Martin Thompson House on Darnestown Road, 1907
Route 28, Darnestown Road Circa 1907 – Martin Thompson House, owned by Lewis Reed’s maternal grandfather. Photo by Lewis Reed.
The home in the photo was owned by James Martin Thompson (1825–1902), Lewis Reed’s maternal grandfather. It was then called “Pleasant Hills”, which was located just opposite of the Thomas Kelly farm. In the early days, it was common practice for a family to give a name to their property. The house was accessed from Darnestown Road by a long tree-lined drive.
Route 28, in Darnestown is depicted in this photo before paving. What is now Route 28 is one of the earliest roads in the county, and was one of the main ways farmers in Poolesville, Darnestown, Dickerson, and Barnesville reached the courthouse in Rockville. Darnestown Road has existed since before the Civil war, and it remained a mud path for years into the automobile age.
Most houses in the Darnestown “Pleasant Hills” area were not very large and most were made of wood rather than brick. According to the 1860 Federal Census, Martin Thompson’s occupations were listed as Carpenter and Farmer living in Darnestown, Montgomery County, Maryland.
This photograph won an honorable mention in a contest sponsored by Rotary International for Lewis Reed.
Rockville B&O Railroad Station, Early 1900s
Rockville B&O Train Station early 1900s. On the left, a horse-drawn carriage has just left the station. Photo by Lewis Reed
Built in 1873, the station was one of several stops along the route between Washington’s Union Station and Point of Rocks where the Metropolitan Branch joined the B&O Main Line of the railroad. Along the route of the railroad were twenty-six stations. In the early days people came to the stations on foot, on horseback, in buggies. Some wives took their commuting husbands to the station in the buggy in the morning and then met the train as it came through in the evening.
Lewis Reed using a tripod and five-by-four box camera to shoot photos of an arriving B&O train.
While the station helped to spur Rockville’s early growth, development pressures would later threaten its existence. In the mid-1970s Metro’s original plans for the Rockville Metro Station and the final phase of construction on the Red Line called for the demolition of the B&O Station which by then was disused and in disrepair. However, Peerless Rockville, then only one year old, brought the station’s plight to the attention of the City and Metro, ultimately negotiating a compromise—the station and its freight house would not be demolished, but instead would be relocated so that a new tenant could be found to occupy the historic buildings, while allowing the Metro construction to continue as planned.
In 1981, the 400-ton station carefully was lifted off of its foundation, moved approximately 30 feet to the south, and reoriented 180 degrees so that the train platform which originally faced the tracks now faced Church Street and the Wire Hardware Store.
Relocating the 400-ton Passenger Station, 1981. Photograph by John Spano via Peerless Rockville
Lewis Reed Shows Off His “Photoshopping” Skills… 100 Years Ago
If you take a look at the state of photography today, such as the advances of digital cameras and the artful image manipulation by Photoshop, it is easy to forget that back in the 1900s photographers couldn’t just go into a computer program and change their images any way they wanted. They did what they could with the tools they had. Double image exposure was one tool Lewis Reed had in his photography tool belt. He was doing crazy things to images and creating humorous effects over 100 years ago. With double exposure technique, you could create certain effects like placing the same person on both sides of a picture simultaneously. Photographs were pieced together in the darkroom from separate photographs.
Below are eight (circa 1920s) photographs from Lewis Reed’s collection that will make you do a double take. No digital manipulation here. (click on photos to enlarge)
A double exposure image of Lewis Reed’s brother, Edgar, seated on both sides of a table.
Lewis Reed standing on both sides of a steamroller
Another double exposure wonderment. Wanna Fight?
Oh No! What on earth are they doing? I don’t know, but this one is epic.
Don’t Shoot! Lewis Reed is standing both front left and front right in this photo
Surrealistic, ghost-like effect of Lewis Reed standing next to a tree in the middle of train track.
More “photoshop” fun. Lewis Reed pushing the same man in baby carriage on both sides of the photo.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane .. no, it’s a man up in a tree!
