The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1894-07-21
ASCENSION PARISH.
Historical Address by Hon. VIM. P.
Maulsby on tie Occasion of the
Semi Centennial Celebration of its
Organizations at Ascension Church.
Westminster, July II, 1894.

Carroll county was formed out of part,
of Frederick and Baltimore counties in
1897. At that time Westminster was 6
village with population of 400 or 500
On the main route of travel and trans
porlation between Baltimore and Pittsburg
and intermediate points, its importance
consisted principally in being a stopping
place of the mail stages, and large six
horse wagons, in use for travel and trans
portation Of the products and merchan-
disc supplied by, and to, and between these
points The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad
was then completed and in use but a
short distance westward of Frederick City.
Since then the spirit of the age, with its
accomplishments of iron and steel and their
various adjuncts, has progressed to that
condition of things which has been recently
and is now transpiring, in large parts of our
country, and which described themselves
in acts more wildly than words can be
found to do. But to avoid diversion, and
to return to the subject in hand.
In that population there were one bank
officer, two physicians and two or perhaps
three storekeepers. Every other man in
the village was laborer with his hands.
There were five tan yards, and every old
established family in the town derived
whatever of patrimonial estate it posses
SEES from the manual labors of honest
hands of its progenitors in tan yard.
Those who did not work in the tan yards
we're blacksmiths, wheelwrights, tailors,
shoe makers, hatters, &C., &C. All the
trades were represented. One small class
ical school had been essayed, but had
failed of support and been given up.
Up to 1912 the main accessions to the
population had been three or four lawyers,
induced by the creation of the new county
to an industrious search for briefs, aud
their concomitants; and unhappily for
themselves, and the wives and babies of
those of them who happily possessed such
treasures, not weighted down in their
laborious searches for briefs by pockets
filled by white or yellow metals.
The original settlers Of the town aud
surrounding country had been Germans,
except only the Winchester and Gist
families and Mr.. Leigh Master, an Eng
lish gentleman of position and fortune,
who had left his ancestral estates, and es-
tablished iron works at Avondale, about
two miles from Westminster, and had, long
before the time mentioned, returned to the
dust from which he and all of us came, his
iron works leaving behind scarcely trace
that they had ever been.
The Lutherans and Reformed, or Ger
man Reformed, had church known as
Kriders, little more than mile westward
of the town, in which each worshipped
alternately, and the graveyard attached
gives history of very many of the
families for many generations back, whose
names and blood survive. In the town
there was standing in the grounds of the
present cemetery an Union Church build
ing, in which all the various Protestant de-
nominations had worshipped together, or
separately, as circumstances gave occasion,
two small Methodist Churches which had
succeeded, and largely superseded the use
of the Union Church, and small Roman
Catholic Church. In these several church
buildings worshipped almost the entire
population.
Tradition tells that on the Washington
road, half mile from the town, in pre-
Revolutionary times there had stood an
Anglican Church building, but it, and all
traces of it had long gone.
Such was the condition when, in 1872,
the Rev. d. Hillhouse Buel, who had
short time before become the Rector Of
Trinity parish near Freedom and Elders
burg, and who was sou of the Honorable
David Buel, of Troy, New York, younger
brother of Dr. Samuel Buel for long years
a Professor in the General Theological
Seminary, and held to be one of the most
learned and distinguished Theological
scholars of the country, and 1t may be
said of the world, aud an elder bro;her of
the Rev. Clarence Buel now Rector Of the
Church at Cumberland, Md, came to
Westminster, and during horseback ride,
on very hot day, from Westminster to
Avondale proposed to the author of this
sketch the foundation Of this church.
In reply, he was told that the idea was
wholly impracticable, that there was not
congregation to carry it on, even
if church building could be erected, and
such erection was entirely beyond the
means of the one man who, with his wife
had been brought up in the church, and of
the two wives of Presbyterian husbands,
who with the first mentioned made up the
total of Churchman and Churchwomen of
and with the family of
Avondale constituted the entire hope of a
to be formed. Of the Win
chester family all that remained were two
maiden ladies so aged and infrm that they
were unable to leave their home.
Mr.. Buel listened, and was not con-
WINGED. He did not say SO, but it was
not the less fact, that he sought for him
self not one thing, save only an extended
to work, without money and
without price, in extending the Kingdom
of Him, whom in heart and mind he
served.
In the course of the visit to Ayondale
more optimistic view of the situation was
taken, and resulted in determination to
undertake the enterprise, whether hopeful
or hopeless of success. In the sense that
Hope is identical with Faith, there was
Hope. Where the money was to come
from was yelled in the densist mist of
In the end it did come, but where from,
from whom, it would puzzle the most careful
historian of facts to discover even now,
with absolute certainty.
Ordinarily history proceeds from pre-
conceived theory of philosopher, estab-
fishing in his own mind las conclusions, and
thereupon, with unAagging righteousness,
invoking tradition, whether prosaic or
poetic, to yield up facts to sustain his
and so we get at, in large
measure, the facts of history.
Not so with this history / and therefore
we must be permitted to use some, at least,
Of the names which made the things to be
herein recounted, which created the facts
10 be recorded.