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Moving - Somerset, Maryland

If you are planning to move your family into or out of Somerset, MD, you need a local moving company with an exceptional reputation for getting your belongings from pick up to destination without damages.  Movers USA is that company.  We are a full service moving company offering packing, crating, moving and storage, if needed.  Call Movers USA for a free estimate or you can click here to start your moving process now.

Set down at the turn of the century around an unpaved crossroad in the midst of Maryland tobacco fields, the cluster of new residences there bore little resemblance to the Town of Somerset of today. That crossroad now is known as the intersection of Dorset Avenue and Surrey Street. In 1906, it was merely the center of a fifty-acre parcel of farmland which five government scientists had purchased in 1890. Their plans for the land were described in a story which appeared in the Washington Evening Star of May 17, 1890:
 

"... the scientific men of the Department of Agriculture ... selected a tract consisting of 50 acres of rolling land adjoining the property of General Drum just across the District line in Montgomery County. The company will begin operations by providing the property with a good system of sewerage, a bountiful supply of waste and electric lights for the Georgetown and Tenallytown Electric Railway Company. The lots are to contain no less than one acre, with a view to insuring the building of...a suburb fashioned after the very pleasant ones of Boston and other northern cities."

The land had been part of the original Friendship Tract of over 3,000 acres, a gift in 1713 to two early Maryland colonists. Subsequently, the Tract, which lay to the west of the Rockville Pike, often changed hands. However, a particular unit of land within the Tract remained intact, and early maps show that as early as 1801, and as late as 1878, that particular 211 acres which was known as "Friendship" was the property of a farmer, Richard Williams and his descendants, who continued to live on the acreage.

The price of the fifty acres which was acquired in "Friendship" by the Somerset Heights Colony Company was $19,000. Five short streets were laid out, named for the English counties of Dorset, Warwick, Surrey, Cumberland, and Essex. Covenants required thirty-foot setbacks from front property lines and that partners "build five or more private residences...to cost no less than $2,000 each." The first was occupied in 1893 by Dr. Charles A. Crampton. Several more large frame houses were completed soon at the intersection of Dorset Avenue and Surrey Street. In 1895 the partners subdivided the rest of the tract into one-acre lots, which they distributed among themselves by lot. A promotion brochure prepared by the Company described a unique opportunity for families to live in "tranquility and refinement" on Somerset Heights. By 1905, thirty-five residences had been built and occupied there.

The broad avenues described in the brochure were, however, still only dirt roads. Nor was the "good system of sewerage...bountiful supply of water and electric lights..." yet a reality. The strenuous efforts of the homeowners themselves could remedy some, but not all, of these shortcomings. A Citizens Association built and maintained wood sidewalks to protect shoes and clothing from the ever-present mud, and managed to fill a great many of the holes in the streets. This unevenly shared effort could alleviated part of the problems, but it was impossible by this means to deal with the inadequate surface drainage, improper sewerage, a makeshift waste supply, the need for education and fire protection, not to mention livestock which wandered freely over lawns and gardens. Waste water was drained by gravity to low ground; for sanitary sewerage, residences either used outhouses or were connected to cesspools. Nearby streams received the effluent from all to these arrangements. The Somerset Heights Water and Power Company supplied water to households for a $200 connection fee. A windmill on the summit the hill pumped water from the deep wells on west Cumberland Avenue, up to the holding tank. From there it ran by gravity through shallowly-laid pipes to nearby houses. During freezing weather drinking water often could be had only in buckets.

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