Captain Elijah Monroe Friend, born in 1836, was the grandson of Gabriel Friend and the son of John Friend, the first white settler in Garrett County. Educated in the district schools, he lived on a 300 acre farm on the west side of the river along Water Street in Friendsville. During the Civil War he enlisted as a private in Company 1, Second Maryland Regiment of Volunteer Infantry and served three years, earning promotion to corporal, sergeant, and sergeant-major in the field. In February 1865 he was ordered to Cumberland to act as an enrolling officer and was given the rank of captain. He served until the fall of Richmond and received an honorable discharge. In 1873 he helped take the census of the western part of Allegany County and divide it into Garrett County. After traveling extensively around the country as a salesman, he returned to Friendsville in 1879, engaged in farming, and in 1887 was elected to the Maryland Legislature. In 1890 he married Emma C. Shroyer, daughter of J.D. Shroyer, and they had three children: Earl Morril, Ruth Adele, and Ada Blanche. The area also included the Riverside Hotel livery stable and was connected by Water Street to the Youghiogheny Iron Company foundry downstream. The Youghiogheny Iron Company, built on Bear Creek in 1828 to produce pig iron, later declined because transporting iron to the National Road could not compete with furnaces and foundries along the Ohio River. The foundry was later converted by Leslie Friend into a hydroelectric plant that in 1895 supplied electricity to the new electric Unique Mill in the center of town and to Friendsville homes for 75¢ a month.