Second only to Olney as a busy crossroad, Ashton was known as Porter's Corner a century and a half ago when Charles G. Porter owned three of the quadrants. Historian Nesbitt described the hamlet of that time as consisting of "a general store, a blacksmith shop, a wheelwright shop...and a house or two." There may also have been a slave market, for the Annals record that here "the last public sale of a slave in Montgomery County occurred, when John Hood...was auctioned off to settle the estate of the late Edward Porter." The new owners quickly gave Hood his freedom, for which they were "greatly petted by the Abolitionists."

Alban Gilpin Thomas rented the store in 1870 and opened the first post office in 1889. At this point Ashton's new name became official, derived from Thomas's birthplace Ashland and another renowned Thomas home, Clifton. Paving came late to the busy crossroad: In 1917 present Route 108 was surfaced, a decade later New Hampshire Avenue.

The Civil War period saw the growth of Ashton's black community, known as Ebenezer, half a mile east of the crossroads. Ebenezer's cemetery marks the former site of a log African Methodist Episcopal Church that stood well into the 20th century.

Plows and fencing wire, butter and eggs, and almost everything else could be purchased at A.G. Thomas's Ashton store. For items not in stock his response was often, "I'll have it for thee tomorrow night," brought by the two-horse Laurel stage.

"Putting up" vegetables in Mason jars was an annual summer chore that still is performed today in many Sandy Spring homes. This scene is at Ingleside.

Sam Rice's poultry farm of the 1930s and '40s spreads across Ashton acres now bordering Tree Lawn Drive. In the scattered coops, he hygenically raised hens whose eggs sold for a dollar apiece to the National Institutes of Health for virology vaccine research. A family of Japanese interns helped with the poultry during World War II.