in our area was Jacob Snyder, who brought his family from Germany in 1832.  Initially they lived in the Middlebrook area, and Jacob worked as a tree trimmer in the local orchards.  One day, while traveling to Darnestown through thick forest and swampy terrain, he emerged at Clopper Road (then McCubbin Road) and beheld a beautiful, sunny hill. 

He fell in love with the spot and decided to purchase the land and build his home there.  His sons helped to build the road between Neelsville and Darnestown that we now know as Rt. 118.  (Back then, the stretch between Clopper Road and the railroad ran along what is today Liberty Mill Road. It was moved in the past 10 years or so.) Shops, many owned by Germans, soon appeared at the intersection of Rt. 118 and Clopper Road, and Germantown was born.

Other "first German families" to arrive in Germantown include the Richters, Metz's, and Stangs, some of which are memorialized in the names of streets built on or near their farms.

In 1873, the B&O Railroad came to Germantown and a station was built near Mateny Hill Road, where a more recent station sits today, about 1 ½ miles from the Rt. 118-Clopper Road epicenter of Germantown (see image of Germantown Town Center old and new).  As a result, Germantown businesses moved to that location, leaving behind the former town center that became known as "Old Germantown."

The railroad allowed Germantown to obtain goods and services from far away and was crucial to getting the town on a fast track to further development and modernization.  The nearby village of Hyattstown was skirted by the railroad and today remains largely unchanged since it was first laid out 200 years ago (to the delight of many).

Clopper Road would have one more claim to fame a century later.  As Bill Danoff and his wife Taffy Nivert were driving down that picturesque road in the early 1970s (Taffy driving), Bill was moved to strum some chords on his guitar and sing the simple phrase, "Country roads, country roads, country roads…."  This was the nucleus of a song that he, Taffy, and John Denver later co-wrote, and that would become loved the world over, "Country Roads."

Acknowledgements:  Susan Soderberg's "A History of Germantown," was extremely helpful.  Other sources include:

Catoctin Mountain Park, A Historic Resource Study (Edmund F. Wehrle), http://www.nps.gov/archive/cato/hrs/hrs.htm .

 Glory, Death, And Transfiguration:  The Susquehannock Indians In The Seventeenth Century (Francis Jennings), http://susquehannock.org/html/neighbours.html .

Germantown's History -- A Brief Overview (Germantown Historical Society), http://www.germantownmdhistory.org/?q=node/2 .

 Bill Danoff, personal communication.

 This column is dedicated to my 10-grade English teacher, Patricia A. Connors, whose patience, creativity, and sunny nature brought life to the class everyday.