History
The Town of Somerset has a long & rich history with some of that history displayed here. Below you can find a brief history of Somerset covering some of our greatest milestones while also taking a look at past mistakes so we may never repeat them as we strive to be an inclusive, safe community for all. This brief history includes a timeline, a full list of Mayors, a list of Town honorees, & documents for further reading produced by Somerset residents past & present, the History & Archives Committee, & the Montgomery County Historical Society.A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOMERSET: BEGINNINGS, MILESTONES, & OTHER ITEMS OF NOTE1890 - Five Department of Agriculture scientists worked in the red brick mansion still standing in what used to be farmland in Norwood Park. They bought 50 acres of exhausted tobacco fields for $19,000 ($535,000 today). They were distinguished in their fields: Harvey Wiley, founder of the Food & Drug Administration, was one; another, David Salmon, is remembered in the name of Salmonella bacteria. The five founded the Somerset Heights Colony Company. They laid out a street grid - Dorset Avenue, Cumberland Avenue, Warwick Place, Surrey Street, & Essex Avenue - & proposed "a suburb after the very pleasant ones of Boston."
1891 - Dr. Wiley built the first house, 4722 Dorset Avenue, near the corner at Surrey Street. His companions followed. Two of their five houses survive, both extremely renovated: 4722 & 4728 Dorset Avenue.
1900 - The census recorded 170 residents, among them eight Black & two White live-in servants.
1905 - When Somerset had grown to 35 homes, its residents applied to Montgomery County for municipal status.
1906 - A charter was granted. The Town of Somerset was born. Its new Council approved a first budget: $511 ($17,000 today), mostly for maintenance & lighting of the dirt streets. The 54 houses built on the initial street grid are now recognized as a Historic District, with the surviving 31 built before 1915 given special status.
Somerset today is a multinational & multiracial community. Its earliest families, though, were not exempt from the prejudices of their day. Residents joined Friendship Heights in angry protests against a plan advertised by four Black investors to develop a suburb comparable to Somerset for "colored people," stretching up the east side of Wisconsin Avenue as far as Grafton Street. The suburb was to carry the name of that tract of land, Belmont. Elbert Richmond, Somerset's very new Town Marshal, twice arrested the principal investor; each time, a local justice of the peace released him. The Belmont project collapsed in 1909; Belmont's name was subsequently expunged from Montgomery County property records.
1913 - The Town approved a sum "not to exceed $10" ($300 today) to build a bridge over Little Falls Branch. Children had to ford the stream on their way to school in rented rooms in Mr. Shoemaker's house in Friendship Heights. Later, they went to Mrs. Givens' school near Chevy Chase Circle. Parents took turns shepherding them.
The Town's first speed limit was established: 12 mph.
1917 - The Department of Agriculture established a Bee Culture Station at 4823 Dorset Avenue. A surviving photograph shows at least three dozen sizable hives in the garden. Pioneering apiary research was done there, while Dorset Avenue residents endured occasional stings. The work moved to Beltsville in 1937.
1921 - Women attained the right to vote in Town elections.
1924 - The Town issued $40,000 ($593,000 today) in bonds to begin paving the streets. Somerset Women's Club organized a Town Carnival to celebrate. When paving was completed the next year, the speed limit rose to 15 mph.
1926 - The U.S. Postal Service agreed to deliver mail to individual addresses in Somerset.
1928 - Edna Miller Gish became the first woman elected to the Council.
Somerset's first school opened on the old site of Joshua Callahan's farm. The school had eight rooms & separate entrances for boys & girls. There were 138 pupils (mostly from outside Somerset), six teachers, & a 25-year-old principal, Kathryne M. Bricker, who stayed for 37 years. When she retired, the Town gave her a trip around the world.
1940 - The Town's population had doubled to 399. After much debate, keeping cattle, horses, & pigs within the Town was banned. Free roaming chickens were banned two years later.
1943 - The Bergdoll family, from Philadelphia, owned most of the land to the south of Somerset's initial street grid. The family applied to erect apartment blocks. So began a more than 40-year struggle to maintain single-family housing in Somerset & avoid the construction of high-rises or commercial properties along our side of Wisconsin Avenue.
1946 - Rebuffed, the Bergdoll family sold 115 acres south of Essex Avenue in four auctions. Successful bidders had to sign pledges to sell houses only to "those of the Caucasian race" (although "partial occupancy... by domestic servants" was to be allowed). What Somerset children called "the great woods" were slowly felled, and the street plan of Lower Somerset took shape: Falstone Avenue, Grantham Avenue, Trent Street, Uppingham Street, & Greystone Street.
