Trammelstown as envisioned by
John Trammell, Jr.
Partial Transcript of the chapter "Three Lost Towns" in Millard Milburn Rice's "New Facts and Old Families: From the Records of Frederick Couty, Maryland."
"In my opinion
Trammelstown - sometimes also known as Trammelsburg - never existed
as a platted town. It is true that at and near the intersection of
Maryland's Route #464 and the County Road from Point of Rocks to
Frederick, where the Point of Rocks Episcopal Church now stands, a
few houses once were grouped and called Trammelstown. But that was
not the town John Trammel envisioned in his 1784 will.
In that will Trammel
directed his executors, who were his daughter Sarah Trammel
DeLashmutt and her husband Lindsey DeLashmutt, to lay out 400 lots
for a town. The lots were to be 60x120 feet in size, 'with suitable
and convenient streets and alleys.' Half of the lots were devised to
Sarah Trammel DeLashmutt and half to Sarah's son Trammel DeLashmutt.
The 400 lots were to be
laid off, said John Trammel, 'On that part of my lands called
Trammel's Coney Islands and Woodland which lies between Swedes Folly
and Potowmack River.' The lots were to be sold 'for 8 silver
dollars...' with yearly ground rent of 'not less than 18 shillings
[then about $2.40].'
Swedes Folly lay about
one mile, approximately north-northwest, from present-day Point of
Rocks and had been owned by the Nelson and Delashmutt families for at
least forty years prior to 1784.
I have searched the Land
Records carefully, but I can find no record of lot sales by either
Trammel DeLashmutt or his mother. Lindsey DeLashmutt died in October
or November of 1791. Shortly thereafter, in the following March - and
that may have caused some raised eyebrows - Sarah married Ralph
Briscoe. She devised 'the lands my father gave me' to the two sons
she had by DeLashmutt but in so doing nowhere made any mention of
town lots.
Trammel DeLashmutt died
1810 and during his lifetime was involved in numerous purchases and
sales of land, some of which apparently included the lands his
grandfather had given him and on which Trammelstown was to have been
laid out. But there is no mention of town lots in any of them.
There is one transaction
in which Trammel DeLashmutt sold to his brother John for $55 'one
negro woman now in the house of said John DeLashmutt in
Trammelsburg.' It may have been that Trammelsburg equated with
Trammelstown, but it was not the kind of town John Trammel had in
mind when he made his will in 1784. That town was still-born.
Scharf says briefly of
the town that 'it was partially destroyed by fire'. I suspect a house
may have burned down."
