A Less-Than-Glorious Arrival in Lutherville By Herb Harwood

Consumer warning: The following is a family legend that I've been unable to verify through any local history sources, and I've tried the best of them. Since this side of my family was prone to dramatizing themselves, it could well be exaggerated, but likely there's at least some truth to it.

My great-grandfather, John Jacob Detwiller, was a Swiss immigrant who came over in the 1870s and, among other businesses, got involved in manufacturing fireworks in Jersey City, New Jersey.  He did quite well in the business, and in fact, his firm, “Detwiller & Street, Pyrotecnists”, provided the fireworks—14 tons of them—for the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883.  John Jacob had two sons, Charles and Clarence, who were opposite in personality—Charles (my grandfather) was quite shy and retiring; Clarence, (my great uncle) was ebullient and showy.

In 1899 or so, “Uncle” Clarence was courting a Lutherville girl and would visit her from Jersey City by train, taking the PRR or B&O to Baltimore and then a local on the Pennsy's Northern Central line out to Lutherville.  According to the legend, on one trip he managed to persuade the Northern Central train crew to mount some of his father’s fireworks on the engine and set them off as the train arrived in Lutherville.  As planned, the train chuffed in spewing some of Great-Grandfathers spectacular creations.  It was doubtless a gloriously impressive arrival except for one unintended consequence: the station was set afire and promptly burned down, leaving John Jacob to pay for a new one.  In the end, though, it was worth it to Clarence, since he married the girl in 1900.  (And indeed, perhaps the display was supposed to celebrate their engagement.)  What John Jacob said to Clarence and what the superintendent said to the train crew afterward, however, are now lost; but perhaps it is not to too difficult to reconstruct the dialogs.

Fact check: Family lore insists that it was the “station” that burned, but since the actual Lutherville station building was a solid stone structure that still resolutely stands alongside the present light rail line, it's more likely that the victim was the small wood passenger shelter on the east side that served westbound trains.  That might make sense, since it would have been next to the arriving train.