The Dawn of the Industrial Age in Germantown

The completion of the Metropolitan Branch of the B & O Railroad through Montgomery County in 1873 changed the county in many ways. Many farmers began growing apples and peaches and raising dairy cows because they could get these perishable goods to market quickly. Railroad suburbs appeared downcounty. Railroad towns were created at Boyds and Dickerson. And Germantown changed from a crossroads village to a railroad town when most of its businesses moved one mile to the east to be next to the railroad.

The coming of the railroad also meant the end of the water-powered mills, since steam-powered mills could be built anywhere. Most mills were built next to railroad tracks to more easily move flour and cornmeal to markets in Washington. 

In 1895 the enterprising Bowman brothers, William, Charles and Eldridge purchased an 800 square-foot lot next to the tracks and adjacent to the Germantown railroad station. There they built a large steam operated flour mill. Local farmers immediately flocked to the new mill, abandoning the old water mills without a backward glance, urged on by the New Populist era and the idea of the importance of progress.

As houses were built along Germantown-Neelsville Road (now Liberty Mill Road) and Blunt Avenue, many opted to have the steam from the mill piped to their houses in underground terra-cotta pipelines, thus gaining an unexpected benefit of living near a factory.

The mill prospered and in 1911 expanded its tract the main road and bridge over the tracks. Eldridge sold his part of the operation to his brothers in 1899, so Charles and William Bowman owned the Bowman Brothers Mill when it burned to the ground in 1914.

The brothers rebuilt the mill but sold it in 1918 to the newly formed Liberty Milling Company. This new corporation was created by Stanley Kline of Boonesboro, Md., William Greeting of Keedysville, Md., Augustus Selby of Shepardstown, W.Va., and Herbert Kline of Mt. Airy, Md.

Augustus Riggs Selby had been in the milling business for 15 years, having started at his father’s Howard County , Md., mill at age 16. He was appointed to be general manager of the new mill, a position he retained until his death by heart failure in 1963.

The new mill was powered by a diesel engine until it was converted to electricity in 1950. It employed nine people full time, with extra seasonal help. The mill continued to expand and add new technologies. It was the first mill in the area to have racks to dry out grain harvested while still damp. It added molasses tanks in the basement to mix with the chaff to produce animal feed. In 1935 the company purchased an adjacent lot to the south and built a warehouse and store to sell its many products, which, according to a 1963 Damascus Courier article included Gold Leaf Flour, Silver Leaf Flour, Liberty Cake Flour, Liberty self-rising Corn Meal, Liberty Straight-Line Winter Wheat Flour, Liberty Pancake Flour, Liberty Self-rising Buckwheat Flour, Dairy Feeds, Horse Feeds, and Chicken Feeds. These products were sold all across the nation.

By the 1950s, it was the second largest mill in Maryland with eight 50-foot silos and a capacity of 24,00 pounds of flour a day and 9,000 pounds of cornmeal a week, bringing in a profit of more than $1 million a year. During World War II, it produced flour for the armed forces. It had its own railroad siding and its own boxcars.

Charles May, who worked for the mill from 1946 to 1968, said in an interview in the 1980s, “On the fourth floor there were sifters and the flour was sifted through silk cloths of various sizes for the different kinds of flour. There were special sieves for making cake flour.”

May worked his way up the ranks of mill workers to become the manager of the grain elevators.

“I started out in ’56,” he said. “I was a flour packer, putting the flour into bags of five, 10, 25 or 100 pounds. The government orders were usually 98 pounds. They did a lot of it that was shipped overseas. Those were packed in 50-pound bags. The bottom was sealed with wax. After the flour was in there and the bag was sewn up we would have to dip the other end in hot wax.”

The Liberty Milling Company was finally put out of business by the larger commercial mills, its income dwindling in the 1960s. It was managed by Samuel P. “Pete” Hersperger, son-in-law of Augustus Selby, until it was sold to the Carroll V. Grosse Company in 1967, but this company soon went bankrupt.

The mill burned in June 1972, and the still-standing cement silos were removed by the county in 1986 to make way for a train commuter parking lot. A historic marker erected by the Germantown Citizens Association stands at the edge of the parking lot. The Germantown Historical Society sells T-shirts sporting the colorful logos of the Liberty Silver Leaf Flour, and the Liberty Cornmeal.