Led Efforts to Preserve Historic Montgomery Sites

Mary Ann Kephart, 88, who led historic preservation efforts in Poolesville and upper Montgomery County and who lived in an 18th-century farmhouse built by her ancestors, died May 29 at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville of complications from a fall.

In 1956, Mrs. Kephart and her husband, a Foreign Service officer, bought an aging brick house and 135-acre property in Poolesville called Chiswell's Inheritance. She was a descendant of Steven Newton Chiswell and his son, Joseph Newton Chiswell, who built the house over a period of 40 years, completing it in 1796.

As a girl growing up in Silver Spring, Mrs. Kephart had taken part in dramatic presentations at the house, depicting its history and legends. Years later, she and her husband restored the drafty old building, installing a new kitchen and a central heating system. Cattle grazed in the surrounding pasture.

"At first I didn't even like it, regardless of my family's history here," Mrs. Kephart told The Washington Post in 1996, during a celebration of the house's bicentennial. "In fact, I hated it. But I said we'd fix it up, and we did. We just muddled along fixing and repairing and renovating whatever needed it."

When Mrs. Kephart returned to Montgomery in 1972 after living in Belgium for four years, she was dismayed to learn that many of the old farmsteads she had known since childhood had been demolished to make way for housing developments. Inspired by the respect for history she had seen in Europe, she helped establish two groups to preserve the county's traditional character, the Historic Medley District and Montgomery Preservation.

As one of the first presidents of the Historic Medley District, which is devoted to preserving historic properties in the northwestern quadrant of Montgomery, Mrs. Kephart had a central role in saving and restoring Poolesville's oldest building, the John Poole House, a log cabin built in 1793. She also led efforts to preserve the Old Chiswell Place, an 18th-century farm, and the three-story Dr. Thomas Poole House, from 1835.

She also helped save two other significant Poolesville properties that had been scheduled for demolition, the Edward Chiswell House and the Darnall Place. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Darnall Place includes a house, four stone farm buildings and artifacts of an earlier age. The Web site of the Maryland Historical Trust describes it as "a complex of small stone farm buildings reminiscent of a farmstead in Europe or the British Isles. There is no sign of professionalism in design, only practicality and basic principles of construction applied to achieve a beauty, simplicity, and solidity that have endured since the 18th century."

Mary Ann Griffith was born Jan. 15, 1921, in Silver Spring, where her father was the postmaster. She graduated from the old Central High School in the District and from the University of Maryland. She was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and was elected secretary of the student government.

She was a volunteer nurse's aide during World War II and the Korean War and taught English in Japan, where she lived for four years in the 1950s. From the 1970s until the mid-1990s, she and her husband sailed each summer along the East Coast from Canada to the Caribbean.

She traveled widely throughout Europe, but her heart lay in Montgomery. Beginning in the 1970s, she helped prepare maps and monographs about county historic sites, drew up nominations for official historic recognition and lobbied for the Montgomery County Farmland Preservation Program, which allows for easements to conserve the disappearing rural corners of the county in perpetuity. In 1979, as a member of the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission, she helped write the county's master plan for historic preservation.

Mrs. Kephart was a member of the vestry of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Poolesville, which was built in 1846. She led a fundraising effort for new church pews and chaired an annual tour of historic homes. She was also a member of the altar guild at Washington National Cathedral, where she arranged flowers for more than 30 years.

Survivors include her husband of 67 years, George O. Kephart of Poolesville; three children, George O. Kephart Jr., Elizabeth Perry Kapsch and Ann-Frazer Brown, all of Poolesville; a brother, William B. Griffith of Beallsville; and three grandchildren.

At the 1996 bicentennial celebration of her home, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, Mrs. Kephart pointed out hidden cabinets, intricately carved woodwork and a glazed brick on one of the house's two chimneys inscribed with the letters "CI" (for Chiswell's Inheritance) and the date 1796.

"We aren't ever going to sell this house," she said. "It is just too near and dear to us. Chances are it will go to one of our kids and stay in the family for another 200 years."