Two Women

Anne Cheston(1881-1951)

Dr Morris Cheston was Owensville’s doctor from 1881 to 1898.  

His daughter, Anne, got the idea at age 35 to start a business.

So, in 1916 she built a charming little cottage beside the new State Road.  She planted shrubbery, a rose trellis, hung window boxes with flowers, and called it The Tea House.  

“Friends made reservations to come for tea & sandwiches in the afternoon”, remembered Sally Whall, Anne's niece.  

Parents took their children for homemade ice cream.  Auto travelers stopped for cake and lemonade.  “At that time the State Rd was the only road from Baltimore to Washington, and Anne had a right good little business.” [Kate Chew]

The Tea House c1920 (SWhall photo)

In 1917 two companies of soldiers marching from Ft Foote stopped and camped overnight behind the Tea House.   They were headed to the War in France.  

“Miss Anne Cheston, who heard of their coming, notified all the whole countryside and everyone thronged in automobiles, carriages and horseback and afoot to give them a welcome.” [news clipping Jun.1917]

“Soon after the war, King Albert and Queen Elizabeth of Belgium came from Baltimore to Washington with a small cavalcade.  One of their cars went off the road near The Tea House and an aide was hurt.  Dr Cawood was sent for.  He told us afterwards he met the monarchs, and I’m sure he did, for they would have surely thanked him.” [Kate Chew] 

Anne closed her Tea House after 5 or 6 years of operation.  For awhile it was rented by various newlywed couples.  Then, in the 40's, Dr Emily Wilson bought it for her office.

House call 1950's by Dr Wilson (b1904-d2007)

Dr Wilson was a living legend.  Beginning in 1929, she was the first woman doctor in southern Anne Arundel County. 

Emily Wilson: “People weren’t sure I knew what I was doing.  So my first patient was a dog that had been hit by a car.  The dog survived and my practice picked up!” 

Dr Wilson served the West River area for 53 years.  She lived to be 103.  In the days of segregation she was scrupulous about treating her patients equally.  Her waiting room was integrated, with a first-come-first-served policy.  She carried on the service tradition of Anne’s father, Dr Cheston, who in 1898 got up from his death bed to attend one last patient, an indigent former slave.

In 2012 Anne Arundel County declared the Tea House  “significant” for its association with early 20th century women’s history & commerce.

As I write this, the State Highway Administration is widening roads on two sides of the Tea House.  Earth movers, gravel trucks, and flagmen are milling about, but the little cottage is secure.  The County has an eye on it.

"AnteLebanus"

Half the deeds in Owensville trace their titles back to “AnteLebanus”, a 685-acre tract purchased in 1793 by Dr Wm Murray.  He and his wife Harriet settled there in 1800.

DrWmMurray 1752-1842 (ARandall photo)

At the northwest edge of AnteLebanus was a small crossroad.  As Dr Murray began selling land around the crossroad, Owensville was born.  

Isaac Owens bought the N corner for his store & blacksmith shop.

The S corner was Isaac’s too, where his house doubled as a place for preaching and funerals. 

The E corner was John Hopkins' - his shops produced wagons, carriages, farm implements, harnesses, saddles, boots, brogans, and cloth. 

Wm Murray, the benevolent village doctor, lived to age 90.  His secret to long life?  “A happy mind”.  

His wife wrote in 1840:  “I have never heard him express anything like discontent...  His health is very good, and but for the loss of his sight, he enjoys life as much as he has for many years; he can scarcely discern one colour from another, yet he watches the monthly rose bushes and regularly brings me his morning offering of a

1860 Martenet Map - "West River Country"

Rose.”

After Murray's death in 1842, Owensville grew some more.          

A Methodist Chapel was built in 1849, and a Masonic Hall.

In 1850, a Classical Institute whose catalog boasted:  

“Owensville’s citizens breathe a pure atmosphere and enjoy most excellent health.

Maryland can present no village more favorable to mental and moral improvement.”   

                 

In 1852, an Episcopal chapel and a public school.  In 1866 a Catholic Church.  
In 1867 a larger Episcopal Church.

Owensville was on a roll!

But alas, the automobile was the undoing of Owensville's commerce.  Villagers began driving to Annapolis to shop.

Isaac Owens’ store closed after 150 years. 

By 1952 Owensville consisted of fifteen residences, two churches, a school, and a post office.

Kate Chew in her 1970's memoir wrote, “Perhaps Owensville will be an historic district someday.  It should be.”  

5 years after her death, in 2003, it happened: 

   

  ->  The Owensville National Register Historic District  <-    Ta-Da ! 

.

A Revolver Under the Pillow

The new West River Methodist Circuit, created in 1836, consisted of 3 member churches:  Friendship, Mt Zion, and Hope Chapel.

