Fantastic YouTube Find: A Historical View of Main Street Westminster

To go along with the historical video montage, here are some highlights of Westminster's founding.

According to a History of Westminster written by former Westminser Mayor Kevin Dayhoff, William Winchester of England founded Westminster in 1764.

Winchester originally named the community "Winchester's Town," but in 1768 the town name was changed to Westminster because the mail was often accidentally delivered to the town of Winchester in Virginia, according to Dayhoff's article.

Winchester built Westminster so it would be one day's travel, 10 miles, between Reisterstown and Taneytown. This led to Westminster quickly establishing hotels, eating establishments and provisioning stores.

Although the origin of the immigrants may have changed, there is nothing new about Westminster having an immigrant population.

According to Dayhoff, Westminster's first settlers were predominately Germans and Scotch-Irish, coming here from southern Pennsylvania. The issue of immigrants coming from bordering colonies—Germans from the north, Scotch from the west and Irish from the south—was of grave concern.

Northern Carroll Countians primarily spoke German well into the mid-1800s; English was the language of southern Carroll Countians. Westminster remained at the confluence of these three main cultural influences, according to Dayhoff's article.

These historical highlights were taken from an article on the Westminster government website, written by Kevin Dayhoff.