13
ut it was grain, more than any other single bulk commodity,
which built the Port of Baltimore. And it was along the
Patapsco River Valley where Marylanders first mastered the indus-
trial processes which transformed raw materials into exportable
quantities of quality product — finished flour, that most basic of
all foodstuffs.
The Patapsco, primarily perceived as a shipping channel to
transport tobacco, instead emerged as a river of com-
merce, an industrial incubator for a host of nascent
business operations which also seeded the birth of
numerous mill towns, providing the Port with both
investment capital and human capital — a founda-
tion to sustain the era of heady, high-growth days
awaiting Maryland.
The influx of Pennsylvania-German farmers
into Maryland during the mid-1700s brought the
three Ellicott brothers into the Patapsco Valley,
where they developed the largest grain mill in
Colonial America, the very model of industrial
success others would emulate.
Word of their success attracted the attention of Oliver Evans,
who only dropped by to interest the Ellicotts in steam power, but
stuck around to become a maestro of Maryland’s grain industry,
encapsulating his state-of-the-art milling technology in the 1795
publication of “Young Mill-Wright and Miller’s Guide,” which went
through 14 editions.
For the Ellicotts, one thing led to another. With the profits from
their flour operations, they built copper and woolen mills, which
in turn spun off a network of stores, shops, schools and churches,
and jobs for clerks, millers, coopers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights and
millwrights — the makings of Ellicott City. Other mill towns and
River of
C
ommerce
Facing page: The sun sets
behind the Locust Point grain
pier, the last working facility
of its kind at the Port.
Above: Modern grain elevators
at Canton evolved from early
milling technology, such as
the sketch at far left, by
Oliver Evans.
Left: Andrew Ellicott helped
develop what was once North
America’s largest grain mill.
