Brunswick, Maryland: Berlin, Then Barry, Then Brunswick

Brunswick, Maryland, went through three names in about a century, and the railroad that picked the last one never left a record of why. It started as Berlin, got a post office called Barry, and became Brunswick in 1890, while the Baltimore and Ohio was building a giant freight yard here.

Merry Peep-’O-Day and Berlin

The land itself had a name before the town did. Richard Love, writing in the Maryland Historical Magazine in 1993, says King George II granted 3,100 acres here to John Hawkins in 1753, and Hawkins, taken with the view of the Potomac valley from the hills, named the tract Merry Peep-’O-Day. Leonard Smith, who had surveyed it, bought the land from Hawkins’s heirs in 1780 and laid out a town. In 1787, Love writes, “the town of Berlin, Maryland, appeared on the land records of the day.”

Why the post office said Barry

Berlin had a problem: there was another Berlin, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. When the first post office opened in 1832, Love says, officials changed the town’s name to Barry “to avoid confusion.” By 1834 the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the B&O had both reached Barry, and the railroad ran right down the middle of Main Street.

Even in 1890, Love says, the town was “officially named Barry,” yet “many still referred to the town as Berlin.” You can see that the old name hung on. The Geological Survey’s map of 1891, shown at the top, still prints “Berlin” beside the tracks, a year after the town had become Brunswick.

The B&O buys a town

In the 1880s the B&O’s freight yard at Martinsburg, West Virginia, was too small, and Maryland offered the railroad a tax exemption if it built the new yard on the Maryland side of the river. The choice was Barry. Love says railroad agents “disguised themselves as farmers and small businessmen” to buy land quietly, then the company tore down the little village by the tracks and laid out a new town in the hills for its workers.

Then the B&O gave the place a new name, “to avoid any further confusion, and to create a sense of identity to accompany its role as an important railroad center.” Which name, and why that one? Love is blunt about it: “The reasons behind the choice of that new name have been lost to history.” On April 8, 1890, Barry was incorporated as Brunswick. The 1940 WPA guide to Maryland gives the shorter version, that “the name was changed in 1890 to avoid confusion with Berlin on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.” Neither source explains the word Brunswick itself, so this article calls its origin unknown.

A song about the yards

What the railroad did leave is plain on the ground. The eastbound yard alone held 2,500 cars when it was finished, and the population grew about tenfold, to 3,000. Love opens his article with lines by a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Luther Martin (1857-1922):

I’m going back to Brunswick, where the engines puff and roar

And where they keep a double track, that connects with Baltimore

The B&O picked the name, and a minister wrote verses about coming back to Brunswick for the engines. If you were looking for a link between Brunswick and the railroad, that’s about as clear as it gets.

Quick answers

What was Brunswick, Maryland, called before?

Berlin, from 1787, and Barry, the name of its post office from 1832. The town was incorporated as Brunswick on April 8, 1890.

Why did Berlin, Maryland, change its name?

To avoid confusion with another Berlin on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The post office became Barry for that reason in 1832, and the B&O renamed the town in 1890.

Why was it named Brunswick?

Nobody knows. The B&O chose the name, but Love’s 1993 history says “the reasons behind the choice of that new name have been lost to history.”

Key dates

1. 1753John Hawkins receives the land grant he names Merry Peep-'O-Day.
2. 1787Leonard Smith's town of Berlin appears on the land records.
3. 1832The first post office opens under the name Barry.
4. 1890April 8: the town is incorporated as Brunswick.

Getting there

Open Brunswick in Google Maps

• Map
• Directions
• Satellite
• Terrain

Opens in a new tab. The pin is the center of Brunswick in the USGS place-name record.

The closest airports, Amtrak stations and intercity bus stops, measured in a straight line from the center of Brunswick.

Airports

• Washington Dulles International (IAD) 27 mi 43 km
• Hagerstown Regional/Richard A Henson Field (HGR) 28 mi 45 km

Amtrak trains

• Harpers Ferry station (HFY) 6 mi 9 km
• Martinsburg station (MRB) 20 mi 33 km

Intercity buses

• OurBus Frederick, MD (Prospect Plaza shopping center, close to Dollar tree at 403 S Jefferson St.) 12 mi 20 km
• Greyhound Frederick MD - Transit Center/MARC Station (FRC) 14 mi 22 km
• BayRunner Shuttle Frederick (Transit Center) 14 mi 22 km

Distances are as the crow flies, not by road. We don't list schedules or fares because they change; check with the airline, Amtrak or the bus company before you go. Official data (FAA commercial service airports (2025), FAA airport locations, Amtrak stations and Intercity Bus Atlas) from the FAA and the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, checked Nov 6, 2026.

Historical Sources & References

• Richard Love, “Brunswick’s ‘Blessed Curse,’” Maryland Historical Magazine 88 (1993), pp. 133-135. The Merry Peep-’O-Day grant of 1753, Leonard Smith’s Berlin of 1787, the Barry post office of 1832, the B&O’s yard, the 1890 renaming whose reasons “have been lost to history,” and the Rev. Luther Martin’s verses; read in the full issue.
• Federal Writers’ Project, Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State (1940), pp. 348-349. The B&O repair shops of 1890, Hawkins’ tract, Berlin laid out in 1787 and the change of name in 1890 “to avoid confusion with Berlin on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.”
• GNIS feature 595202 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal gazetteer entry for Brunswick, in Frederick County: “Established in 1780. Current name adopted in 1890.”