Calvert Grants Historic Farm More Protection

150 Acres of Morgan Hill Cannot Be Developed

Morgan Hill Farm, one of Calvert County's few 17th-century properties, has been officially designated a county historic district.

The Lusby property, which sits along St. Leonard Creek, includes two houses, a notched-log barn and zigzag rail fencing. It is owned by sisters Joan Wohlgemuth and Patricia Meagher. Their parents bought the farm 60 years ago and used it as a weekend house until the early 1960s, when the family moved there, Wohlgemuth said.

"The farmhouse was built around 1670. The view from the house is practically the same as it was then, so we are trying to preserve it," she said. "The rest of the creek has been ruined by development and all kinds of things, and we are trying to preserve it the way it was."

The property was named to the national and state historic registers in 1976, and the local designation carries even more protections against development, said Kirsti Uunila, Calvert's historic preservation planner. She said it is one of the most historic sites in the county.

"In the 16 years I have been in this position, I've never been able to review a property like this," she said.

The farm was part of a land grant made in 1651 to Phillip Morgan, a captain in the Puritan militia who also served as an associate justice of the Provincial Court of Calvert County, Uunila said.

Calvert County was established in 1654, after Morgan received the grant, said County Commissioner Linda L. Kelley (R-At Large).

Morgan sold the property to Robert Day in 1670. Over the next 30 years, Day or someone in his family built the house that still stands on the farm. Richard Breeden, for whom the road and cove in Lusby were named, bought the property in 1836, Uunila said. The land remained in the Breeden family until the Wohlgemuth family purchased it.

"They came down and bought it in 1949," Wohlgemuth said of her parents. "Nobody even realized it was an older house in here. My father was an architect, and he knew his houses."

According to the National Register of Historic Places, plenty of original building materials remain in the gable-roofed, T-frame house. A central chimney was removed in the early 19th century, and two outer chimneys were added. Still standing are a log smokehouse and a log cabin that served as servants' quarters.

"It is a step back in time. This is a feather in our caps. The entire site is fantastic," Commissioner Barbara A. Stinnett (D-At Large) said before the Board of County Commissioners vote Tuesday to designate more than 150 acres of Morgan Hill Farm and four acres along the roadway leading to it as a special historic district.

The commissioners also voted to shift that land and an additional 50 acres of the property into an agricultural preservation district.

About 20 acres of Morgan Hill Farm, including "virgin forest," and a portion of the tar and chip roadway to it were disturbed recently during construction of a liquefied natural gas pipeline by Dominion Power, Wohlgemuth said.

"Nobody did anything to protect us from the gas company who invaded our property two years ago," she said. "All that designation didn't do much good." Grass has grown over the pipeline's path. And Wilson H. Parran (D-Huntingtown), the county board president, said Dominion has agreed to restore the road.