Who Built this Village?

Workers in the village lived under a company system in which some boarded with others in their homes and single workers could stay in nearby boarding houses, while supplies were bought with company scrip at the store and charges for rent, wood, and goods were deducted from wages. In 1864, board cost 12.5¢ for each meal, and in 1899 a man who worked a month averaging 200 hours at 9¢ per hour, paid $2.00 house rent, and owed a $10.00 store bill might take home only $6.00. During the decade before the Civil War, European immigrants began replacing enslaved and freed African American workers because hiring cheap labor was more economical than supporting an enslaved workforce, and descendants of those immigrants still live in the village. The stone chapel, village store, and log and stone houses reflect the lives and skills of village workers over more than two centuries. Harriet Chapel was built by workers owned or employed by John Brien and named in memory of his wife, Harriet McPherson Brien, and today it remains an active Episcopal parish. During 130 years of operation, furnace owners provided worker housing, and an 1858 trustee's sale advertised the ironworks with 60 houses, while the remaining 12 worker houses are rare examples of domestic architecture. Some whitewashed stone houses were built by John Brien in the winter of 1820 and 1821, less than a year after he bought the furnace operation, and multiple families and boarders likely shared the simply furnished dwellings. In a 1982 interview, Mary Miller Martin said there were strong traditions that certain houses at Catoctin Furnace had once been slave quarters, though she did not identify specific structures. The nearest stone cottage is now the Museum of the Ironworker. The Collier's Log House, built about 1810 and enlarged about 1830 into a double structure, was bought by the historical society in 1980, restored, and turned into a historic house museum. The F.W. Fraley Store, a village landmark that closed in 1973, was linked to the descendants of Heinrich Frolick, a Hessian soldier captured at Yorktown during the Revolutionary War and sent to hard labor at the Catoctin Iron Works while imprisoned at Frederick's Hessian Barracks.

Maryland · United States