1950 - The United States Census (whose details were released in 2022) recorded 429 residents in 129 houses. Only 15 residents were born in Maryland; others came from elsewhere in the United States & from 21 foreign countries (four diplomatic families among them). Several Somerset wives were pursuing their own careers: among them were two physicians, an economist, a journalist, & a celebrated sculptor. Only three people of color were recorded: one cook & three maids, all Black.
1954 - Philip Elman, of Cumberland Avenue, wrote the Federal government's brief in the historic
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case, when the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation "with all deliberate speed" (Elman's phrase). Elman was an attorney in the Department of Justice's Office of the Solicitor General, which takes the lead in government litigation before the Supreme Court. He had been an editor of the
Harvard Law Review & had clerked for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
1955 - In the name of desegregation, Montgomery County shut River Road School. Since 1912, this had been the sole source of education (elementary only) for local Black children, many of whose families had their homes in what is now Kenwood. The two-room schoolhouse, built in 1926 to replace a 1912 wood hut, was where the tall radio mast rises now behind McDonalds. Displaced, several of the children came to Somerset Elementary, its first Black students.
1957 - The first edition of the Town Journal was published. Its editor was
Washington Post columnist Hobart Rowen.
1960 - The Town's population, propelled by the development of Lower Somerset, had grown to 1,444.
Somerset fought to defeat plans to develop commercial properties along its Wisconsin Avenue border. Both the Hecht Company department store & the Yater Medical Clinic tried to build on the southern corner of Dorset & Wisconsin.
1961 - Somerset School's first Black teacher, Shirley Gordon, arrived. She taught 2nd & then 1st grades. Ms. Gordon moved on in 1966.
196 - Recognizing that development of the final 30-acre expanse bordering Lower Somerset could not be staved off forever, Somerset's then-Mayor Warren Vinton reached a compromise with developers. In exchange for ending costly legal battles, Somerset gained 12 acres of the land, primarily woodland along Little Falls Branch. It was named Vinton Park in his honor.
1965 - The Town purchased the "Little Red House" at 4510 Cumberland Avenue to serve as the Town Hall. Built in 1902, the house aptly fits our historic town.
1966 - Friendship Heights' first high-rise block was erected, the 17-story Irene on Willard Avenue, looming over Warwick Place & Uppingham Street.
1971 - Somerset Pool opened - built on an additional five acres of land extracted from the developers by then-Mayor Jerald Goldberg.
1977 - Somerset worked to shore up its Wisconsin Avenue boundary, buying the rectangle between Dorset & Cumberland Avenues. Its name, Capello Park, honors James Capello, the Town's Clerk-Treasurer from 1940-1976.
1981 - Somerset acquired the last crucial tract. With much help from the State Board of Public Works, the Town bought the 1.79-acre plot on the southern corner of Dorset & Wisconsin Avenues, the site that the Hecht Company & the Yater Medical Clinic had tried to develop.
1988 - The first speed bumps were laid on Dorset & Cumberland Avenues.
As the first of three Somerset House high-rise apartment blocks was going up, Town residents feared their occupants would, by sheer numbers, come to control the Town government. In a referendum, they voted four-to-one to de-annex those acres, redrawing Somerset's new southern boundary to straddle Little Falls Branch.
1989 - A major windstorm toppled many trees, downed overhead power lines, damaged dozens of houses, blocked the Dorset Avenue & Cumberland Avenue entrances to the Town, & caused a six-day power outage.
1997 - A survey by parents found that of the school's 391 students, 121 came from 45 foreign countries.
2003 - After multiple additions and renovations - 1949, 1951, 1958, 1971 - the old Somerset Elementary School building was finally demolished, to be replaced by the present structure.
2006 - Somerset celebrated its centennial with trolley-bus tours of the historic district, tours of historic houses, banners on our streetlights, & the creation of Founders' Park.
2012 - The Pool got a new pool house. Its open & airy design won the architects & general contractor numerous awards.
2019 - The Town began a multi-year structural renovation of our beautiful but aging Town Hall. Ties were installed to bind its bulging exterior walls. First-floor offices were updated, & the big meeting room was illuminated by tall windows. In what had been an attic, a new second floor now housed an office for the Mayor, plus a room for the Town's archives.
2020 - Somerset rallied its community spirit to cope with coronavirus. There were community mask-making efforts, drive-by celebrations of graduations & birthdays, virtual Town Council & committee meetings, Zoom candidate forums, mail-in ballots, & a virtual Fourth of July celebration.
2023 - Somerset residents voted to lower the voting age for Town elections to 16, & the Town Council created the Somerset Youth Council for high school students in grades 9 through 12. The goal of the Council is to give Somerset's youth the chance to have a real impact on the community, to learn about local government, & to have a voice in shaping our Town's future.
