Tag: Bethesda MD

Wikipedia says: Bethesda is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which in turn took its name from Jerusalem’s Pool of Bethesda.

Bethesda is located in a region populated by the Piscataway and Nacotchtank tribes at the time of European colonization. Fur trader Henry Fleet became the first European to visit the area, reaching it by sailing up the Potomac River. He stayed with the Piscataway tribe from 1623 to 1627, either as a guest or prisoner (historical accounts differ). Fleet eventually secured funding for another expedition to the region, and was later granted proprietary rights to 2,000 acres in the nascent colony and became a member of Maryland’s colonial legislature. Raids from the Senecas and Susquehannock resulted in the creation of the Maryland division of Rangers in 1694 to patrol the frontier.

Most settlers in colonial Maryland were tenant farmers who paid their rent in tobacco, and colonists continued to expand farther north in search of fertile land. Henry Darnall (1645–1711) surveyed a 710-acre (290-hectare) area in 1694 which became the first land grant in Bethesda. Tobacco farming was the primary way of life in Bethesda throughout the 1700s. The city avoided seeing action during the Revolutionary War, although it became a supply region for the fledgling Continental Navy. The establishment of Washington, D.C. in 1790 deprived Montgomery County of its economic center at Georgetown, although the event had little effect on the small farmers throughout Bethesda.

Between 1805 and 1821, Bethesda became a rural way station after development of the Washington and Rockville Turnpike, which carried tobacco and other products between Georgetown and Rockville, and north to Frederick. A small settlement grew around a store and tollhouse along the turnpike by 1862 known as “Darcy’s Store”, named after the store’s owner William E. Darcy. The settlement was renamed in 1871 by postmaster Robert Franck after the Bethesda Meeting House, a Presbyterian church built in 1820. The church burned in 1849 and was rebuilt the same year about 100 yards (91 m) south, and its former location became the Cemetery of the Bethesda Meeting House.

Bethesda did not develop beyond a small crossroads village through the 19th century. It consisted then of a blacksmith shop, a church and school, and a few houses and stores. In 1852, the postmaster general established a post office in Bethesda and appointed Rev. A. R. Smith its first postmaster.