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“Frederick Town” was laid out by Daniel Dulany (a land speculator) in 1745,[2] and settled by a German immigrant party led by a young German Reformed schoolmaster from the Rhineland Palatinate named Johann Thomas Schley (d. 1790), who came to the Maryland colony with his wife, Maria Winz. They built the first house of the new town which into the 20th century stood at the northwest corner of Middle Alley and East Patrick Street. The settlement was founded upon a tract of land granted by Daniel Dulany on the banks of Carroll Creek. Within three years the settlement had become the county seat of Frederick County. It is uncertain which Frederick the town was named for, but the likeliest candidates are Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore and one of the proprietors of Maryland,[3] Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales,[4] and Frederick "The Great" of Prussia. Most sources agree it was named for Frederick Calvert.
Schley's first task as leader of the settlement party was the foundation of a German Reformed Church (today the church is known as Evangelical Reformed Church, UCC), which also served immediately as a public school, in keeping with the German Reformed tradition of sponsoring universal public education. Many of the Pennsylvania Dutch settled in Frederick as they migrated westward in the late 18th century. Frederick was a stop along the German migration route that led down through the "Great Valley" (Shenandoah Valley, etc.) all the way to the western Piedmont in North Carolina.
The city served as a major crossroads from colonial times. British General Braddock marched west through Frederick on the way to the fateful ambush near Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War. To control this crossroads during the American Revolution, the British garrisoned a Hessian regiment in the town during the war (the barracks still stand). The Schleys were activists for the American Revolution and had been a military family in Germany, with one ancestor holding high rank at the Battle of Parma in 1714.[5] One of Johann Thomas Schley's sons, Col. George Jacob Schley, served in the Maryland Line of the Continental Army.[6] Afterward, with no way to return to their homeland, the men of the Hessian regiment stayed on and married into the families of the town, strengthening its German identity.[citation needed] Later, when President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the building of the National Road from Baltimore to St. Louis, the "National Pike" ran through Frederick along Patrick Street.
[edit] Early 19th century
From these beginnings, Frederick grew to an important market town, but by the first third of the 19th century, the town had also become one of the leading mining counties of the United States, producing gold, copper, limestone, marble, iron and other minerals. As early as the American Revolution, Catoctin Furnace near Thurmont had been a significant site for iron production.[7] In 1831 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) completed its Frederick Branch line from Baltimore to Frederick.[8]
When the first wave of Irish refugees from the potato famine settled in the city in 1846, one of the leading members of the Schley family married into the Wilson family from Ireland. Consequently, many of the Schleys converted to Catholicism, and residents of Frederick began to speak English for the first time in the town's history — up until then, the language had been German.[citation needed] Frederick was known during the nineteenth century for its religious pluralism, with one of its main thoroughfares, Church Street, hosting half a dozen major churches. The main Catholic church, St. John's, was built in 1800, then rebuilt in 1837 (across the street) one block north of Church Street on East Second Street, where it still stands.[9] Together, these churches dominated the town, set against the backdrop of the first ridge of the Appalachians, Catoctin Mountain. The abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized this view of Frederick in his poem to Barbara Fritchie: "The clustered spires of Frederick stand — greenwalled in the hills of Maryland."[10]
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