Somerset launched a new & much improved website & established its social media presence on the Town of Somerset website, the Town Pool website, Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Threads, LinkedIn, YouTube, & Nextdoor. Other platforms would follow.
The 2020 U.S. Census gave a snapshot of who we have become:
- Multinational: One in six of our residents is foreign born, of whom just under half have chosen to become U.S. citizens. One in six residents speaks a language other than English in their homes.
- Multiracial/Multiethnic: While predominantly White, our residents include 102 who describe themselves as of "mixed race," 43 select Asian, 19 select Black, & two are from Pacific Islands; 94 select Hispanic or Latino as their ethnicity.
- Well Educated: More than nine in ten adults have a bachelor's degree or higher; two-thirds have gone on to earn a graduate or professional degree.
- At Work: One in five adults work in Federal, state, or local government; the same proportion works in the non-profit sector; one in five runs their own business. Close to a third work from home.
THE MAYORS OF SOMERSET
- Charles A. Crampton (Served from 1906-1912)
- Jesse E. Swigart (Served from 1910-1912)
- Warren W. Biggs (Served from 1912-1916)
- Charles S. Moore (Served from 1916-1919)
- J. William Stohlman (Served from 1919-1938)
- W. B. Horne (Served from 1938-1940)
- Irvin M. Day (Served from 1940-1954)
- William F. Betts (Served from 1954-1956)
- Frederick W. Turnbull (Served from 1956-1958)
- Warren Jay Vinton (Served from 1958-1969)
- Jerald F. Goldberg (Served from 1969-1975)
- Walter J. Behr (Served from 1975-1982)
- A. Eugene Miller (Served from 1982-1986)
- Walter J. Behr (Served from 1986-2008)
- Jeffrey Z. Slavin (Has served since 2008)
TOWN HONOREESSomerset has thrived thanks to the efforts of so many of its residents. The community has a tradition of recognizing those who have made special contributions by naming features of the Town in their honor.
- Mayor Warren Vinton & Clerk-Treasurer James Capello were the first to be noted, with Vinton Park & Capello Park.
- A plaque at the Pool commemorates Mayor Jerald Goldberg, who oversaw construction of the Pool on land he helped to acquire.
- Walter Behr, Somerset's longest-serving Mayor, marshalled the effort to exclude Somerset House high-rises from the Town's boundaries. Walter Behr Path runs, fittingly, alongside the Town Hall, & commemorates his three decades as Mayor. In addition, remembering Mayor Behr's passion for tennis, our courts also bear his name.
- A plaque on the bench by the pool commemorates Alan Proctor, who as a Councilmember energetically oversaw, among other advances, the design & building of our new pool house.
- Judy Frankel's long service on the Council is remembered in the Town Hall's archive room.
- Barbra Zeughauser's & Franny Peale's work on restoring our Town Hall is commemorated in its main meeting room.
- Marnie Shaul's years as a Councilmember & Council President are honored by Marnie Shaul Path. Winding up from the Pool to Friendship Heights, the path symbolizes Marnie's tireless work connecting Somerset to our neighboring communities.
- Two benches have been donated in memory of Somerset residents. First, on the corner of Wisconsin & Dorset Avenues, is a bench dedicated to Hobart & Alice Rowen. Second, on Dorset Avenue near Founders' Park, is a bench dedicated to Tarunica V. Dehejia.
EMBARK ON A JOURNEY OF SOMERSET'S HISTORYThe Town of Somerset is fortunate that through the ages Somerset residents have understood the importance of uncovering & preserving Somerset's heritage. They have volunteered their time to preserve memories, research archives, & collect & save the dust-laden artifacts & ephemera that have become our primary sources. The efforts of these residents have helped us better understand the human experience that has led to our current life in Somerset. The information on this website is from primary source material in the Town's archives, material from Montgomery County Historical Society's Somerset Archives, & three different histories written about the Town.
The first history was written by Dorothy O'Brien who prepared a booklet in 1956 for the 50th anniversary of the Town being chartered; the second history, building on the first, was written, assembled by & published into a pamphlet by Helen Jaszi, Joan Weiss (the editor) & Donna Williamson in celebration of Somerset's 75th anniversary, the Diamond Jubilee in 1981. Other Somerset historians contributing to the document were Robert Balcom, Dorothy O'Brien & Hobart Rowen with many others offering support; & finally, the third history, building on the first & second, was written by Lesley Anne Simmons with Donna Kathleen Harman in celebration of the Town's centennial,
Somerset: One Hundred Years a Town.
