The beginning of the recorded historical past of the northern Frederick County is closely tied to rivalry between England and France. When the primary Europeans settled within the Emmitsburg area, in the early eighteenth century, the English authorities was casting a nervous eye at French moves to assert the interior of the American continent. France's holdings there threatened to limit English affect to the coastal strip east of the Allegheny mountains, and, thereby, stop English dominance of northern America.
To counter French encroachment, the English authorities began an active coverage of selling settlement of the wilderness. Settlers have been organized into groups of hundreds. The primary settlers, within the area below lively research by the Higher Emmitsburg Area Historic Society, have been collectively referred to 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 Their settlement encompassed land from simply north of present day Thurmont to the outdated Pennsylvania border, from the Monocacy to the Catoctin Mountains.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 diseases akin to small pox. As a result, the land occupied by the Tom's Creek Hundred was almost devoid of Indians and, therefore, ripe for settlement by the English.
Whereas the Royal government opened the land to all settlers for a nominal charge, it favored a few select aristocrats by offering them massive tracts of land in reward for their assist of the Crown. One of the earliest land barons in the valley was John Diggs.
Diggs, a grandson of the Royal Governor of Virginia, was a wealthy Catholic who performed a dominant role in the sometimes-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's now center Pennsylvania. This remained a dispute that was not settled until the Mason-Dixon line was laid out.
Diggs believed his right to land, primarily 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 present day Emmitsburg. In July 1743, Diggs managed to obtain title to 3 tracts of land within the raise alert Emmitsburg area. Diggs' land grabbing was quickly mimicked by others, albeit in a smaller fashion.
Sadly for the land speculators and the settlers, the race between the French and English for the interior of the continent quickly acquired out of hand. In 1754, the English were not solely preventing the French, but their Indian allies as effectively. Whereas little combating occurred within the Emmitsburg space, Indian raiding events periodically moved through the world. As a result, many settlers withdrew to the relative safety of coastal cities.
With the end of the Seven Years Struggle in Europe, during which France ceded sovereignty of the inside of North America to the English, settlers as soon as again forged their eyes toward the wilderness. Some fled from severe religious persecution, others from the oppression of civil tyranny, and still others were attracted by the hopes of liberty under the milder influence of English colonial rule. However for the best half, the settlers flocked to the American continent within the hopes of abandoning the crushing poverty of their homeland and for the prospect to own land and prosper via their