The land on which Germantown was built was the homeland of the Piscataway, Manahoac, and Seneca Native Nations, about whom I will talk in a future blog post. By the mid-1730s, the Germantown area had been claimed by wealthy European migrants and was guarded by the Potomac Rangers. For much of the subsequent century, Germantown was just a patchwork of farms mostly to the west of Fredrick Road (Rt. 355) and (slightly later on) east of Clopper Road (Rt. 117, then called McCubbin Mill Road). Several small water mills along Little Seneca Creek and Great Seneca Creek provided the region with the ability to process wood for construction and different crops that would eventually go to market, likely in Georgetown.

Local farmers lived and worked on plots of land with creative names such as “Turkey Thicket” and “Pleasant Ridge.” They produced primarily wheat, corn, and tobacco — the latter of which was paid as taxes to the Lord Baltimore prior to the Revolution. Many of these farms were operated by small numbers of enslaved Africans (generally fewer than 20 per farm).

It wasn’t until the 1840s that a small town emerged in Germantown, almost by accident.

Sometime between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, a handful of small houses sprung up along Fredrick Road, becoming the communities of Neelsville and Steptown (now Middlebrook). In Neelsville, there was a Presbyterian Church that was served by a minister who also preached in Darnestown. Every Sunday in the 1840s, he would make the long journey from one church to the other. To ease his passage, the communities built him a road (Rt. 118) directly from Neelsville to Darnestown, intersecting several farms as well as connecting 355 to Clopper Road.

At the intersection of this new road and Clopper, a German immigrant named Jacob Snyder — who had been living in Steptown for 4 years and trimming trees on local farms — purchased a small plot of land for his own farm. In rapid succession, several other German families moved into the area and purchased land at his intersection, building stores along the new road. As a result, the community at the intersection became known as Germantown and the road, Germantown Road. Among these immigrants was George Atzerodt, the subject of my last post.

This is the foundation of the original Germantown, but the community has changed dramatically over the years:

When the B&O Railroad was constructed in the area in 1873, about a mile east of town center, the heart of the community moved east. The railroad also brought the industrial revolution to the area, although it retained its agricultural character. The town eventually came to encompass Neelsville and Middlebrook, as well as an expansive swath of land to the west of Clopper Road. I-270 echoed the Railroad by moving town center another mile to the east, fundamentally shifting the community’s identity, and creating the population boom that lasts until today. But these developments will be the subject of future posts.