The start of the recorded historical past of the northern Frederick County is closely tied to rivalry between England and France. When the primary Europeans settled in the Emmitsburg area, in the early eighteenth century, the English authorities was casting a frightened eye at French strikes to say the interior of the American continent. France's holdings there threatened to restrict English affect to the coastal strip east of the Allegheny mountains, and, thereby, prevent English dominance of northern America.
To counter French encroachment, the English authorities started an active coverage of promoting settlement of the wilderness. Settlers were organized into teams of tons of. The first settlers, within the area underneath lively research by the Higher Emmitsburg Area Historic Society, were collectively generally known as the Tom's Creek Hundred. Their settlement encompassed land from simply north of present day Thurmont to the outdated Pennsylvania border, from the Monocacy to the Catoctin Mountains.
The Tom Indians, who occupied the Emmitsburg area, had by this time both moved westward or died from European illnesses resembling small pox. In consequence, the land occupied by the Tom's Creek Hundred was practically devoid of Indians and, due to this fact, ripe for settlement by the English.
While the Royal government opened the land to all settlers for a nominal fee, it favored just a few choose aristocrats by offering them giant tracts of land in reward for his or her support of the Crown. One of the earliest land barons within the valley was John Diggs.
Diggs, a grandson of the Royal Governor of Virginia, was a wealthy Catholic who played a dominant function within the typically-bloody border dispute between the Maryland and Pennsylvania governments. With possession of the Chesapeake and the mouth of the Susquehanna, Maryland pressed its declare of what is now middle Pennsylvania. This remained a dispute that was not settled till the Mason-Dixon line was laid out.
Diggs believed his proper to land, based upon his aristocratic standing, entitled him to most of northern and western Maryland. In 1732, Diggs formally claimed, though without any authority, all of the vacant land on the Monocacy and its many branches, which included all of current day Emmitsburg. In July 1743, Diggs managed to receive title to three tracts of land in the Emmitsburg space. Diggs' land grabbing was rapidly mimicked by others, albeit in a smaller vogue.
Unfortunately for the land speculators and the settlers, the race between the French and English for the interior of the continent soon acquired out of hand. In 1754, the English weren't solely fighting the French, but their Indian allies as properly. While little preventing occurred within the Emmitsburg space, Indian raiding events periodically moved by the realm. As a result, many settlers withdrew to the relative safety of coastal cities.
With the end of the Seven Years Warfare in Europe, through which France ceded sovereignty of the inside of North America to the English, settlers as soon as once more forged their eyes toward the wilderness. Some fled from severe spiritual persecution, others from the oppression of civil tyranny, and still others were attracted by the hopes of liberty below the milder affect home security of English colonial rule. But for the best part, the settlers flocked to the American continent within the hopes of abandoning the crushing poverty of their homeland and for the possibility to own land and prosper through their