Hundreds of years ago, northeastern Baltimore County was explored by nomadic Indians who came south from present-day Pennsylvania to hunt for game in the bountiful Chesapeake Bay region. These tribes were dominated by the terrifying Susquehannocks, who intimated smaller Indian clans and held dominion over the area until Europeans settled Maryland in the Seventeenth Century. The Susquehannocks moved frequently through Perry Hall, using present-day Joppa Road as a trail to the west.
Captain John Smith encountered the Susquehannocks in 1608 when he made the first European exploration of the Gunpowder River. Smith's expedition cleared the way for intense industrialization along the Gunpowder River, and by the Eighteenth Century, northeastern Baltimore County was the site of numerous mills, furnaces, and forges. A small settlement emerged near present-day Cowenton and Joppa Roads, home to woodcutter families who lived in log cabins and sod houses.
These squalid conditions contrasted vividly with the mansion being constructed in the northern region of Perry Hall. In 1774, wealthy planter Harry Dorsey Gough purchased an 1,000 acre estate called "the Adventure" north of present-day Belair Road. Gough renamed the estate "Perry Hall," after his family's home in Great Britain, and completed construction of the Perry Hall Mansion, which still stands in the northern part of our community. Harry Dorsey Gough, then, could be thought of as the founder of Perry Hall.
The Gough family dominated the life of the community until after the Civil War. The Gough plantation was among the largest in Baltimore County, and Harry Dorsey Gough was an early leader in the Maryland General Assembly, as well as a founder of the Methodist Church. It was at Perry Hall Mansion that plans for the American Methodist Church were developed by Gough, Francis Asbury, and other religious leaders. The Gough family later donated land for the construction of the Camp Chapel church and a community school.
The Civil War accelerated the end of plantation life in the United States. The Perry Hall estate was sold in 1875 to Eli Slifer of Philadelphia, who divided the property into farms of various sizes and sold the lots to immigrant families, many of whom were from Germany. That is how the tiny village came to be known as "Germantown." These farmers raised "stoop crops" like celery and carrots, and as the Twentieth Century opened, many families opened nurseries and flower shops.
Germantown, which rested near the intersection of Chapel and Belair Roads, was a small but self-sufficient farming village. The 1902 telephone directory listed only twenty-six numbers, including five saloon owners, seven storekeepers, four farmers, the justice of the peace, and undertaker, and the community schoolteacher. Mail delivery was done on horseback, and it was the only real way for one village to communicate with another. The community had its share of taverns and inns, and at the end of a long day in the fields, a trip to the local saloon was a nightly tradition for many. Local patrons were often joined by travelers on their way along Belair Road, a major turnpike from the city to the country.
With German and Irish immigration, new Catholic and Lutheran churches were built in the community. For most families, entertainment meant gathering together on the front porches of the farmhouses, where families would hold dances and young men would romance the girls from down the street. In time, the name "Germantown" disappeared from local maps, and the plantation moniker "Perry Hall" came to distinguish the growing village.
The period after World War Two transformed Perry Hall from rural hamlet into a suburban community. Recognizing the inevitable surge in development, the Perry Hall Improvement Association was established in 1945 to lobby for the necessary infrastructure to support the community. Its most successful endeavor was the Northeast Library Association, formed to acquire a new public library in Perry Hall. That effort culminated in 1963, when the Perry Hall library was dedicated by Baltimore County Executive Spiro T. Agnew, Congressman Clarence Long, and dozens of local leaders.
During those early years, the Perry Hall Improvement Association was a social nucleus for the community. It hosted dances, parties, and Bingo nights at the old Perry Hall School, now the Gribbin Center. It also started a Perry Hall tradition, the Halloween parade, which began in 1949 with a procession of church groups and Scouting units down Belair and Ebenezer Roads.
Perry Hall was changing, though, and signs of postwar urbanization were everywhere. as thousands of city residents bought homes in Perry Hall, the county built three new schools between 1956 and 1968. In 1961, the community's first shopping center was built at Ebenezer and Belair Roads.
Between 1980 and 1990, Perry Hall's population almost doubled, rising from 13,455 to 22,723 residents. The US Census Bureau estimates that over six thousand housing units were constructed over a ten-year period, most in the vast area behind Seven Courts and Gunpowder Elementary School.
If growth has brought its share of problems to Perry Hall, development has also created new opportunities and a diversified way of life. The construction of White Marsh Mall and the surrounding Town Center generated thousands of new jobs, bringing state-of-the-art medical, service, and technological industries to an undeveloped region. Perry Hall has now been linked to a regional economy.
Despite these changes, Perry Hall retains time-honored traditions and strong pride in local institutions. The school is very much the center of the community, with Perry Hall High's annual Homecoming parade bringing out hundreds of spectators along Ebenezer Road. Strong PTA's represent the bedrock of Perry Hall's successful schools. A new tradition, the community Christmas tree-lighting at Perry Hall Elementary School, has grown every year since 1990, drawing over three hundred spectators annually.
In the midst of change and development, the themes of family and local pride run strong in Perry Hall, as they have since Harry Dorsey Gough founded his family estate in 1775 and industrious immigrants cleared the land after the Civil War. Some things never change.
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