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Moving - Colesville, Maryland

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To inform you Colesville, MD, here is a brief history you can read that will give you a glimpse into the past of the community.

A Brief History of Colesville, Maryland

The earliest landowners in what was to become Colesville were speculators, willing to sell their holdings for whatever purpose would bring them the greatest return. Their primary interest in the natural resources was timber, grasslands and water. They paid particular attention to the availability of streams for navigation because roads were nonexistent. They also had water power in mind for the construction of mills. However, they did not directly change the environment. This was left to the settlers, who came in to establish farms.

The Lazenbys - Frontier Farmers

Robert Lazenby, thought to be a son of Henry Lazenby, High Sheriff of Anne Arundel County, was the person from whom most of the Lazenbys in the United States descended. He purchased 217 acres of Wolfs Den from William Beall in 1723. Because he was living on the land at the time, he and his family were the first known settlers in the area of today's Colesville.

Lazenby's property occupied the southern portion of Wolfs Den. It straddled today's Bonifant Road and lay between the Northwest Branch and one or more of its tributaries. Much of the land near the river and streams would have been marshy and/or permanently covered with brush and trees, making the land available for crops relatively small. However, the at-hand opportunity to hunt, trap and fish probably offset the disadvantage of small crop acreage. Whether Lazenby leased the other 100 acres of Wolfs Den from the owner, Ignatius Perry, is not known.

Robert and his wife, Ann, had two sons: Robert, born about 1719, and Henry, born in 1721. We don't know exactly how the Lazenbys lived. However, like other frontier families, their life would have been a sharp contrast to that of the landed gentry.

Their first need was water. A bubbling spring provided drinking water. The nearby headwaters of Northwest Branch provided water for other needs, including, in those days, navigation by canoe, dugout or raft.

Except for grass meadows that may have been close to the river, timber covered their property. The Lazenbys' house was of wood, probably a one room cabin with a loft above. Logs of yellow poplar (tulip poplar) were smoothed on one side and made into puncheon floors. Logs also were split and matched pairs laid horizontally to form flat inside walls. Sometimes logs were sawed with one edge wider than the other to form clapboards that could be overlapped as siding for a cabin. The green boards often shrank as they dried and required constant chinking with clay. White oak shingles, split-rail fences, fuel for their fires, furniture and many cooking utensils were hand hewn from native timber.

Chimneys sometimes were made of clay over sticks and poles. More permanent structures were of stone, often found far from the house, and hauled on sleds by oxen.

A woodshed, nearby or attached to the cabin, stored hickory, maple and oak. Pine wood and pine knots made good kindling. Poplar and chestnut were seldom used for fire because the former gave off little heat and the latter "popped" so much it threatened to set a cabin aflame.

The early frontier family had a log building to store and preserve meat. When hogs, deer, or bears were butchered in the fall, the meat was laid on a shelf at the far end of the building. It was cured by covering each layer with a thick coat of imported salt. To protect it from "varmints" and keep it dry, the cured meat was hung from poles that spanned the interior of the meat house.

An apple house, made with thick rock walls, had two floors: The upper floor stored soft, summer apples and other fruit from the orchard. The lower floor held winter apples. Sometimes sliced apples were dried on homemade scaffolds and then tied in clean clothes and hung from the rafters.

The family had a log crib to store their most important food crop - Indian maize or corn. Corn was not only a feed for livestock but also the chief item in the family's diet. It was eaten as roasting' ears and ground into corn meal and served as hoe cakes, corn bread, and corn meal mush.

A picket fence surrounded the garden to keep deer and other animals from foraging on the beans, cabbage, lettuce, onions, peppers, cucumbers, beets, turnips, potatoes and pumpkins. Even that protection did not always keep out all rabbits, squirrels, woodchucks, and crows. A farmyard dog dealt with those pests.

Other buildings on the farmstead included a log springhouse that protected the drinking water supply. Evaporation from the running water cooled the air to keep melons, sweet milk and crocks of buttermilk for days. Still other buildings included a blacksmith shop and sheds for livestock and for drying tobacco, the most important cash crop. Also a barn with stalls and hay mow to house oxen, horses and cattle would be added. Essential to the food supply was a dairy cow for milk and butter.

Women and children not only carried out chores around the house, but also tended the garden and milked the cows. They also worked in the fields with the men. When farm activity increased, a single-room log cabin or two with dirt floors and crude furnishings would be built to house one or more families of slaves or indentured servants.

ICC MC 414146
DOT 981371