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A Laurel Founder's Life
 Laurel        Civil War     Japan

June-December 2004

Introduction

Early Years: (1804-1834)

Laurel Years (1835-50)

A Life in Transition

1851-1859

Civil War (1860-65)

Department of Agriculture (1866-1871)

Japan (1871-1875)

Final Years (1875-1885)

Credits & Acknowledgements

Resources

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The Laurel Years:  1835-1850
A Monumental Cornerstone and
a Presidential Visit
The Laurel Years

Horace Capron's Laurel:
An Orderly Village
Agriculture:
Birth of A Lifelong Passion

A Monumental Cornerstone and Presidential Visit

Leaving Laurel

 

History of the Washington Monument:
 Laying the Cornerstone
 
 
 

President Zachary Taylor

President Zachary Taylor
 
Dilapitated Assembly Rooms c. 1907. Photo by Bert Sadler. c) Laurel Historical Society
The Assembly Rooms as they looked circa 1907. During Capron's time and for many years after, The Assembly Rooms were the center of Laurel's social life. Photo by Bert Sadler.c. 1907
 
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A Monumental Cornerstone

Horace Capron, who was then a member of the Maryland Militia, attended the laying of the Washington Monument Cornerstone on July 4, 1848. The monument would not be completed until February, 1885 after construction was interrupted during the Civil War.
 

A Presidential Visit

President Zachary Taylor visited Laurel in July, 1849.

His visit was supposed to be a vacation, but he was discovered by the press, and office seekers descended on the town.

Taylor visited Capron's farm and the mill.

The community threw a Grand Ball in his honor in the Assembly Rooms, attended by Laurel's leaders and mill workers

"Turning to me he [the President] remarked...that he understood...he was to meet the operatives of the place....I assured him that every individual present...he had witnessed the day before engaged in some part of the work he had inspected. " Horace Capron Autobiography p. 74.