Local Historian Unravels Hyattsville's Past

Change and growth have long been Hyattsville's mantra, from its roots as a stop on the railroad to the fluid façade changes the city has experienced in the past decade.

When John B. Bourne was attending what was then known as Hyattsville High School, the city's face looked a lot different.

"It's easy to notice that the population mix has changed, because when I was a boy you recognized people on the streets because not much changed from day to day," he said Wednesday evening during a lecture at Glenn Dale's Marietta House Museum.

The discussion was part of a series that the Prince George's County Historical Society put on about the history of the area during the month of August. City resident and historian Andra Damron discussed Hyattsville's history on Wednesday.

There were two settlements in the area before Christopher Clark Hyatt became postmaster in 1859. Hyatt was a descendent of an Englishman who came to the area with Lord Baltimore. He bought a store in Bladensburg but soon became upset with the gambling involved with the local stagecoach line, so he moved his store to the area that is now his namesake.

According to Damron – who recently published the Hyattsville "Images of America" book – most of the original people in Hyattsville were native Marylanders. The second-largest population came from Washington, D.C.

Many people worked for the railroad, though some, like the Gasch family, had their own businesses.

In 1850, the Gaschs moved into Hyattsville. Francis Gasch, a cabinetmaker, also built coffins. His sons picked up the undertaker trade after attending mortuary school. The funeral home still exists today on Alt. U.S. Route 1.

By 1880, one fifth of the city's population was black, and some racial tensions were obvious. One of the earliest churches was a break-off of the Methodist Church that continued to believe in the institution of slavery even after the Civil War.

"I think it was possibly a KKK meeting place," Damron said.

During the 1880s, the Heurich and Ager families joined Hyattsville, and in the early 1890s the streetcar stirred the next era of development for the city.

In 1892, there were about 1,600 residents in Hyattsville. At that time in Maryland, only Laurel and Hyattsville had populations of 1,500 and above.

The original Hyattsville fire department – which consisted of a barrel welded to wheels – soon became outdated and the Michael V. Tierney Volunteer Fire Department, complete with a horse-drawn fire truck, was established in 1895.

Throughout the 1900s, Hyattsville developed infrastructure and amenities – like a theater and gas and electric company – to serve its growing citizenry.

In 1929, Rhode Island Avenue opened up to allow traffic to flow through the area without having to cross the local railroad, whose crossing was a site of many accidents, Damron said.

Ed Dabolt, now a West Lanham Hills resident, came to the lecture to hear about the places where he and his father worked when he was a boy. In the 1970s, the Dabolts rehabilitated the "flatiron" building and the former Tesst store building on what is now Baltimore Avenue.

"Hyattsville was just so cool …" he reminisced.