The Reed Family (Blacksmithing in Darnestown c. 1870)
Philip Reed outside of his Blacksmith Shop in Darnestown, Maryland c. early 1900s. Photo by Lewis Reed
Philip Reed (1845-1918), father of Lewis Reed, was an early settler in Darnestown, Maryland. He was a Blacksmith. Blacksmiths were once important members of the Darnestown community. They provided a vital trade that continued up to the mid-20th century. Born in Darnestown, Maryland on March 17, 1845, he was raised in a family that survived on knowledge and hard work. In 1870, at age 25, his occupation is listed as a Cabinet Maker and Blacksmith. Darnestown residents of that time included a doctor, a merchant, a blacksmith and a wheelwright. It seems Philip Reed may not have considered his primary occupation as a Wheelwright, but I do know that he had a Blacksmith shop on his land and he worked with both cabinet maker and blacksmith skills.
A blacksmith is a metal worker who creates objects from iron or steel by heating the metal and using tools to hammer, bend, and cut it. Civil war armies used blacksmiths to shoe horses and repair things such as wagons, horse tack, and artillery equipment.
A wheelwright is someone who makes and repairs wheels. Early wagon and cart wheels were made of solid wood, but increasingly had iron parts, such as hubs and rims. It would not be unusual for one man to be both a blacksmith and a wheelwright, for wheelwrights were sometimes described as a cross between a carpenter and a blacksmith.
Reed farmhouse and blacksmith shop in Darnestown, MD (Route 118). Photo by Lewis Reed
Reed Photo Collection (1898-1960)
Lewis Reed, founder of Reed Brothers Dodge, was one of the most prolific photographers in Montgomery County at the turn of the 20th century. A self-taught photographer, he used a darkroom set up in his kitchen, sometimes working late at night to develop the negatives.
About This Collection:
Since launching this blog, it has been possible to explore an extraordinary archive: Lewis Reed’s photographs, taken across Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia, and well beyond. The Reed Photo Collection (1898-1960) highlights the images that have been researched and identified, gathered into 200+ blog posts that offer vivid glimpses of everyday life more than a century ago.
Featured subjects range from the Black Rock Grist Mill, Rockville Water Tower, and C&O Canal to the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, Rockville Fair dirt track races, trolley cars, the Wright Brothers’ airplane, and the Quebec Bridge, once called the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Particularly striking are the images documenting the devastation of the 1936 Gainesville, Georgia tornado, one of the deadliest in U.S. history; many photographs in this collection have never before appeared in print.
Lewis Reed’s legacy
Lewis Reed’s photographs have become an essential visual resource for local historians and have appeared in respected publications as well as historical television programs, including American Pickers, Science Channel’s Impossible Engineering, Maryland Public Television, and the PBS American Experience series.
In Montgomery County, his work is woven into the landscape: if you see a historical marker by the roadside, there is a good chance it features one of his images. His photographs appear on markers such as the Andrew Small Academy and Origins of Darnestown markers, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station marker in Gaithersburg, From Trolley to Trail in Bethesda, the African American Heritage Walking Tour in Rockville, and the 19th Century Crossroads marker in Darnestown, as well as on an interpretive sign along the trail at Watters Smith Memorial State Park in West Virginia.
Early photographic “special effects”
One especially intriguing part of the collection is Lewis Reed’s experimentation with manipulated images. Long before digital cameras and Photoshop, he was creating imaginative “special effects,” a full century ahead of his time. His techniques included hand-tinting, double exposures, applied handwork, and playful compositions that introduce ghostly figures into the frame, all achieved with the limited tools of the early twentieth century. These experiments reveal not only technical skill but also a remarkable sense of creativity and humor.
Preserving historical authenticity
All images presented here are scanned from prints made from Lewis Reed’s original glass plate negatives, which were commonly used from the 1880s through the late 1920s. No digital retouching or alteration has been applied, preserving the photographs as faithfully as possible and maintaining their historical character.
Click here to step back in time and explore the lives, places, and stories captured through Lewis Reed’s camera.
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Copyright Notice
Reed Brothers Dodge History (1915-2012) by Jeanne Gartner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Reed Brothers Dodge History 1915 – 2012 
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