Library Record
Images
Metadata
Object ID |
1987.26.01 |
Title |
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Community Telephone Directory 1977-78 |
Object Name |
City Directory/Phone book |
Published Date |
1977 |
Description |
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Community Telephone Directory 1977-78 History of Bethesda-Chevy Chase Ads and advertizing Chamber of Commerce Tax information Phone numbers churches Services, organizations Merchants local schools p. iv HISTORY OF BETHESDA CHEVY CHASE From the whispering footfalls of Indians to the rumble of traffic, the story of Bethesda and Chevy Chase is one of bucolic scenes and pastoral life giving way to the commerce and population that accompany the passage of time. Those highways that we know as Old Georgetown Road and Wisconsin Avenue were once the site of one of the oldest Indian trails in the east. They were the footpaths of the Conoy tribe, part of the Algonquian Confederation that inhabited the area in Maryland close to the Potomac River until the early 1700s. As with all Atlantic Coast Indians, they were part of the cultural division known as Woodland People, principally hunters, fishers and agricultural tribes. Their route, out Old Georgetown Road and south on Wisconsin Avenue, led them to the Potomac River. Along this trail they obtained game and fruit and other edibles as well as materials for their paint and pottery and an abundance of fish from the river. Along part of this same trail in later years went pioneers leaving Maryland to make their way westward. The Madonna of the Trail monument adjacent to the Bethesda Post Office marks the spot where these adventurous people spent their first night out of Georgetown on their trek to the west. There are twelve of these monuments to the pioneer women in states from Maryland to California. The statues are part of the Daughters of the American Revolution National Old Trails project. The area where once the Conoys trod, now comprising Behtesda and Chevy Chase, was originally , part of St. Mary's County, the name given to the entire state by Lord Cecilius Calvert who inherited it from his father, Sir George Calvert Sir George, First Lord Baltimore, died be- fore he had ever seen the vast province his king had given him. Cecilius Calvert sent his brother, Leonard, to establish a colony on his inheritance and named it Terra Maria-Mary Land-to honor Queen Henrietta Maria and to please his benefactor, Charles the First of England, he named the capital St. Mary's City. From their arrival in 1634 the little band who had ventured into this great wilderness enjoyed the religious freedom they had been denied in England, and soon both Catholic and Protestant were established here. Today the descendants of these first settlers in St. Mary's and Charles counties are predominantly members of the Catholic and Anglican communion. The Second Lord Baltimore, who was himself a Catholic, believed that a strong colony could only be established if freedom of religion were encouraged, and the descendants of that little settlement are testimony to the wisdom of his decision. With the formation of Prince George's County the division of the proprietorship was begun in 1695. This was later divided into smaller counties, with Montgomery-this year observing its own bi-centennial-obtaining its own government in 1776 and its boundary with Prince George's in 1786. In 1788 the final change occurred when a sectionof the lower county was taken over to be part of the country's new capital city. Sometime after 1820 a group of Presbyterians whose numbers had swelled to the point where their churches would no longer accomodate them, purchased a site on the Georgetown Frederick then a toll road with one of its booths where the Community Paint and Hardware now stands, to build a new church. Here, in an area called Leeke Forest, they paid Thomas Cramphin a token of one dollar for one acre and built their new house of worship on the west side of the Pike, just north of the present site of the National Institutes of Health. They called this . the Bethesda Presbyterian Church, after the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem where, in biblical times, the lame and the halt were sheltered in one of the five porticos until they could go into the miraculous water and be healed. From the church, the surrounding area eventually took the name of Bethesda. This small stone church served its parishioners for 26 years and then was gutted by fire. To replace it, the congregation in 1850 built a new church of white painted wood, and it is this charming little church that stands today on a hillside on the Pike. On the site of the first church is a graveyard established when the present church was built. Again in 1926 the congregation outgrew the church, and the original is now the Temple Hill Baptist Church. Chevy Chase as it is known today is considerably larger than the original "Chevie Chace" for which Colonel Joseph Belt obtained the patent in 1725. At that time his estate, which he probably named for the ancient Scottish "Ballad of Chevie Chase" comprised 560 acres and included, roughly, the area between present Connecticut Avenue and the east side of Wisconsin Avenue, and from Jones Bridge Road to somewhat below Chevy Chase Circle. His house stood south of the Circle, and it was here that he raised his family. |