HOWARD COUNTY COURTHOUSE (1840-1842)
Historic Site — Ellicott City, Maryland
Status: Operating · Access: Open to public
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/howard-county-courthouse-1840-1842-ellicott-city-maryland/

The first courthouse—where the fugitives’ cases were heard.

A historic site in Ellicott City, Maryland, an NPS Network to Freedom, Howard County Courthouse (1840-1842) is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The first courthouse—where the fugitives’ cases were heard. HauntHunt files it with Underground Railroad history, the Underground Railroad and African American history. The dossier holds 2 documented facts — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. The site is open to visitors.

Howard County's first court met in a rented building. When the legislature carved the Howard District out of Anne Arundel County in 1838, the commissioners leased a stone structure on County Street from George Ellicott — the mill family that had built Ellicott's Mills on the Patapsco falls — and for three years the new jurisdiction's justice ran out of borrowed rooms while the permanent courthouse rose on Capitoline Hill.
The cases heard there in 1840–42 were the county's first — and they included the prosecutions the Park Service now records under the Network to Freedom marker: four enslaved men — Bill Plummer, John Wesley Mathews, David Mathews, and Basil, all held by Charles W. Warfield — charged with 'illegally absconding' toward Pennsylvania, and the free Black man Wesley Green charged with helping them escape. The first business of Howard District justice included punishing flight to freedom.
The building outlasted its use — when the granite courthouse on the hill opened in 1843 the rented rooms reverted, and the old structure survived the twentieth century narrowly, escaping demolition in 1969 to be restored as a historical display. The streets around it were moved in urban renewal; the building stayed where the district's first court had sat.
The 1840 courthouse is the archive's rented-justice file — the leased stone building where Howard District tried its first cases, including the prosecutions of four men for the crime of walking toward Pennsylvania and the free man who helped them.

WHY THIS FILE MATTERS
The 1840–42 Howard County Courthouse is the archive's first-docket file — the rented rooms where the new district's first cases included prosecuting four enslaved men for absconding and the free Black man charged with helping them, marked now as a Network to Freedom site.
A rented courthouse keeps its first cases — the file's suggestion being that the building's hold is the opening docket: the prosecutions of Plummer, the Mathewses, Basil, and Green, in the borrowed rooms where Howard County justice began by punishing escape.

HISTORY — 2 documented facts
· NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. Sources including 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01' carry the record. The date is part of the site's documented spine.
· Howard County Courthouse (1840-1842) is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.

SOURCES — 3 cited
· Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01 — National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223
· NPS Network to Freedom listing — National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm
· Underground Railroad — Wikipedia
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad

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