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is a city in northern Maryland, United States. It is the county seat of Carroll County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's population was 17,715 for a 12 month period ending 01 July 2007. Westminster is an outlying community within the Baltimore-Towson, MD MSA, which is part of a greater Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia, DC-MD-VA-WV CSA.
In April 1865, Joseph Shaw, newspaper editor, had his presses wrecked and his business destroyed, and was subsequently beaten and stabbed to death by four men in Westminster, allegedly because of an anti-Lincoln editorial that was published the week before the actual assassination. In a later trial at the Westminster Court House the four men were acquitted; the reason cited was "self-defense."
Just north of Westminster is the farm at which Whittaker Chambers hid the so-called "pumpkin papers."
A historic marker states that Westminster was the first place in the nation to offer Rural Free Delivery postal service.
Westminster is the birthplace of Sargent Shriver (born 1915), former candidate for Vice President of the United States and brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy.