The Village of Charlotte Hall took its name from the school located there, which the Maryland General Assembly authorized in 1774. The area had originally been known as "Ye Coole Springs" for the supposed healing qualities of its spring water. Charlotte Hall was first incorporated in 1914, but that incorporation was repealed in 1941, possibly because the population was too small to support a municipal government. The village remains a peaceful, well-preserved place with several historic sites and a number of buildings dating to the 18th and early 19th centuries. A walk from the St. Mary's County Library to the Northern Senior Activity Center offers a sense of the past. From 1935 to 1953, trains ran through Charlotte Hall, and resident Patty Poffenbarger, who grew up there, recalled that as a child her family shut the front gate twice a day because passing trains came so close beside the picket fence that they would strike the gate.