When the Howard Dragoons mounted infantry unit headed south to join forces with the Confederacy during the Civil War, the Patapsco Guard stayed in Ellicott's Mills to defend the Union.
What is now Ellicott City was a town divided by war, said Mike Radinsky, who will give a talk, "Coffee and Cavalry," on the impact of Howard County's split allegiances Saturday, Feb. 21, at the Ellicott City Station of the B&O Railroad Museum.
Radinsky, an Ellicott City resident, is a fixture in full Union Army uniform most weekends at the museum, located by the railroad tracks and the Patapsco River at the base of Main Street.
With a recording of Morse code playing in the background, he is stationed in an authentic re-creation of an office belonging to the provost marshal, a powerful law enforcement officer who directed military police in wartime.
The Patapsco Guard's flag is mounted on a wall behind the provost marshal's desk that sits among Civil War-era replicas, along with sample contents from an infantryman's knapsack spread across the window sill of the granite building that dates to 1831.
"I prefer interacting one-on-one to re-enacting a battle scene that can only be watched from 100 yards away," said the museum volunteer as a freight train rumbled past. "Re-enactments provide a sense of what a battle was like, but not of a soldier's life like living history does."
Nearly a dozen years ago Radinsky took his family to Gettysburg, Pa., to see its Remembrance Day Parade, held each November to commemorate President Abraham Lincoln's visit in 1863 to dedicate the National Cemetery and his delivery of the Gettysburg Address.
Radinsky's daughter, Sarah, who was 11 at the time, was mesmerized by the spectacle, he recalled, especially the female re-enactors in their period garb as they handed out flowers.
She turned to him and said, "Dad, we've got to do this."
And so they did. The entire family, including Radinsky's wife, Betsy, and son, Jacob, participated together in re-enactments for about seven years. While his children eventually turned to other interests, Radinsky's passion for sharing living history continued to grow.
He still participates in several regional re-enactment events each year and in Howard County Historical Society programs, but Radinsky draws the most satisfaction from volunteering as a living historian at the Ellicott City Station.
It is the oldest surviving railroad station in the United States, and was the original terminus of the first 13 miles of commercial railroad in the nation.
"As Ellicott City has grown, many residents moving here don't realize that this is in their backyards," he said. "It's a gem of a museum."
Radinsky's talk is part of "The War Came by Train," the museum's Civil War sesquicentennial tribute that incorporates living history demonstrations and exhibits, which will continue through December.
"Mike does a great job of highlighting the little-known chapters of Ellicott City's history," said Amelia Youhn, the museum's assistant manager. "He's able to tie those pieces into Howard County, Maryland and U.S. history so you gain a broader understanding of how they all fit together in the big picture."
As in other border states during the Civil War, Maryland's sympathies were split between the North and the South, and Ellicott's Mills was no exception.
"Ellicott's Mills was divided in its politics, and those deeply held divisions resulted in neighbors fighting and dying on both sides," Radinsky said. "You couldn't trust the people you'd grown up with. You either ended up not speaking or on bitter terms."
Oakland Manor, now in Columbia, was home to Capt. George Gaither, commander of the Howard Dragoons. The cavalry unit was composed mostly of men and boys from wealthy families, some of whom were slaveholders, Radinsky said.
The Patapsco Guard was led by Capt. Thomas McGowan Jr., whose father owned the Patapsco Hotel across the street from the railroad station.
To prevent the Confederates from sabotaging key points along the railroad in Howard County, the Union Army stationed troops to guard the Thomas Viaduct in Elkridge and the B&O Railroad Station in Ellicott's Mills for the duration of the war, according to the county's tourism website.
"Every family had someone serving in the war or knew someone who was," Radinsky said. "Every family was touched by the war, which had 1 million casualties. These were the men who were killed, missing or wounded, and some towns had their entire male populations wiped out and went under."
Worse, perhaps, was that the war did not resolve racial issues, he said, noting that there was a lynching in Ellicott City in 1885, 20 years after the Civil War.
Radinsky said Ellicott's Mills could have become a mess if not for the Ellicott brothers, who changed the local staple product from tobacco, which at the time required slaves to work the farms, to wheat.
That change, Radinsky said, "made for fewer slaveholding families in Howard County."
Even so, Maryland didn't outlaw slavery until November 1864. It was the first state to voluntarily do so, nearly two years after the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 freed slaves in states that had seceded from the Union and over a year before the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery in December 1865.
Radinsky takes seriously his responsibility as a living historian to be well versed in the events he retells to museum visitors.
"If I can't answer someone's question, I tell that person what books to check to find more information," he said.
Among the works he recommends are "Battle Cry of Freedom," a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by James M. McPherson, and "The Civil War in Maryland" and other books by prominent Marylander Daniel Carroll Toomey.
He also suggests watching Ken Burns' "The Civil War," a documentary that originally aired on PBS.
Radinsky says he especially enjoys speaking with children who visit.
"My focus is on sparking interests in kids so they want to learn more history," he said. "That can lead to more people being open to historic preservation in the future."
If you go
"Coffee and Cavalry" will take place from 11:30 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 21, at the Ellicott City Station, 2711 Maryland Ave. Coffee and light refreshments will be served, and a question-and-answer session will follow the presentation. The talk is free with paid admission to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum. Fees are: adults, $8; seniors 60 and older, $7; children ages 2 to12, $6; and children under 2, free. Information: 410-461-1945 or go to borail.org.