The planned part of my tour began near Galesville, in Anne Arundel County, in search of the Tulip Hill plantation mansion, considered to be one of the most beautiful and original pre-Revolutionary War homes in the entire country. I found the entrance without trouble, but the mansion itself was nowhere in sight.
A bit of creative lurking, however, and the slightest encroachment onto a wide front lawn, allowed me to catch a glimpse of the estate. It was built by Samuel Galloway in 1755-1756 in the Georgian style.
As it happens, Tulip Hill was sold recently. I don't know the sale price, but the owners were asking $2,375,000. For that, the fortunate new owner received all 7 bedrooms, all 6 1/2 bathrooms, the waterfront access and dock, and the full 54 acres of the estate. (Well-bought, I would have to say!) Here's a photo of the interior, from the real estate agent's website:
Now, I suppose I should mention that, in cases involving slight encroachments, it's not a bad idea to plan to a speedy retreat, just in case, don'tcha know… Yep, the door was open and the motor was running!
Southern Maryland is home to a seemingly infinite number of weathered old barns, every last one of them scenic.
At Galesville, I admired the seemingly infinite number of sailboats in the harbor…
…and also this Formula 16 racing catamaran (which I believe is a Bimare X-16). Having sailed Hobie Cats, Prindles, Tornadoes, and NACRA's from time to time, I enjoyed watched this fellow flying across the West River at speeds I estimated at 20 knots.
Thursday's Steak & Crabhouse looked inviting, and even featured motorcycle-only parking, but it was beginning to rain and I had a long way to go.
In town, I found the Carrie Weedon House, now the site for the Galesville Heritage Society. There I learned that the town was founded in 1652 and was home to one of the first Quaker meetings in Maryland.
I may have already mentioned the infinite number of picturesque barns in this area…
Christ Church, situated west of Galesville, is considered the finest example of a "Carpenter Gothic" church on the entire East Coast. It was built in 1867-1869 and paid for by Eleanor Hall McCaleb Burwell in memory of her two children. Its design came from a sketch by the famous church architect Richard Upjohn.
A few miles further south, the present Saint James Church dates from 1765, having replaced an earlier one from 1695. Even so, the oldest headstone in the cemetery is marked 1665 and marks the grave of Ann and Christopher Birckhead.
Inside Saint James, the 10 Commandments are shown on two wooden plaques above the altar. They were carved and given to the parish in 1723 and restored by the Smithsonian Institution in 1970.
I'd been to the Chesapeake Bay town of Deale, MD previously, by motorcycle. But I'd never noticed the local museum, which features a number of old buildings brought here from nearby sites. From left to right in this photo, we have a scenic and historic outhouse, St. Mark's Chapel, and the one-room Nutwell schoolhouse.
This peek through the window of a late-1800s residence at the museum shows the relatively primitive living conditions common at that time.
Of the many old churches I found on this trip, All Saints was my favorite. As its website proclaims, it's a church that is "older than most countries—including this one." Its predecessors dated from 1693 and 1707, but were apparently not built to last. The current brick church was built in 1774-1777 and stands 60 by 50 feet feet and 26 feet high.
The interior was beautiful, with its original box pews, clear glass windows, and impossibly narrow stairways to the balconies. The originality of the church was remarkable, right down to its smallest details.
All Saints' churchyard also featured this fun-looking "labyrinth," a recent addition in honor of the 4,000-year-old history of such spiritual paths.
What, another rustic barn? Just can't help myself.
Next up, I was looking for the grave of Dr. William Beanes, who had served as an army doctor during the Revolutionary War and later became a farmer as well. My only clue was that his burial site was covered by a flat gravestone and was in the middle of Upper Marlboro. Along the way, I discovered this modern but quite interesting multi-sided house:
After tracing and retracing my steps (well, tire tracks) and about to give up, from the corner of my eye I spotted what looked to be a small cemetery up on a hill. I parked behind the abandoned Marlboro High School and soon enough found the graves of Dr. Beanes and his wife Sarah (who was the niece of John Hanson, President of the first Continental Congress and—arguably—the first President of the United States).
During the War of 1812, Dr. Beanes, then 63, helped arrest British Army deserters who were plundering homes and farms in this area—only to be taken prisoner himself and held captive on a British ship in Baltimore Harbor. That might have been the end of the story—until one Frances Scott Key went to the ship to try to obtain Dr. Beanes' release. He, too, was detained onboard while the British bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore. As everyone knows, Key was inspired by the brave defense of the fort to write The Star Spangled Banner. Both men were released the next day following the British retreat.
