Founding and name In 1785, a Maryland native named Plummer Ijams moved to Frederick County, having purchased a tract of land called the "Paradise Grant" from the government. His family was originally from
Wales and emigrated to the
Anne Arundel region sometime during the 17th century. The land was approximately southeast of the city of Frederick and cost Plummer one
pound, fifteen
shillings, and four
pence per acre. Plummer established a plantation on his new land, growing primarily
wheat and
barley, with a small number of
slaves. Plummer Ijams Sr. died on June 14, 1796, but his children and their family remained in the area well into the 19th century. In the 1780s and '90s, other settlers (including the Musetter, Montgomery, and Riggs families) established themselves nearby, purchasing land from the government or the Ijams family. One of the most important were the three brothers John, William, and Thomas Duvall, whose tract of land became known as "Duvall's Forest." The Duvalls discovered large deposits of
slate in 1800, and two
quarries were operational by 1812, at least one owned by a man named Gideon Bantz. Veins of this unique blue-green or purple volcanic
"Ijamsville phylite" "lie west and southwest of
Westminster and extend southwest from Frederick County into
Montgomery County" and are primarily responsible for the community's early growth. Around 1831, the early
B&O Railroad asked the Ijams family for permission to construct
railroad tracks through its land. Plummer II accepted on the condition that a
depot also be built to ease the slate transport into the local cities. The B&O christened the heretofore unnamed community "Ijams' Mill and Bantzs' Slate Quarries." On March 13, 1832, four horse-drawn railroad cars traveled through the town on their inaugural journey from
Baltimore to Frederick. In fact, Ijamsville slate was used as roofing material throughout Frederick and even in
Washington, D.C. Resident Chris M. Riggs began a fundraising campaign in 1854 to construct a church in Ijamsville. Local
Episcopalians donated a land lot to the cause, farmer Charles Hendry
fired the bricks, and the women of the town made and sold quilts to raise the needed funds. The roof was made of Ijamsville phyllite. On July 25, 1858, Ijamsville's Methodist Episcopal Church was officially dedicated and received its first two
ministers—Reverends Thomas B. Sergeant and T. M. Reese—who happened to be
Lutheran. The church's basement served as the local
school until 1876, when a building adjacent to the church was constructed to house the few students. Professor Chasuble McGill Luckett was the school's first teacher, with other teachers (including some women form the Riggs family) riding in on horseback to help when needed. The school reportedly took $509.98 to operate each year.
Transition to agriculture With the onset of the
Civil War, the demand for slate dropped off sharply, as did the available workforce. To compound the problem, the B&O railroad ran an
injunction against the local quarry owners for undermining their tracks. These two factors led to the closing of many of the town's quarries in 1870. An outside mining company, the Maine Co., attempted to start a mine in Ijamsville but gave up by 1874. With the end of mining, Ijamsville transitioned into an agricultural town. At the time, land cost $35–50 an acre. Farmers could produce 15-30 bushels of wheat, 30-50 barrels of corn, ½ ton of tobacco, and two tons of hay an acre, per season. The local farms changed hands several times, but remained mostly unchanged through the 1940s. The church was run in the late 1800s by a
Baptist, progressive leader, and former
forty-niner named Isaac T. McComas. Other important residents of the period included Mrs. Eliza Ijams, who was inspired by her two deaf children (Mary and Plummer III) to become involved with the
Maryland School for the Deaf located in nearby Frederick City. The school's annual tuition was $100 and specialized in science of all levels. Enrollment peaked at about 40 students, and the school continued to offer lessons even after its official "closure" in 1888. An interesting local legend held that Mrs. Thompson was the
ghostwriter of the romance novel
Lorna Doone while she lived in
England. Though Lady Ellen and some of the couple's students often claimed that she was the book's true author and requested that her relative,
R. D. Blackmore, publish it under his name, no definitive proof was ever given for their story. The Westport Paving Brick Company of
Baltimore reopened one of the slate quarries from 1913-1937; company records from 1922 show 120 tons of slate and
shale being shipped daily. After about 1925, the easy availability of
automobiles led to the death of the railroad. The Ijamsville depot was bypassed, though the actual railroad tracks were still open to non-local traffic. As a result, when the Westport Company's operation closed in 1937, there were no longer any advantages to mining in a small town like Ijamsville, and no quarry has existed in the town since. The center of the town's social life remained the
Methodist church and its Homemakers' Club. The church converted the old public school building into a social hall upon its closure in 1932. From that time on, Ijamsville residents were serviced by local
Frederick County schools (in particular those of nearby
Urbana, Maryland). A large patch of grass sandwiched between a hill and the railroad tracks known as Moxley Field housed the Ijamsville champion
baseball team. Over the years, the team became "almost like a farm team for the
Orioles" and was one of the town's main attractions, now that the mining industry had been supplanted by agriculture. One business established during the late 1800s became Ijamsville's other attraction. Christopher Riggs constructed the physical building in 1862 for use by Welsh mining families. Riggs's son, Dr. George Henry Riggs (a local family
physician and
psychiatrist), converted the structure into a "
sanatorium for nervous and mental health disorders" in 1896. The hospital was called "Riggs' Cottage" or, more formally, "Riggs Cottage Sanitariym for Nervous and Mental Diseases". The hospital changed owners at least once during its lifetime, as records show its purchase in 1939 by a Dr. and Mrs. McAdoo. The post office was closed down in 1983 (postal services were then provided out of
Monrovia, MD). Without a post office, railroad depot, or other businesses in town, there was nothing to attract new farmers to the area. As the older farm owners died and their children moved closer to city centers, more and more land was put up for sale. By 1989, developers were making purchases of as much as $1 million's worth of land at a time. After the construction of
wells and
septic fields, the area developed rapidly. Houses were built and filled with families looking for work in nearby Frederick, Baltimore, or Washington, D.C. By 2000, Ijamsville was divided into three areas: the original town center by the railroad tracks, with a few historic homes, left intact; several large family farms raising mostly
cows, corn, and
soybeans; and large sections of
suburban-style homes. New companies came into the area to tap the growing
upper middle class market in Ijamsville and nearby
Urbana. The businesses they established included
golf courses and a
petting zoo. Two religious centers were established as well: a
Roman Catholic,
Jesuit Saint Ignatius of Loyola parish (originally from
Buckeystown, MD and with another church building in Urbana); and the
Hindu Sri Bhaktha Anjaneya Temple, the "only [Hindu] temple in the United States dedicated to Bhaktha Anjaneyar|[Bhaktha]-Anjaneya." The temple was completed in late 2014-early 2015, while the church has stood since the 1980s and undergone several expansions to accommodate new parishioners. A
Quaker school named Friends Meeting School (FMS) moved to the area in 1997, sharing space with Pleasant Grove
United Methodist Church, also located in Ijamsville. FMS was originally established for
preschool through
6th grade, but expanded until it reached its current size in 2013, serving pre-K through
12th grade. As the school expanded, it purchased and moved onto land near
Windsor Knolls Middle school. ==Education==