Needham photograph collection

The village of Lutherville in Baltimore County was founded in 1852 by a group of Lutherans, including Reverend Dr. John Gottlieb Morris (1803-1895), his brother Charles Morris, and Dr. Benjamin Kurtz.

Reverend Dr. John Morris, born in York, Pennsylvania, was a Lutheran minister, but also a teacher, writer, librarian, and naturalist. After 33 years as the pastor of the First English Lutheran Church of Baltimore and about 3 years as pastor of the Third Lutheran Church, he served as the first librarian of the Peabody Library in the 1860s. He was president of the Maryland Historical Society and of the German Historical Society at the time of his death. Morris also founded the Lutheran Female Seminary (also known as Female College at Lutherville and Maryland College for Women), and was at times a professor or lecturer at the Gettysburg Theological Seminary, the Pennsylvania College at Gettysburg, and in the Natural History Department at the University of Maryland.

Married to Eliza Hay Morris (died 1875), Morris had three children who survived infancy. Luther Morris Leisenring (1875-1965) was a grandson of Dr. Morris who went to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896.

Eight miles north of Baltimore, the land on which Lutherville was founded had been part of several estates, including Amon Bosley's "Regulation" and Charles Ridgely's Hampton. The Talbot family provided land upon which the Northern Central Railroad tracks ran through the village. Barrett's Delight, built around 1820, was a Ridgely family home located east of Lutherville on Pot Springs Road.