This seemingly abandoned house sits between the vacant Marlboro High School and the Beanes' gravesite. It's too new to have been Dr. Beanes' residence, but it doesn't seem related to the school. Anyone have any ideas?
As I left Upper Marlboro, in pursuit of Duckett's Cabin, out of the corner of my eye I saw something that I just had to investigate. Surprisingly, the gate was wide open. I'd seen the gate open only once before in recent times. That adventure led to my scrambling up a steep dirt bank in an effort to escape two large (and unfriendly) dogs. If you ever think you can get away from a dog by climbing a steep bank, think again—they got to the top in half the time it took me. But that's another story, for another time.
This time, as I entered the hallowed grounds of my youth, I proceeded directly to the rundown house at the end of the former parking lot. A cheerful fellow with a pronounced foreign accent greeted me and immediately accepted my request to get a few pictures of the area. Here is the first. Any local folks know where we are yet? (My friends Phil and Lew certainly do…)
Walking around to the other side, I found this slightly eerie sight. It was so familiar, but so different, with trees and shrubs having grown up everywhere I looked. I remembered sitting in these stands with Phil, Lew, and their father, drinking my first-ever glass of iced tea. There used to be an announcer's booth on top, where I met Stirling Moss for the first time, in 1964.
In front of the grandstands, the pavement was in better shape than I might have guessed, with the 1/3-mile oval readily visible.
This is what the oval looked like back in about 1965, at the start of an international 12-hour FIA endurance race for sedans. The old-style "Le Mans" starts, with the drivers sprinting across the track to their cars, was one of the most exciting things I'd ever witnessed. (I got a summer job several years later with Chris Custer, who finished third overall in this race.)
Yes, I had found the ruins of the old Marlboro Speedway. It began life as a dirt oval in 1952 but was expanded to a 1.7-mile paved road course by the legendary Lavender Hill Mob in 1954. In its heyday, Marlboro hosted major racing series for the SCCA, NASCAR, FIA, and others, with some of the biggest names getting their start there, including Mark Donohue and Roger Penske. Back when no one had heard of him in the U.S., Jackie Stewart shared the winning factory Lotus Cortina (with Sir John Whitmore, if I remember correctly) in the 1964 Marlboro 12-hour. The following year, he was racing with Graham Hill on the BRM Formula 1 team.
This photo from 1962 shows an SCCA race (E Production), with an Alfa Romeo and MGA leaving the banking to enter the road course. If you left the oval a little more to the right in this picture, you would get airborne as a result of topping the banked corner. The faster cars, such as Hal Keck's 427 Cobra, would get airborne even on the outside of the banking. Very exciting for a 15-year-old spectator who was developing what would become a lifetime fascination with sports cars and racing. (Historic photos courtesy of the fascinating Binghamton Automobile Racing Club website
Here's the start of the road course, where the cars in the prior photo were heading, leading to the chicane. It's all still there.
Doctor Dick Thompson was the first person to have the opportunity to race the prototype Corvette Stingray, and Marlboro in 1960 was, I believe, its first appearance on a racetrack.
Murray Kellner's Jaguar XK-120 leads a Porsche 356 Speedster past the grandstand.
For most SCCA races, the cars would be gridded on the otherwise-unused fourth of the oval track. From there, they would do a standing start, race around the oval, and continue onto the road course. On the grid here are a Lotus 17 (#78) and a Lola Mk. I (#7). Even more interestingly, to me anyway, is the fellow standing behind the Lotus. It's Harry Reynolds, who was quite a good race driver and mechanic. He's also the person who built my SCCA Spec Racer (originally Sports Renault) for me at J & J Racing in 1985, which got me started in SCCA racing. The last I heard, Harry was racing a Lola Mk. I in vintage events.
It's hard not to fall in love with a Ferrari 250GT Short-Wheelbase Berlinetta, after seeing them race. This one was piloted by Charlie Hayes, who later went on to race on Carroll Shelby's factory Cobra team and in the original Can Am series, with the infamous Nickey Chevrolet sponsored McLaren Mk. II.
Did I mention that Mark Donohue and Roger Penske both got their starts in racing at Marlboro? This is Mark's Elva Courier leaving the banking. Roger was Mark's instructor at Marlboro when he attended his first SCCA drivers school.
On the main straight of the oval, we find Rick Mandelson's white Porsche Speedster gridded up front, and he went on to win this race. Lew and I used to call him, irreverently, "The Flying Nose." Well, in our defense, we were only 15 and 14, respectively… Back in those days, Rick Mandelson, Ron Grable, Tony Adamowicz, and my friend Phil all drove Porsche Speedsters and were all friends. They often auto-crossed together, usually with Phil coming out ahead.
