Black Rock Mill stood at the center of a diverse farming community along Black Rock Road. Nicholas Dorsey Offutt, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates and a successful businessman and merchant, bought the mill in 1866 and built a new miller's house on a hillside overlooking it. Across the creek, William and Elizabeth Hughes established a prosperous grain and dairy farm, and their son Charles Wallace Hughes married a daughter of the master miller, learned the milling trade, and became the last miller at Black Rock Mill around 1921. Farther up Black Rock Road at its intersection with Germantown Road, Brownstown developed as a community of African-American farmers and tradespeople. It was named for William Brown, who built a log cabin on ten acres there in 1868 and, as a pious man, hosted church services for his neighbors in his cabin. Brownstown grew rapidly and had its own schoolhouse and church by 1878.