The land on which this home now sits was originally part of the large Bernard Mitchell (1846-1883) tract or farm that included the land west of Juniata Street and Route 40 at Camilla Street. (The latter street was named for Bernard Mitchell’s daughter, Camilla A. Mitchell.) Camilla Mitchell and other Bernard Mitchell heirs sold some of their tract (including the land on which this home now sits) in 1893 to Margaret A. Boyd and Michael Patrick Boyd (1860-1941). It is most likely that the Boyds built this home for their family after acquiring the land.

A delightful description of life on this portion of the farm is provided by a Harford County Living Treasures 1981 interview with Mae Cecilia Boyd (1907-1988) who grew up here (https://collections.digitalmaryland.org/digital/collection/hclt/id/207/). After Michael Boyd’s first wife died at the age of 32, having had two children, he married Margaret Conner (1861-1925) and had seven more children (a total of four boys and five girls). Mae, born in 1907, was their youngest child. Another child was James Bryon Boyd (1894-1972) who was living at this address when he was inducted May 3, 1918, as a Private in the Army. He served overseas in WWI from June 1918 to June 1919 and saw action in the Gerardmer Sector and Meuse Argonne while serving with the 53rd Infantry in Company L. James Boyd was honorably discharged on June 18, 1919. Another daughter of the Boyds was Mary Ellen Boyd who married Daniel James Gallagher.

In Mae Boyd’s 1981 Living Treasures interview she recalls that her parents had lots of horses and cows on their farm, and that a small river branch ran through the property where she and her siblings used to swim in summertime and skate in the winter. And there was an adjoining “woods” with abundant wildflowers. The Boyds grew several crops—they sold a lot of tomatoes to the Seneca Cannery that produced ketchup from them. Her parents had a sleigh that they hooked up to a horse and she enjoyed riding through heavy snowfalls in it. In winter people held sled races on the river, which would freeze to the bottom.

Mae’s grandparents (Michael Boyd’s parents) lived on what we now know as Garrett Island in the river, where he and his wife raised eleven children, in rough conditions. She remembers hearing that some of the children contracted malaria and a lot of their cattle died. She said her father had to row a doctor over to the Island when her grandfather was sick. After her grandfather died, his family moved back ashore to a home near the Casparis Stone Quarry (now known as the Vulcan Quarry).

In 1921, Michael and Margaret Boyd bought a property at 601 Otsego Street, at the northwest corner of Otsego and North Stokes Street (on a smaller lot than their “farm” here on Erie Street). Mae remembers that the house had a fence all the way around it. That house had been built and owned by William and Esther Reasin who sold the property to them. In May 1924 the Boyds sold this Erie Street home and only a portion of the land to John and Katherine Waskovich. The Boyds were living at 601 Otsego Street when Margaret died in 1925 and Michael sold the remainder of this Erie Street land in 1936 to the widowed Katherine Waskovich.

This property was owned by Katherine Waskovich, E. Mildred Gray, Frank and Mary Coratti, and John C. and Pearl C. Jaynes, Jr. until it was bought by Joseph T. Bernardi (1914-1988) and his wife, Alice F. Bernardi (1920-2008), in 1947. Joseph was an Army veteran having served in WWII. It remained in the Bernardi family for about the next 50 years during which they raised several children. Susan Bernardi Greer says she grew up here, which was just one block from the Cianellis’ sub shop of which she has fond memories. Susan said the Cianellis were the nicest people she knew growing up. She remembers Carmela and Viola, who was “so kind to me I will never forget any of that family. Those were some of the best days of my childhood.”

Joseph T. Bernardi died in 1988, after which his widow, Alice, deeded this home to Anthony Wayne Bernardi (1949-2009), her son, subject to reserving a life estate for herself. However, just one year after Alice’s 2008 death, her son Anthony Bernardi died intestate. Court-appointed personal representatives distributed percentages of his estate in 2010 to thirteen surviving heirs. Some Bernardi family members resided here until 2014, when collectively they sold this property to Shanemarie Ferguson and her husband, Leonard Elwood Ferguson III. Leonard’s parents were Leonard E. Ferguson, Sr. (1928-2014) and Eleanor McLhinney Ferguson, who founded Ferguson Electric and worked there for 66 years. The Fergusons sold this property six years later to Marvel J. Bakke in 2020, who remains the owner.

County Records
Built 1900. 1168 sq ft, 2 baths, 2 stories no basement, 17,430 sq ft lot.