Eventually, the track was deemed unsafe for the faster speeds enabled by wider tires and more horsepower, and it closed in 1969. (Go back and look at the track map: the long straight in the top of the diagram was separated from the shorter straight below by about 75 feet of grass… No guardrails, no tire walls, nothing. And the closing speed between cars racing in the opposite directions would have been 120 mph or more! Remarkably, there were zero fatalities in the history of Marlboro.)
With great reluctance, I left the scene of my introduction to the world of fast sports and formula racing cars and journeyed on to the Patuxtent River Park. There I found Duckett's Cabin without difficulty, although the park was closing, so it was too late to tour inside the cabin. Charles Duckett, a former slave, built this cabin in about 1880, after having served in the Union Army forces during the Civil War. It has one room downstairs and a loft upstairs. Note the pole leaning against the chimney. It's actually the other-way-round, such that, in the case of a chimney fire, you could run outdoors, yank the pole away, and the burning chimney would fall away from the cabin.
This house, while fairly plain, is quite an upgrade from the log cabin. It's a "Simplex Goldenrod" and was purchased in 1923 from the Sears, Roebuck Co. for about $400. These mail-order houses had three rooms; you could add a 4-foot-square outhouse for an extra $41—no doubt a wise investment.
The living room of a Goldenrod took up one-half of the entire floor space.
It's a wonder the bedroom had enough space for any furnishings at all.
Leaving the park, I apparently took a wrong turn. Although I crossed a number of streams on my R1200GS, I decided it was best not to try to cross the Patuxtant in the Z4.
I swear, you couldn't stop anywhere on this tour without finding interesting things. In this case, two of them at once.
First we have a statue in honor of Private Benjamin Owens. During the Battle of Stephenson's Depot on June 19, 1863, all of Owens' cannon crew were killed or wounded. He continued to load and fire the cannon on his own, helping in the process to defend a key railroad bridge and hold off the Union troops. He died in 1917 and was awarded the Confederate Medal of Honor in 1993. (There seems to be a lesson here about patience…)
The Mount Calvary Anglican Church was also quite a sight, with its catty-cornered bell tower.
And right across the road were—believe it or not—even more weathered farm buildings.
In researching the Harwood, MD area before my trip, I read about a number of stately mansions. I found Mary's Mount on the third try. (For some reason, it hadn't occurred to me that it might be on Mary's Mount Road…) I recognized its unusual twin fireplaces, but the current and prior owners have made many changes to the original house. The original part of the house was built in 1771 by Col. Richard Harwood. The additions began in the early 1800s when the second story was added. Over the years, I'd say there have been a few additions too many—but who am I to say?
Larkin's Hill Farm is owned by the sister of the current owner of Mary's Mount, but you can't see the house from the road. Thus, I continued on in search of Larkin's Hundred, one of the oldest (1704) and most original mansions in the state and a precursor to the Georgian style. I found the entrance to the property, and learned that the place was for sale. It was a long drive up to the top of the hill, however, and I didn't want to push my encroachment luck.
Further down the road, fortunately, I found a place where one could get a distant glimpse of Larkin's Hundred. I also found this older photo at the Library of Congress site. Other than the porch shown in the LoC photo (which was later removed), the house has never been altered.
As usual, my tour had lasted well into the evening, and the sun was threatening to set altogether. My original destination had been the historic town of Davidsonville, MD, and I finally managed to get there as the sun was going down. I got a quick look at the extraordinary All Hallows Chapel and cemetery. Construction started in 1860, was delayed by the Civil War, and was finished in 1865. One of the early rectors of the All Hallows Parish was author Mason Locke Weems. His 1800 biography The Life of [George] Washington includes the "cherry tree" story, which Parson Weems invented as an "entertaining and morally instructive tale."
I also had to stop for a look at the original Holy Family Catholic Church in Davidsonville.
This tour, at only about 160 miles, was one of my shorter ones. Various work pressures led to a much later start than usual (around noon), and I didn't get home until 8:30 or so. Regardless, I enjoyed every minute of it. Let's see: 7 historic churches, 8 old houses, but only 1 old racetrack. Hmmm … to even up those odds, I guess I'll have to track down the abandoned tracks at Cumberland, Dorsey, Beltsville, Monrovia, and Braddock Heights the next time I'm out!
Rick F.
Some I kick myself for selling. 
Only 5 of the following images show the actual vehicle. The rest are ripped-off from Google Images.
I might be forgetting one or two.)
