10 March 2002 – Double Pipe Creek

Several Carroll towns have undergone name changes, including the northwest town of Detour in the Middleburg District.   A brief history of the community, originally known as Double Pipe Creek, was written by James H. Koons and published in the Taneytown Carroll Record newspaper in 1895:

The land on which the village now stands and the surrounding vicinity embracing about 600 acres called “Prosperity,” was in 1794 owned by Joshua Delaplane, in which year he founded a large grist mill with a capacity of 100 barrels of flour per day, on the Frederick side of the stream of Double Pipe Creek.  Joshua Delaplane was a manufacturer of some note in his day and carried on not only the grist mill, but a woolen mill, and a saw mill on the opposite side of the creek in Carroll county, with saw mill attached to said woolen mill.  The woolen mill still stands, but no looms have made music within its walls for these many years, (since 1849).

The said Joshua Delaplane in 1835 sold his mill properties and land in the vicinity to Henry Waesche, and from 1835 to 1847, no changes of any consequence occurred.  In 1849 Henry Waesche sold the milling properties to Henry McKinstry, and a few years later the land was purchased by Elder Daniel P. Sayler.  Waesche, during the “Gold Fever” of 1849, in company with William Waesche, John Landers, Frederick Miller, and many Baltimoreans, started to California in search of gold; when the company was crossing the Isthmus of Panama, Henry Waesche and Frederick Miller were taken sick and died.  The company was dispersed and Wm. Waesche, son of Henry Waesche, immediately after his father’s death, returned home and conducted the milling business for about two years.

At this time there was but one store in the village, which was a general store, and conducted by Charles Hiteshew and Ephraim Stoner.  Mr. McKinstry conducted the milling business for about one year, when an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in the neighborhood; Mr. McKinstry contracted the disease and died.  After Mr. McKinstry’s death, the milling properties were sold by his heirs to William Annan and Ebenezer Annan, who occupied and ran the grist mill for five or eight  years, during which time, the saw mill washed away.  The mill property was purchased by Thomas F. Cover, about 1868, who conducted the milling business for about ten years, when he sold it to Calvin B. Anders.  Mr. A. continued the milling business on a large scale, until January 4, 1883, when the mill was destroyed by fire.  The fulling mill was used as a dwelling from about 1863 to 1886 when the building was converted into a school house.

The extension of Western Maryland Railroad from Union Bridge to this place in 1868, created quite a boom and the town was laid out by Elder Daniel P. Sayler, who had purchased in 1853 the lands belonging to the Henry Waesche estate.   The place prior to 1868 consisted of five or six houses.  Double Pipe Creek is located in a country of remarkable fertility, and offers advantages for manufacturing enterprise equaled by no small town in Maryland.  Abundant water power, and railroad connection reaching into every state in the union, with a climate of unequaled salubrity and exempt from all miasmatic influences.  One of the conspicuous features of D.P.C. is the large number of spacious business houses which it contains for the size of the town.  Its merchants transact an extensive business with the farmers in the surrounding county.

The merchants are at present, Washington Shorb, Harvey E. Weant, Thomas J. Kolb and Jesse W. Kolb, partners, trading as J. T. Kolb and Sons, and Frederick J. Shorb.  J. W. Weant the present postmaster, after being actively engaged in mercantile pursuits for 25 years, has retired.

Two churches; Methodist Episcopal, Rev. H. C. Hall, pastor; German Baptist, Revs. Thomas J. Kolb and John S. Weybright pastors.  James Warner is blacksmith; Charles H. Diller physician of the town and vicinity has been located here for the past 23 years.

L. F. Miller and Sons, proprietors of the warehouse and grain elevator do an extensive business in grain, hay, coal and farming implements.   D. Calvin Warner, Justice of the Peace, and E. O. Weant, one of Carroll’s popular attorneys, resides here.

On June 1, 1889 Double Pipe Creek was deluged with water, and considerable damage was done to the town.  Besides the burning of the mill property, the town suffered a heavy loss in the burning of the hotel (Flavona House) in November, 1892 owned by Frank Stoner, and Wm. H. Moser, Proprietor.  On October 24, 1894 the town suffered a much greater loss in the burning of the store and dwelling of F. J. Shorb, also the store room owned by Frank Dotterer and occupied by T. J. Kolb & Son, also brick dwelling belonging to F. Dotterer and tenanted by J. Wright Barrick, and a black smith shop owned by Mrs. William H. Powell.  Since the last named fires (1892 and 1894) the burnt buildings were replaced by large, spacious and handsome dwellings and store rooms.

Double Creek Division No. 36, Sons of Temperance, was incorporated by an Act of the Legislature passed March 3, 1847.  The incorporators were John E. H. Ligget, Geo. H. Waesche, Isaac Dern, Eli Otto, Noah Pennington, Benjamin Poole, Martin Grimes, George Landers, James Thomas, Wm. Carmack, Abendigo D. Slick, Francis Carmack, Joseph Fogle, Jesse Anders, William Miller, Edward Carmack and Samuel Birely.

Junior Order United American Mechanics, American Eagle No. 96, was incorporated on April 14, 1894. The incorporators, or charter members, were Wm. N. Fogle, F. J. Shorb, Ursa M. Diller, Charles Eyler, Frederick Myerly, John H. Miller, Charles Stambaugh, W. J. Arthur, James Warren, John Curfman, and many others.”