The Parsonage for the new Circuit was in Owensville - in a house built by Isaac Owens (c1818) and purchased 1836 by the Circuit.  Here resided the Methodist Circuit Riders.  A rough life, theirs... on horseback in all weather, traveling and preaching to three congregations.

In 1853 a Fund was established to care for ”worn out preachers”.  By then there were five churches, including a new one at Owensville, and one in The Swamp (Shady Side). 

Owensville Methodist Church & Parsonage c1910 (SWhall photo)

       

     During 112 years the Parsonage sheltered 104 different preachers.  Most were there only a year before being called to their next assignment.

Several preachers left family members behind in Owensville:

George Hildt served the Circuit in 1840 - his granddaughter Eliza married Owensville’s storekeeper Sam Chew. Eliza’s daughter Kate wrote a memoir, Maryland Girlhood 1908-28, which is quoted in this blog.

James Sanks served the Circuit 1856-7.  One daughter Jennie married Wm Peake Jr, Owensville’s native son architect.   The other, Carrie married Tom Weedon and was a beloved school teacher in Galesville for decades.

Two preachers left “skeletons in the closet” at the Parsonage:

One, famous for his sermons threatening hellfire, had a daughter (secretly pregnant) who hung herself in the attic rather than face his wrath.

Another had an unstable son who set fire to his bedroom.  Charred beams are still visible under new oak flooring on the second floor.

In 1948 the West River Circuit sold its Methodist Parsonage, skeletons and all, to a private family, the Johnstons. 

The "Parsonage", private residence of the Johnstons. 1949 (LWilson photo) 

 

The Johnstons' daughter remembers hearing a woman’s light footstep on the stairs at night (the suicide in the attic?)

Mrs Johnston returned one time from a trip to Canada to find a gun in her bed.

"Robert dear, why is there a revolver under the pillow?" 

"Oh Elizabeth”, he answered.  “I've barely slept a wink.  A ghost has been harassing me.“ 

______________________

P.S.  from the editor of Owensville Stories: 

From 1978-2018 while my family lived at The Parsonaage, the ghosts were at peace. -SW

 😊

The Thomas Book

Owensville’s golden age as a commercial center was the 19th century.  

Highwy marker on Rt.255 WRiver Md

200 years earlier the Owensville site was part of William Richardson's plantation, Watkin’s Hope.  

William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, visited Richardson here in 1682.  

Another plantation Lebanon, south of Owensville's site, was owned by Philip Thomas.   

Philip's great grandson John Thomas married Sarah Murray in 1777.  Sarah's brother William Murray came to visit her and fell in love with her neighborhood.  He purchased nearby Watkins Hope and renamed it "AnteLebanus". 

Meanwhite, John Thomas, a Md State Senator, was, privately, a poet.

Here is part of a poem he wrote as a youth in 1762:

“Written Under a Young Lady’s Picture”

                                                                                                                  

...When Jenny's Picture was seen, the Youth said,

'No Maid on Earth could boast so fair a Face'

... But, when he saw Fair Jenny ...   

Raptured, he cry'd,

'To Nature, Art must yield.'   

Jenny's Picture 1757

In 1808, 3 yrs after John's death, his complete poem was published anonymously by an unnamed "Lady of Maryland", and was soon forgotten.

In 1960, 152 yrs later, the Maryland Lady's book resurfaced, and a search was made for the identities of “Jenny”, “the Youth”, the “Picture”, and the "Lady".

Jenny turned out to be Jane Galloway of Tulip Hill plantation - 12 yrs old in the Picture - 17 at the time of the poem. 

The Picture, an early work by renowned artist Benjamin West, was found at the Pa Historical Society.

The anonymous Youth/poet, was of course John Thomas, neighbor of Tulip Hill. 

The Lady of Maryland was John's sister-in-law, Wm Murray's wife Harriet.

And the Sequel ...?

Lebanon c1900. Burned Oct 27 1915. (SWhall photo)





   

In 1915, the Thomas home

Lebanon burned to the ground. 

In 1980 Kate Chew recalled the fire in her Owensville memoir:

“One night Daddy woke me, and lifting me to the south window, he told me to look, that Lebanon was on fire.  I could see a red light above the trees.  He wanted me to remember it, and I do to this day.  

"Lebanon had been the colonial home of the Thomas family.  Philip Thomas in the 1700's had written a day-by-day account of happenings in the neighborhood, and when anyone wanted to settle a dispute, it was taken to The Thomas Book.  I think the Book was saved." 

“Dogs delight to bark and fight, but ...

children’s little hands were not meant to scratch each other’s eyes.”  

         - a favorite expression of Miss Mary Chew, Owensville’s public school teacher 1865 to 1905.

