[Baltimore Sun] Dayhoff: First telephones usher in a new era for Carroll County
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The telephone came to Carroll County in 1884, only eight years after Alexander Graham Bell was granted his second patent on March 7, 1876 – four days after his 29th birthday. President Rutherford B. Hayes had the first telephone installed in the White House in 1878.
While he is famous for inventing the telephone, what is not well known about Bell is that he was dedicated to helping deaf children lead normal lives. Bell was a dreamer, and he continued dreaming and inventing long after he had invented the telephone; and he continued to train deaf children to talk.
The Wantz Building in Westminster is located at 21 to 29 East Main Street. The four-bay building, 3rd from the right in this photo, was built in sections from 1882 to 1890. The first telephone office in Westminster was opened during the week of July 12, 1884. The office was located on the second floor. Miss Mary Bostwick Shellman was the first manager-operator of the new Westminster exchange, where she worked for almost six years. Miss Shellman served Alexander Graham Bell lunch in July 1884 when he visited the Westminster office. (Submitted photo circa 1900)
The first telephone office in Westminster was opened during the week of July 12, 1884. The office was on the second floor of the Wantz Building, on East Main Street. By the time it was ready for service, 26 citizens had subscribed for business and residence telephones.
According to Nancy Warner in her book, “Carroll County Maryland, A History 1837-1976,” one of the reasons citizens clamored to bring the telephone to Westminster was because the town was 2 miles long and traveling from one end to the other was considered quite a journey.
According to research by Jay Graybeal for the Historical Society of Carroll County, “An early history of the telephone in Carroll County was written by Emma J. Grady and published in the May 28, 1937, issue of [the Carroll County Times].”
Graybeal’s research indicates that The Democratic Advocate of June 14, 1884, reported, “Telephones were delivered to subscribers here yesterday. The lines will be put up as soon as possible. The exchange will be in operation by July 1, it is expected.” In the following week further progress was reported: “Mr. Rhodes has put up about ten telephones in town this week, and has done some work in the exchange, in the old Lotus Club Hall, Wantz Building. The wires are now being put up between Emmitsburg and Union Bridge, and the work will be pushed rapidly.”
Miss Mary Bostwick Shellman was the first manager-operator of the new Westminster exchange, where she worked for almost six years. Miss Shellman served Alexander Graham Bell lunch in July 1884 when he visited the Westminster office.
To the left of the Westminster fire house is the building that houses the “Bell Telephone.” This picture was taken in 1903. At an earlier time, the first telephone office in Westminster was opened during the week of July 12, 1884. The office was located on the second floor of the Wantz Building; and later moved across the street to this building. The ‘office’ remains at this location, although the building has been extensively renovated over the years. (Courtesy the Westminster Fire Department.)
Beginning in the 1880s, the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company advertised in both The Democratic Advocate and The American Sentinel. The invention was only eight years old at that time and it was news when its use was being opened to any community. The newspapers reported that by July 6, 1884, “Westminster [was] connected with Union Bridge by telephone, where the line meets the Frederick County system,” which then connected to Baltimore.“]”
Curiously, in the latter part of August 1884, the telephone in Westminster was first recognized as a speedy medium for obtaining sports results. Long distance service came to Westminster in February of 1885. According to Warner; “As citizens obtained new telephones, their names, and numbers were advertised in the newspapers.” By 1900 there were 801,000 telephones in the United States and by 1903,198 of those telephones were in Westminster.
Before the end of 1884, most important business establishments, including drug stores and local physicians’ offices, had a telephone connection. The county offices had one telephone and officials declared they needed 14 more. There was one telephone in the courthouse and there was much discussion in town that “there should be a line to the waterworks, also, to be used in event of a fire.”
According to Grady, “In time – and not a long time, either – the lines will be extended throughout the county, and persons can converse with others at a distance as readily as if they were in the same room. The importance of this rapid and accurate communication cannot be overestimated.
Telephone and utility lines damaged after a 1902 storm. This photo was taken on Main Street in Westminster looking east from the intersection with Court Street. For years after the telephone was introduced in Carroll County in 1884, there was a keen newspaper interest in anything about the telephone. The photograph was taken by Mitchell’s Gallery of Westminster and was donated to the Historical Society by Mrs. Robert K. Billingslea, Sr. It was a part of the J. Leland Jordan Collection, which was a gift of the Commissioners of Carroll County in 1954. (Courtesy photo)
“When the lines are up business will be facilitated and increased; crime will decrease, and law breakers will have less chance of escaping. To enumerate the advantages, however, would require great space, and we will only add that the business establishment that fails to have telephone connection will, to use a common expression, ‘get left.’”
By 1895 there were several telephone companies in Carroll County that aggressively competed against each other. The American Sentinel reported on Nov. 27, 1895, that the “The Chesapeake and Potomac Company has thirty-two phones in use in this county, and the subscribers all had the pleasure of hearing [a] concert as it was transmitted on the wires. … A number of gentlemen in this city enjoyed the pleasure of listening to a phonographic concert, over the long distance telephone, at the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Exchange, in the Wantz building, on Monday evening.”
Grady further reported in 1937, “The stability of Westminster as a good town in which to live is demonstrated by the succeeding generations of the first subscribers to the telephone service having remained there, and by the earlier business firms surviving the changes and the chances of the years. The First National Bank, the Union National Bank, the Farmers and Merchants Bank and the Westminster Savings Bank were among the first users. They all carry on with the assistance of their telephones in 1937. A fact that loudly bespeaks the stability of Carroll County.”
A portion of this discussion of the history of the telephone in Carroll County has been published in the past.
Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. His Time Flies column appears every Sunday. Email him at [email protected].
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