I finally got around to checking out “The War Came by Train”
exhibit at the B&O Railroad museum in Ellicott City yesterday and I walked
away with a new understanding of the origins of the Village
of Harpers Choice in Columbia . It was once part of the farm of Lt. Robert
Goodloe Harper Carroll, Aide De Camp to Confederate General Richard Ewell. He
went south at the beginning of the war with the Howard Dragoons and saw action
in Virginia and Maryland, including the retreat from Gettysburg . He resigned from his post in
November of 1864, almost four months prior to Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865.
Harper, as he was generally referred, returned to his farm in
HoCo where he lived until he died in 1915. He was the great grandson
of Charles Carroll of Carrollton .
