Well, I seem to be on a roll, sometimes averaging two years between posts. It is what it is.
The Covid19 pandemic is still with us but hopefully, with vaccinations, boosters and natural immunities, it will soon settle down and life can go back to some sort of normalcy. I am so grateful that my family has been spared any serious illness.
During these past few months, with lots of time and internet, I was hanging out on the genealogy websites, hunting for the elusive ancestral lands. A few years ago, I learned I was descended from the Randall family, the tavern owners who gave Randallstown its name. Not an incorporated town these days but it does have a bustling commercial area with shopping centers, churches and a post office. Maybe not too much different from those days in the late 17th century. And, I presently live less than five miles away.
My ancestor was Christopher Randall, who owned several properties in what at the time was Anne Arundel County but is now Baltimore and Howard counties in Maryland. Internet is so wonderful, giving you access to so many records, like land grants. Randall held a patent for a property called Stout Plantation. My (casual) quest the past two years was to find Stout. I wondered if it was at one time in my neighborhood.
Like a lot of quests, I found more about other family and lands along the way. Margaret, the sister of my ancestor Joanna Randall, married into the Thomas Browne family. The Browne farm is now the home of the Howard County Conservancy. One of the Randall properties, Good Fellowship, is now part of the farm. Great place to visit, easy hiking. I live about three miles away.
The Patapsco River appeared quite often in the boundary surveys of the old grants. Good Fellowship mentions the 'great falls' of the river. Anyone who has visited the McKeldin area of the Patapsco Valley State Park, has seen what is probably the only true rapids in the river. Was this the great falls? Well, my excitement waned when I learned that quite often falls in a river sometimes meant just rocks, not really rapids. The Stout search continued. I was so certain it was somewhere near home.
On occasion, I will travel to the Breadery, on Oella Avenue in Catonsville. They sell frozen brick oven pizza that is made next door and some local craft beer, wine too. Busy area here, walkers on the Trolley Trail often stop in for coffee and maybe a muffin. I always pass the entrance to the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and have never visited. So, after my last pizza run, I did a quick drive through, literally just a ten minute visit. Turning right after entering, there is an interpretative area, an old house and apparently some trails leading down to the river. The museum is on the left at the entrance and as I came down to make the turn, on a big rock was a plaque describing how the place became the Banneker farm, originally part of Stout, that at that time had passed out the Randall family. So, another longer stop, with a visit to the museum and a hike will be in the future, when winter lets go.
Stout found. And the craziest thing, just through the woods, you could likely walk to the old Phelps house on Nine Mile Hill, where my dad grew up.
