On July 21, 1817, Captain Benjamin C. Howard鈥檚听First Mechanical Volunteers听formed up early in town and marched six miles to the North Point battleground. Accompanying them were wagons conveying the monument blocks to be assembled and dedicated on site that day. The monument鈥檚 construction was directed by Lt. Thomas Towson, a stone mason听鈥渨ho aimed at simplicity and neatness.鈥 With a final application of whitewash it was dedicated to honor Private Aquila Randall a member who was killed in a skirmish just before the Battle of North Point, September 12, 1814. The company was joined by other 5thMaryland Regiment officers at the monument while Captain Howard delivered a modest appropriate address:
鈥溾.I can picture to myself the sensation of those who in far distant days will contemplate this monument鈥nd the melancholy event which has caused our assemblage at this spot鈥his monument which we are now erecting, will stand as a solemn expression of the feeling of us all鈥ut I regret that the spot, which is made classic by the effusion of blood, the sport where the long line stood un-appalled by the system and advances of an experienced and disciplined foe, has been suffered to remain unnoticed. It is here where her citizens stood arrayed soldier鈥檚 garb, that honors to a soldier鈥檚 memory should have been paid. To mark the spot be then our care.鈥︹
The inscriptions on the monument read:
Tucked away in the southeastern corner of 皇冠体育app County, and separated from the rest of Sparrow鈥檚 Point by a creek, Turner Station is where many African American workers at Bethlehem Steel and nearby factories lived with their families from the 1800s up through the present.
New housing was constructed around World War I in Dundalk for white factory workers, but it excluded black workers. Partially as a result, African Americans focused on building their own community. According to local historian and cosmetologist , Turner Station takes its name from Joshua Turner who first purchased the property in the 1800s:
鈥淚t started with a man named Joshua Turner who had purchased this land back in the 1800s and he had purchased it for guano, which is pigeon droppings, and this was [what] fertilized land... There was a lot of farmland near so the fertilizer was to be used for the different orchard farms. I understand there were apple farms and different vegetable farms not too far from here. So Joshua Turner, as I understand, from the records that we had read, had set up a station for the employees that were employed at Sparrows Point and thus this is how the name came about, Turner Station after Joshua Turner.鈥
While Bethlehem Steel built housing for white workers in Dundalk after WWI, they made no investments in housing for black workers in Turner Station. Instead, residents built their own homes and businesses, growing a community outside the oversight of company officials.
Beginning around 1920, development started in the neighborhoods of Steelton Park and Carnegie. Turner Station soon became one of the largest African American communities in 皇冠体育app County. The town reached a peak around WWII when wartime workers at Bethlehem Steel moved to the area. According to local historian Louis Diggs, credit for the self-sufficient community鈥檚 development belongs largely to Mr. Anthony Thomas (1857-1931) and Dr. Joseph Thomas (1885-1963), Anthony Thomas鈥 son.
Two aging union halls on Dundalk Avenue help the story of Baltimore鈥檚 steel industry. In 1942, steel workers had won their right to unionize and established the United Steel Workers鈥 of America. When the two-story tan brick building at the corner of Dundalk Avenue and Gusryan Street was built in 1952, it served as the headquarters for USW locals 2609 and 2610. As both groups grew in size, however, local 2610 split off and constructed a modern new building next door. According to Gay Flynn, a steelworker who lived in Highlandtown and worked at Sparrow鈥檚 Point, many workers recognized the need for a union:
鈥淎 lot of people were afraid to go to the higher-ups and that, to me, is what brought the unions. They have somebody that they can go to and call that鈥檚 on their side. They always used to feel that they had nobody to talk to. We used to have a company union and a lot of people looked at that as being just that, a company union. Everybody thought that that union was for the company.鈥
Once the USW started, some, like Flynn, joined to protect their jobs, whereas others saw the union as a necessary way to protect the gains that workers had made in the labor movement. , a 34-year veteran of Sparrow鈥檚 Point, former shop steward and member of the alternate grievance committee, views the USW, and other unions, this way:
鈥淲ell what I feel is, thank God for unions in America. Because it made me realize that nothing was given freely, everything was born out of struggle. A lot of people today take for [granted] that fact that you get paid vacations. That was something born out of the labor movement鈥攖hat you get paid if you off sick, that you have workers compensation laws, that you have employer provided health insurance, that you have many safeguards in place, all that were met with resistance when lobbied for that we have in place today that a lot of people think that they are etched into the fabric.鈥