Orange Grove: A Small Neighborly Community

Orange Grove was once a small, serene mill town where more than a dozen flour mill workers and their families lived in nine houses and a combined one-room church and school along the river before 1905. Each home was owned by the Patapsco Flour Mill Company, which operated a mill across the river, and cows grazed in the pasture where the pavilion now stands. Neighbors gathered at the village water pump for drinking water and to exchange news, while the minister, teacher, doctor, butcher, and produce grocer reached the community on foot, horseback, or horse-drawn wagon. In 1900, the town's 41 residents included 19 children, and Thomas Phillips, who grew up there, remembered the river valley as a magnificent playground where children went snow sledding, ice skating on the lake formed by the mill's dam, and chestnut hunting.

Ilchester, Maryland · United States