Your Guide to Buying a Home in Charlestown, MD

Buying a Home in Charlestown, Maryland

Charlestown is located in Cecil County

Charlestown today is a small, water-oriented municipality with a population of about 1,000 people, four marinas, a general store, two restaurants, an elementary school, and a post office. The townspeople are content with it just the way it is.

A two-room school house was erected in 1878 and housed grades one through six until June 14, 1961, when the Board of Education deeded the property to the town. The structure now houses the post office and the Town Hall. The schoolroom clock and the blackboard — with initials and dates carved thereon — are proudly displayed in the Town Hall section.

The original mid-18th-century wharf is no longer standing at Charlestown, but the town has built a reproduction of the wharf at the end of a stone pier that was laid over the remains of the original cribbing for archeological conservation. The wharf serves as a practical reminder of the part that Charlestown and the North East River played in the commercial history of Maryland.

The Tory House is an example of the many structures in Charlestown whose real origins have been cloaked by alter-ations performed over the centuries. Known to have been an 18th-century tavern run by “Tories” and confiscated during the Revolution, older records mention that there was a house at the location “built in the Dutch fashion.” Apparently the early building was partially destroyed and the present two-story, three-bay structure with side-hall and double-parlor plan was built atop the remains. The house and a circa-1870 two-story addition in the rear was restored by Colonial Charlestown, Inc.