Rock Run United Methodist Church. Harford County was a site of early Methodist activity in America. Rock Run, Harford County, Maryland. RL Fifield 2007.
Driving through the countryside anywhere in America, you may pass any number of signs proclaiming towns that no longer exist. My grandfather was in the car sometime in the 1990s, when we were driving on Rock Run Road toward the Susquehanna River. He pointed to a house on the left and said “that used to be the Rock Run Store.” He was born up the road a mile or so on the right, past the Rock Run Methodist Church. He couldn’t pick out the farm that day – perhaps it had been demolished, or memory had distorted its location. Bowmans have lived in the area since at least the 1780s (read a Bowman family probate inventory from Rock Run here). But the road now just looks as if it drives between farms. The industry on the river at the bottom of the hill is gone, including a brewery (read my post on Cox’s Rock Run Beer here). Fragments of a canal and a mill have been worked into a hiking trail along the river. The store is gone. A few farms trim the edges. Markers of effort during the 18th and 19th century are gone.
Here’s an advertisement of some misdirected books belonging to a Rock Run resident that got shipped to the local store. Any genealogists in this area recognize the initials? Gallion family?