  

Mary Chew's grandneice, Kate Chew, described the Owensville school in 1914:

“We entered at the left.  There was a little hallway, then a room on the left which held the water bucket and our lunch pails and wraps.  An identical room on the right had textbooks, chalk boxes, and piles of paper.  Straight ahead, the schoolroom had windows only on the left, with blackboards front and right, and a stove which extended into the room.  We had double desks with ink wells.

“Our teacher, Miss Mary Biscoe, dominated the room.  No question:  she was to be obeyed... 

“Once, one of the older boys had to be whipped, and we were all sent outdoors where we grouped fearfully to listen to his screams, but we didn’t hear much except the swish of the stick.  When we were sent for, slinking in, he was sitting in his corner seat, head down.  Miss Biscoe had no trouble with anyone.  All of us were good as gold.

School House c 1900 (Clemence Burwell photos)

“Recesses and lunch hour were lots of fun.  We played Fox & Hounds and Hide & Seek in the woods behind the school, or jumped over the little stream.  The area near the privy at the foot of the hill was taboo.  In the front yard, baseball was played with a hard ball and simple rules (no strike-outs, no balls, no umpire).  Girls and boys played together, and Miss B with us, sometimes doing her own running in her long skirt and high heeled shoes.

“Hot, tired, thirsty, we would be called in by the bell and lined up to get a drink using the same dipper.  Then, while we were tired, we might have poetry.  When it was “The Village Blacksmith”, it was real.  Mr Wayson had his shop next door, and the chime of his anvil was part of the day...  

"We were like a small family, about thirty of us, all ages, 6 to 16.”

St-James-the-Less

In 1852 a chapel of ease was built in Owensville as part of the St James parish. 

It was located between two existing Episcopal churches: All Hallows, 6mi to the north, and St James, 5mi south.  The chapel was named St-James-the-Less.  Traveling to church on Sunday now became a lot simpler for Owensville's Episcopalians.

For ten years all went well.  Then as arguments about slavery began to heat up,  two groups of congregants within the parish found themselves marching to different drummers, literally. Owensville sons marched off to fight for the Confederacy. The St James mother church was not pleased. 

What happened next is a matter of dispute.

Christ Church c1900 (Burwell photo)
  

The official record states that St-James-the-Less was "granted permission in 1862 to set up an independent parish named Christ Church".

In fact, descendants of that time claim the Chapel was “kicked out” of the parish for its pro-slavery views.

Whichever, a new larger sanctuary was built in Owensville in 1867.  The money came  from a bereaved mother, in memory of her children, using an inheritance from Mississippi.

Eleanor Hall McCaleb Burwell, born in the Owensville-West River district, had married James McCaleb of Mississippi in 1839.  He and all three of their children died young, the last one, Annie, in a sledding accident on Owensville Rd at the bottom of Catholic Church Hill in 1867.  That same year Eleanor placed the cornerstone for a new Christ Church.  She chose a design from the sketchbook of Richard Upjohn. 

Thanks to the fame of Upjohn the architect, 
Christ Church is today recognized as a 
national historic site. 

Eleanor is buried with her children in the 
church yard.  Her stone reads: 

“I have finished the work thou hast sent me to do.”

Christ Church c1930 (Burwell photo)

 Eleanor Hall McCaleb Burwell's stone

World War I Comes to Owensville

In the summer of 1917 a company of US Army soldiers was marching from Fort Foote in DC, to the rifle range at Glen Burnie MD.

They broke ranks on Solomon's Island Rd, at the corner of Owensville Rd, and prepared to pitch tents in Mrs Cheston’s pasture.

They were headed for the battlefields of France.

Sam Chew, Owensville’s storekeeper, described the scene for The Baltimore Sun:

“Automobiles, carriages, wagons, and buggies, loaded with laughing girls bearing fruit, cake, confectionary, & food of every description, deposited their gifts beneath the shade of the elms and left to return again and again with the offerings of the neighborhood.

Officers were importuned to allow the boys to be entertained in the adjacent homes.”  

In one home over the hill from the camp lived a young woman, Lillian Shepherd, a school teacher.  Among the soldier boys who went to the Shepherd home that evening was Hal Nye from Montana.  A romance was kindled.  Hal and Lillian agreed to exchange letters while he was "over there".

“At dawn the next morning the sound of the bugle wafted over the West River country, and residents near the camp came down to the highway to watch the soldiers march away toward Annapolis.  After a few weeks, army transports carried the company across the Atlantic.”

Lillian and Hal Nye c1930

Seven years later Hal Nye came back to Lillian.             

On Dec 4 1924 they were married in Owensville’s Christ Church.  

The following week they boarded a train west to take up married life on Hal’s ranch.

Sam Chew wrote afterwards: “Are there still some who say that romance is dead?”

1917 Gazette news article

 

Nye gravestones at Christ Church, Owensville Md