The story
Daniels occupied a bend of the Patapsco River above Ellicott City, Maryland — a textile mill village of the nineteenth century, called Alberton for most of its life, whose company owned the houses, store and churches lining the narrow valley; the C.R. Daniels company cleared the housing in 1968 as maintenance costs mounted, ending the community, and Hurricane Agnes's 1972 flood devastated what remained, leaving the dam, the mill's later-burned traces, and the poignant shells — the Pentecostal church ruin above the trail the best known — now within Patapsco Valley State Park, threaded by popular rail-trail miles. The valley's telling is hymn-soft: singing from the church ruin at dusk, window lights in the vanished house rows, figures on the millrace path, and voices under the dam's rush — undocumented accounts walkers and anglers trade, the displaced community's memory honoured first. The river still floods; trails close and park rules govern. Present Daniels as company-town elegy — cleared by ledger, finished by storm — its ruined church the valley's standing verse.