The 1843 Howard County Courthouse, on Court Avenue in the Historic District of Ellicott City, Maryland, was the site of judicial proceedings in legal cases involving people charged with encouraging enslaved persons to run away from 1843 until the end of slavery in Maryland on November 1, 1864. Designed and built of native granite between 1840 and 1843, it stands high atop Capitoline Hill above Main Street in Ellicott City. Its most famous case arguably involved the transfer of known Underground Railroad agent William L. Chaplin of New York from Montgomery County to Howard County in 1850, but many cases also involved local free Blacks, including Warner Cook, who was charged with enticing enslaved people to run away.
