The Savage Rail Road and the Lost Bridge

The Washington Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad, which opened in 1835, was routed to pass near the Savage Factory and its nearby granite quarries. This proximity was an opportunity for Amos A. Williams, who was a director of both the B&O and the Savage Manufacturing Company, to promote his business interests. He saw the railroad as a reliable and efficient way to transport the company’s products. Amos had already fabricated thousands of rail chairs, used to secure the rails to the sleepers (or ties), in the company’s foundry under contract to the B&O. He also planned to build a furnace to make pig iron needed by the foundry, as well as a second cotton mill; only the furnace was built, but it was hardly used.

To reach the Washington Branch a little over a mile away would require crossing the usually shallow Little Patuxent River, the source of the waterpower for Savage Factory, through a ford across a shallow point of the river immediately downstream of the factory. Wagons carried the goods for many years, and Amos’ brother, George, expected that practice to continue. Amos planned a railroad to be built on the south side of the river to meet the Washington Branch and proposed building a bridge across the river that the Savage Manufacturing Company would pay for, in addition to paying a charge for the service.

The plan for a railroad from the Savage Factory caused a family squabble. Upon hearing about Amos’ plan, George wrote to him on February 4, 1835, and expressed his anger about the proposal. George admonished Amos for “building a costly bridge at an expense of 2,500 or 3,000 dollars” and for planning to build a “Lateral Rail Road.” He was particularly upset that Amos had pledged the Savage Manufacturing Company to pay six percent per annum for the project.

Seeing what he felt was Amos’ careless use of the company’s funds, George continued that “I can suffer no longer and must throw myself upon my legal right and protest that not for myself as well as my children bear one cent of the expense of this bridge or enter into any such engagements as you contemplate with this rail road company.”

Incorporation of the Rail Road

Despite George’s legal threats, Amos proceeded with the project. Just one month after George’s letter, in March 1835, the Maryland General Assembly approved “An Act to Incorporate the Savage Rail Road Company,” which granted authority to build a railway from the mill to the B&O’s Washington Branch. The charter’s language was broad enough to permit extensions of up to six miles from the mill, such as to the Guilford quarries. The September 1835 Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser wrote that, “As soon as the route of the rail road to Washington had been definitely settled, it was immediately perceived that a short branch extended to the Savage Factory, and then to an extensive range of quarries of the finest granite [at Guilford], could be constructed at a very moderate expense.” This short branch was the Savage Rail Road, which became the Patuxent Branch of the B&O in 1887, and was extended to Guilford in 1902.

The charter appointed several commissioners to secure subscriptions for the company’s stock, including Amos A. Williams, Roger Brooke, Jonathan Waters, Larkin Dorsey, Charles G. Worthington, Richard Stockett, and George Cooke. While there is no evidence that the Savage Factory itself used enslaved labor, some of these investors were certainly slaveholders. The 1830 census shows that while Williams and Brooke did not enslave people, Waters enslaved 10, Dorsey enslaved 23, Worthington enslaved 14, Stockett enslaved 3, and Cooke enslaved 20. The wealth of these men, which contributed to their ability to invest in the railroad, was supported by slavery. It is important to note, however, that there is no evidence to suggest the Williams family or John Savage enslaved anyone or directly benefited from slavery when establishing the Savage Factory.

Savage Rail Road Operations

The Savage Rail Road Company operated from about April 1836 through July 1844, using horse-drawn railway to pull B&O freight cars from the factory to the connection with the Washington Branch called “Savage Switch” and, at times, “Savage Factory” station. The railway facilitated two-way transport of goods. It carried inbound raw materials like cotton, coal, timber, and machinery parts, and outbound finished goods such as textiles and castings. Items transported also included flour, wool, iron ore, limestone, foundry supplies, agricultural equipment castings, and oyster shells shipped from Baltimore. The inclusion of oyster shells was used in the blast furnace as a “flux” material necessary to remove impurities (like silica and alumina) from the iron ore.

Wooden “pier cribs” that were likely part of the original railroad bridge. These wooden structures were on the river bottom under the Bollman Bridge and seen during low flow conditions. (Photos courtesy of Wayne Davis).

Demise and Re-Discovery

The Savage Factory railroad bridge was washed away during the great floods of October 1847, which also destroyed the second dam upstream. There is no evidence that the bridge was rebuilt or that rail operations resumed during the time of the Williams brothers’ ownership. In January 1849, it was noted that there was a pedestrian bridge and a usable ford across the river. It isn’t known when, or if, a replacement bridge was built before the upgrades of William H. Baldwin in 1881, which placed the current Bollman Bridge at that location. The passenger and freight station at Savage Switch remained in operation. It is possible the ford across the river below the bridge was used for the duration or that a replacement was built–it just is not known at this time.

Over 100 years passed until the ruins of the Savage Rail Road Bridge caught researchers’ attention. Local Savage resident and historian Bob Gilette Skaggs was researching just about everything about Savage, including the railroad. When corresponding with Smithsonian Institution Curator and Bollman Bridge expert Robert Vogel, Skaggs was told about wooden “pier cribs” that were likely part of the original railroad bridge. These wooden structures were on the river bottom under the Bollman Bridge and seen during low flow conditions. Skaggs sought assistance of Donald Shomette with the Underwater Archaeology Society of Maryland to conduct a study of the pier cribs and associated archaeology. Their study was approved by HoCo Rec and Parks, the property owners of Bollman Bridge, and they received the appropriate permits from the State of Maryland to divert the river’s flow to isolate the pier cribs to be able to better study them.

In May 1985, Bob Skaggs and members of the Underwater Archaeological Society of Maryland conducted a two-weekend excavation beneath the Bollman Truss Bridge in Savage. After creating a temporary work area in the river using a water diversion system, the team made several significant discoveries:

• Timber cribbing aligned parallel to the river’s flow, which is consistent with 19th-century pier construction.

• Cut nails and wrought spikes, which provided clues that dated the structure to before 1850.

• Mortise-and-tenon joinery, indicating an engineered assembly rather than a makeshift riverbank support.

The location of these cribs directly under the center of the Bollman bridge confirmed that they were not part of the later 1869 iron bridge but were instead the remnants of an earlier structure. Researchers concluded that these were likely from the original Savage Rail Road bridge, which was washed out in the 1847 flood and never fully replaced.

The Saga Continues

There is so much lost and hidden history involving Savage Mill that is still yet to be seen. A new and surprising story will appear in the next issue of Voices of Laurel about the Williams family and the origin of Savage Mill. We will further correct and update the history of this amazing area.

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Read Hidden History of Howard County by Nathan Davis and Wayne Davis, published by The History Press, for more forgotten and hidden stories about Howard County.