Kitzmiller, Maryland is located on the border between Garrett County,
Maryland, and Mineral County, West Virginia. Garrett County, originally
part of Allegany County, was settled in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
by German immigrants as competition for tobacco and farm land grew in the
Chesapeake-Tidewater region and new land was needed. The earliest families
settled primarily in the county’s north-central area, due to the good farmland
found there amidst the area’s mountainous terrain. In 1797 Thomas Wilson
II, son of a Scottish immigrant to the United States, moved to what is
now Kitzmiller with his family and later settled in Altamont, located approximately
ten miles from Kitzmiller. In 1801, his son Thomas Wilson III and bride
Susan Bowman purchased a house from Frank Heck. Wilson opened a gristmill
in Kitzmiller the next year, and later opened a sawmill. He had several
children, including a daughter, Emily Wilson, who married Ebenezer Kitzmiller.
During the early 19th century the Bray family also settled in
Kitzmiller, joining the Wilson’s as the first settlers in the Kitzmiller
neighborhood. The Rafter, Hamill, Harvey, Paugh, and Pew families
followed them.
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7/31/2008
