History of Frederick

of Carroll Creek. Within three years, the settlement had become the county seat of Frederick County. It is uncertain which Frederick the town was named for, but the likeliest candidates are Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (one of the proprietors of Maryland), Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, and Frederick "The Great" of Prussia. Most sources favor Calvert.

The settlers founded a German Reformed Church (today the church is known as Evangelical Reformed Church, UCC), which also served as a public school, in keeping with the German Reformed tradition of sponsoring universal public education. Many Pennsylvania Dutch (ethnic Germans) settled in Frederick as they migrated westward in the late 18th century. Frederick was a stop along the German migration route that led down through the "Great Valley" (Shenandoah Valley, etc.) to the western Piedmont in North Carolina.

The city served as a major crossroads from colonial times. British General Edward Braddock marched west in 1755 through Frederick on the way to the fateful ambush near Fort Duquesne (later Fort Pitt, then Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. To control this crossroads during the American Revolution, the British garrisoned a German Hessian regiment in the town during the war (the stone, L-shaped "Hessian Barracks" still stand). Afterward, with no way to return to their homeland, the men of the Hessian regiment stayed on and married into the families of the town, strengthening its German identity.

When President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the building of the National Road from Baltimore to St. Louis (eventually built to Vandalia, the territorial capital of Illinois by the 1850s), the "National Pike" ran through Frederick along Patrick Street. (This later became US Route 40.)

previous12345...89next