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Destination Ancestor

Writer: makefamilyhistory7makefamilyhistory7
Jan 7, 20212 min read

Happy 2021 to all my readers.


Let’s start off this new year with a topic that I find fun; researching the history of a town where my ancestors lived when that town is a tourist destination!


I love it when extra information provided by the tourist office helps me recognize the old parts of town. A destination in the spotlight gets the attention of the historians and preservation societies. This sounds very promising for a family historian.


So, I’ve decided to search for tourist information on a small neighborhood just north and west of Baltimore city called Woodberry. I am looking to find information from the time my great grandparents, Thomas Levi Pearce and Lille Mae Waxter, who lived there from about the 1880s until the late 1930s. Woodberry is an old mill town which was recently dubbed a historic enclave. To get the historic destination category, a fair deal of research was needed… and a lot of it is online!


Let’s start with one document that must exist, the registration from the National Register of Historic Places.

  • From the architectural description, I learned that the road Thomas Levi and Lillie Mae lived on, Clipper Road, was the oldest in the town, “Clipper Road is the oldest street and curves along the railroad line at the south end of the district.”

  • It goes on to list the stone residences in which they lived, “"These 2'/2-story, 4-bay, side-gable duplexes have entries in the center bays and graduated window openings," and are made of semi-coursed gneiss stone. I researched further and discovered that the gneiss stone was quarried locally.



A reference from a newspaper article pointed to an organization called CHAP (Commission on Historic Architecture and Preservation) which lists the mills which were built by the time my great grandparents lived there:

  • Park Mill (1855)

  • Poole & Hunt Foundry (1870)

  • Meadow Mill (1877)

And, I discovered the date the school building was constructed, 1889. That means that their children and grandchildren attended this school.


Because Woodberry has gotten attention recently, tours were developed and historic markers erected. These tools orient me so much when I get to visit a destination. Tours and markers describe what I am seeing, help me date buildings and understand business activity of the era.


The preservation signs in Woodberry are complemented by the website which describes the mills, laborers and business in detail. Such a bonus for the planned in-person visit! The self-walking tour, provided online by Baltimore Industry Tours, really rounds out a visit when combined with the historic signs and fills a gap in knowledge; the mills produced cotton duck to provide sails for clipper ships.


I am surprised at how quickly I was able to turn back the hands of time and glimpse the Woodberry of my great grandparents because it has become a “destination”.





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