Hamilton

This is the ultimate old school Hamilton/Gardenville/Parkville profile!!It belongs to all of us, just like the neighborhoods.Post pics, stories, flyers, and anything else that will take us back in the day.This is open to all Hamville generations, but I come from the Hot Dog City generation. If you don't know what the hell that means, post a question and those who know can post the answer.Girlfriends, boyfriends, jobs, fuck it. We are doing wonderful things all over the world!! What are you doing???A History of Our Hood (fo' dat ass)The area that encompasses present-day Waltherson was inhabited mostly by family farms until the early twentieth-century. In those horse-and-buggy days, it was better known for four settlements along two turnpikes that go back to colonial times: Lauraville and Hamilton along the Harford Road, and Gardenville and Raspeburg along the Belair Road. These four villages served old farming families and got their names when their post offices were formed. There were tollgates along the turnpikes, with Amile houses or taverns placed strategically along the way. It wasn't until the streetcar lines came out from the city into what was then still Baltimore County that the area began to be developed into a suburban neighborhood of Baltimore City.Lauraville, the oldest of the four settlements, became an official village soon after the civil war with the establishment of its post office, located in William Emmel's confectionary store near Harford Road and Rosekemp Avenue. Residents agreed to name the village after the daughter of John Keene, a main proponent for establishing a post office and a local property owner who ran a lumberyard and mill where the Pep Boys now stands. The western part of today's Waltherson was long considered part of North Lauraville.The first log schoolhouse in Baltimore County stood on land that always seems to have been called Echodale, somewhere near present-day Echodale and Twin Oaks Avenues. This land was part of a larger estate owned by James Read known as Egypt that ran from present-day Hamilton Avenue to the Herring Run. Stories were told that the children would be let out of classes to play with Indians who would stop to drink out of an old well in front of the school.According to an old 1877 map, the Biddison and Burgan families owned the biggest tracts of land in what was to become Waltherson. The Burgans were granted their lands by Lord Baltimore, and Abraham Biddison married into the Burgan family in the 1790's. These two families, the Gontrums, and others have left traces of their names and times behind in the small family cemeteries that still exist in the area. Waltherson is home to two historic cemeteries: the Burgan Cemetery on Belair Road, and the Biddison Cemetery at the intersection of Forrester and Oaklyn Avenues. The oldest headstone you can read in the Biddison cemetery is from 1818.Gardenville, on the eastern side of Waltherson, began to form near the Jerusalem Church around the time of the Civil War, and got its name at the suggestion of Judge John Gontrum. He and other citizens founded Garden Lodge No. 114, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, near this church, and the growing settlement soon got its own post office, located in the general store owned by the Judge's son-in-law. The area was home to a number of families who left the Gatch Methodist Church to form the Andrew Chapel, the first Southern Methodist church in Maryland. It was originally built beside the home of Dr. George Corse on Southern Avenue before it ended up at its current location on Frankford Avenue (known back then as Franklin Lane), on land donated by John S. Biddison, Abraham Biddisons' son. The Andrew Chapel is now the Spread the Word Cathedral.Raspeburg, Waltherson's third village, was originally located at the intersection of Hamilton Avenue and Belair Road. It got its name when the people of the settlement requested their own post office branch, which was first located in Henry Raspes=s general store. A 1913 map of the area shows a development going halfway up the hill along Belair Road between Hamilton and Frankford Avenues called Raspeburg Heights.When Raspeburg got its post office, Hamilton Avenue was still known as Tames Lane. It was named for John and Charles Tames, who owned a grocery store at the intersection of the lane and the Harford Road. The settlement forming around their store most likely would have been called Tamesville, but a retired sea captain named Hamilton Caughey donated land on the southern border of his property, Fair Oaks Farm, for the construction of a short cut to Towson from Harford to Hillen Road. In return, he required that the road be named after him, and soon the entire stretch of road, including Tames Lane, became Hamilton Avenue.The Number 19 streetcar line was extended in 1889 from the City to Hamilton Avenue, and on Belair Road, the Number 15 line was extended from Gay Street and North Avenue to Overlea. Soon city people, coming out for picnics in the country, began to be interested in buying homes of their own. The demand for real estate began along both turnpikes, with family farms beginning to be divided into housing lots. The little business area centered around Hamilton Avenue grew to the point where it earned its own post office in 1900, and the postmaster, S. Davies Warfield, named the village after its major avenue.Lauraville Hall, across Hamilton Avenue from the Tames brother’s store, became Hamilton Hall. The owner, Jerry Norwood, ran a harness business, but he also rented out other spaces along the 40-foot porches that ran along both Harford Road and Hamilton Avenue. It was home to a barbershop, a Chinese laundry, Hamilton's first telephone exchange, and Frank Purdum's Drug Store and Fountain, where the post office opened in the rear. The second floor was a social hall that served as a meeting room. It held dances, bazaars, oyster suppers, as was the spot where many of Hamilton's churches held their first meetings. Bradley Purdum, head of the Hamilton Real Estate Company and the Hamilton Businessman's Association, tore this building down and erected the Hamilton Bank, now the site of the First Union Bank.Civic-minded expansion was the byword for Hamilton in the early 20th century. The area had bragging rights to the first ambulance, the first motorized fire truck south of Boston, and the first improvement association, which was led for decades by William McCallister, the unofficial mayor of Hamilton.Harford Road's first tollgate was eliminated in 1906, and the road was paved in 1910, then widened in 1914. Baltimore City annexed the area in 1918, and in 1926 the city began the huge task of straightening and widening Harford Road into a modern boulevard. Walther Boulevard was planned at the same time and was first built only up to Southern Avenue. The rest of Walther was not completed until well after World War II, and it took years for Echodale Avenue to assume its present form between Harford and Belair Roads.Development of our area was slow but steady through the 1960's. One of our older residents, George F. Walter, who grew up on Holder Avenue, recalls finding Indian arrowheads when he was a boy, and that it was just woods behind Carter Avenue. Gibbons Avenue, named after Cardinal Gibbons, used to be called Bushman after the family that owned the estate shown on both the 1877 and 1913 maps.Lark Pugh has donated a photocopy of a Waltherson ad, circa 1940, for a furnished exhibition home at 5207 Walther Blvd., F.H.A. financed for $5650. Katherine Brown has contributed a plat from 1960 that shows the lots being developed for the area between Holder and Crosswood Avenues and Southern Avenue and Edgar Terrace, as well as a wealth of material on the Waltherson Improvement Association from her tenure as president in the 1980's.Two of our most distinctive landmarks, the Waltherson sign and the glassphalt paving, came about through the efforts of the Waltherson Improvement Association in the 1980's.The history of Waltherson began as the history of the little villages that sprung up near each of its corners, but our history is so much more. ( The above info © Waltherson Improvement Association of Baltimore City, Inc., 2006, www.waltherson.org)