Utica Mills
by “My Father’s Son”
Between Thurmont and Frederick has long laid the humbly-pleasant settlement of Utica Mills, marked on the map today with solely the charming title of Utica. Where such an enchanting name derives (though mystery part of its appeal) led to investigation learning Utica to mean “old town” – appropriately so, honoring the community’s historical value compiling since it was founded 200 years ago.
The center of Utica Mills was just that; a large, stone, gristmill along Fishing Creek constructed by Jacob Cronise in 1815. This mill, once on the corner of present-day Old Frederick and Utica Roads, was accompanied by Mr. Cronise’s house, “the mansion house” as some referred. The Cronise house, a three-bay, end-hall layout built of stone and finished with stucco parging was built between 1815 and 1817- the final year delightfully found on the backside of a mantel during renovations in the 1970s. Now enlarged by multiple additions (also dated), 10616 Old Frederick Road is an admirable residence with 6-over-6 sashes, louvre shutters, and a Tuscan-columned porch running the width of the front elevation part of which is a southward, lower-roofed wing matching the main house in material. Multiple surnames have claimed the deed of the Cronise home including Rogers (1887) – followed by the Stottlemyer, Pearl, Ziebell, and current Jeffries families- the last in their second generation of ownership.
The most prominent of names to reside at this residence are the two granting the mansion its title as the Cronise-Todd House. Jacob Cronise, who built the house and mill, maintained the 74-acre enterprise until 1825. At this time, for the sum of twelve-thousand dollars, Jacob sold to brother Simon Cronise and relocated to operate the former Williams & Stinchcomb Mill at Ceresville Manor alongside where the Monocacy River ferry crossing was situated on the road to Libertytown. Simon Cronise operated the mill until his death and in September 1835 the property was sold to William H. Todd for eight-thousand dollars. Born in Ireland in 1781, Todd moved to Pennsylvania with his parents in 1795. He married Rebecca Barnes of Pennsylvania in 1804 and settled at Utica Mills after his parents’ untimely deaths. William’s brother, James Todd, moved to Creagerstown at this time also, the sibling’s living ten miles apart for the rest of their lives. The Utica Mill was inherited by William H. Todd’s son of the same name and by 1882 was shipping flour to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In 1886 the property was listed for sale, an ad in the Citizen stating the mill to be “located in one of the most productive, healthy, and picturesque sections of the country.” The brick mill, inclusive “11-room stone mansion” and 90-foot Switzer barn were all lost by Todd in 1887 to his mortgagors.
No visible trace of the Cronise gristmill exists today in the pasture south of the Cronise-Todd House. Operated until 1900, the mill was demolished around 1924- the 1910 deed between Rogers and Stottlemyer mentioning the property’s improvements “excepting the old mill building” likely referencing its irreparable condition. At the time of the Maryland State Archive’s 1992 survey, residents of Utica relayed that the mill, in lesser form, is still present at its former site as the stone and rubble of the building were reused to raise Utica Road away from the active levels of Fishing Creek. Also untraceable at the site, though surviving longer than the mill until at least 1927, is the mill-race that broke away from Fishing Creek at a bend upstream from the nearby Utica Rd. covered bridge. This watercourse continued straight from the creek’s twist, running to the rear of the mansion house before flowing south past the mill and cooper shop to rejoin its tributary, powering two “overshot” mill-wheels.
North of the mansion house is the old Utica Mills General Store. Now a single-family home this was previously a two-story log cabin built before 1820 by Cronise as the village Post Office and Stage-stop. Originally on Cronise’s landholdings, this store was separated from the Mansion house at the time of the Jeffries’ 1975 purchase of the Cronise-Todd House from Peter & Betty Ziebell. The Ziebells retained the storehouse and 2.3 acres as their own, divided as to keep a c.1930-40 dairy barn and milk house built by Clarence W. Stottlemyer who lived in the manor-house from 1918 to 1965. Additions and modifications to the storehouse leave it today a long, narrow building mere feet from Old Frederick Road.
Franklin Stottlemyer purchased the Cronise-Todd property of 72 acres in 1910. “The farm at Utica” was sold to his son, aforementioned Clarence W. for $4,500.00 per Franklin’s Will. Franklin’s deed reflects the decrease in acreage by the previous Rogers’ donations of two plots: one to the Board of County School Commissioners for a school house (1891- part of a tract ironically called “The End of Trouble”), and another, adjoining the first; to the Utica Cemetery (1893). Both donated properties lay on the northern edge of Lenhart Road; the way to the stone, Baer farmhouse atop a knoll carved by the encircling Fishing Creek. Though John and Annie (Ramsburg) Baer moved after selling their farm to William and Jessie Lenhart in 1903, their daughter would return nearby when she wed Clarence W. Stottlemyer and lived in the mansion house opposite her parent’s old farm-road. The reputable Lenhart lineage continues to occupy the Baer farm 113 years later.
On the opposite corner of the Baer farm-road from the old school lot (now an extension of the Utica Cemetery) stands the Samuel Clem house. Reportedly built between 1820-40 this small home is erected in the German-vernacular style leading some to believe it may actually date to 1769. The childhood home of Augustus Clem, a forerunner in Frederick County’s print industry, Clem distributed reports like the “Little Sunbeam”, “Weekly Enterprise”, and “Monthly Visitor” from the 1850-90s from a single-level shop located immediately North of St. Paul’s Church. By 1886 Clem also printed the larger “Walkersville Enterprise.”
The grist mill, once the focal point of Utica Mills, was replaced as such in 1891 when the striking “Utica Mills Covered Bridge” was raised over Fishing Creek behind the Cronise-Todd House. This was not a new bridge! The 101-foot Utica Mills bridge is actually a fragment of the once double-span, Burr-arch, 250-foot covered “Devilbiss Bridge” that spanned the Monocacy on Devilbiss Bridge Road. Built in 1843, the original structure was washed away by the same storm causing the infamous 1889 Johnstown Flood. It is told that salvageable debris was gathered from the receded river’s banks and the surviving portion of the bridge dismantled and stored to be re-assembled 1.5 miles (as the bird flies) from its primary location. In 1978 the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places and in December 1996 an extensive, $337,000 restoration begun after an auto-accident exposed severe beetle and termite damage to the susceptible wood.
Utica has many valuable sites beyond the bridge that has long gained it recognition. The place is a perfect medium between city and country life – it’s quiet, open-space calm quickly transformed to the happenings of Frederick City by a short car-ride. In the last 30 years subdivisions like “Utica Mills” and “Mills Manor” have been added paying homage to their location. Many historic structures in proximity to the Cronise-Todd House remain and the majority of the names mentioned here pleasantly honored in the Utica Cemetery; particularly Rebecca Barnes Todd, whose memorial is embellished with a high-relief bouquet of roses & wildflowers and framed in elegant vines.
Layout of Utica Mills based off Maryland Land Records, local accounts, and historic descriptions.
