St. Mary’s contains the largest of Maryland’s three Amish settlements, centered mainly along Maryland Routes 6 and 236 in New Market, Charlotte Hall, and neighboring Charles County. Amish families moved there in 1940 from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to avoid statewide educational changes and development pressure, and their community continues to thrive along these rural roads through farming tobacco, grain, and vegetables and raising poultry and dairy cows, while handwritten signs advertise produce and services including chair caning, blacksmithing, quilting, and woodworking. Similar goods are also offered farther south around Loveville and Oakville by the county’s Mennonite community, which came to St. Mary’s from Pennsylvania at about the same time. In 1872, the rival Washington City and Point Lookout Railroad was organized, and in the following year a compromise provided that it would not be built south of Brandywine Junction and would instead be renamed the Washington and Chesapeake Railroad Company, while the Southern Maryland Railroad would run from Brandywine to Mechanicsville. In 1886, the Washington and Potomac Railroad Company purchased the railroad, renewing hopes for an extension south to the St. Mary’s River and Point Lookout, but although some grading was completed, financial problems prevented the line from being extended.