Black History Month: The Wilson Farmhouse (01FEB2022)

The Wilson Farmhouse, Galesville, Maryland (Spring/Summer 2010)

I took this photograph in 2010. At the time, I was on-site conducting an exterior condition assessment (ECA) and determination of eligibility (DOE) for a farmstead, and a baseball diamond, that captured my interest while doing research for the Anne Arundel County Department of Planning and Zoning.

This building, the Wilson Farmhouse, is located in Galesville, Maryland, a small waterfront community on a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay named the West River. The community is a census-designated place (CDP) of approximately 623 residents (2020). Galesville was a Quaker community when it was first founded. The economy centered on the water, the natural resources provided by the Chesapeake Bay. The connection to the Bay remained unchanged in 2010, even if the water-based, larger-scale commercial industries had long left (e.g. shellfish canning).

As a contractor for the Anne Arundel County Department of Planning and Zoning. One of my first assignments was to draft an assessment of the Anne Arundel Inventory of Historic Properties (AAIHP). The assessment would provide the Department of Planning and Zoning with a fresh appraisal of its efforts to identify, preserve, and promote its historic resources. The regional context was important here. Anne Arundel County its located nearly equidistant from both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. and, in 2010, residential and commercial development was booming. Lesser known, vernacular, buildings and structures were being lost.

At the time, the AAIHP consisted of approximately 1,040 resources. While conducting research on the inventory, two entries - Wilson Farmhouse (AAIHP #0913) and Wilson Field (AAIHP #2320) - stood out. The Wilson Farmhouse was built sometime between 1865 and 1878 by a manumitted slave named Henry Wilson. Henry Wilson was one of only 462 manumitted slaves to ever own a house in the State of Maryland. Henry Wilson eventually acquired a total of approximately 26.5-acres of land and, in the 1920s, his son, Richard Wilson, permitted the local Negro League baseball team - the Galesville Hot Sox - to construct a baseball diamond on the property. The baseball diamond became known as Wilson Field and on more than one occasion the Galesville Hot Sox home field hosted that Baltimore Black Sox.

Back in 2010, the house was overrun with vegetation and in danger of structural failure. I visited the property, documented the house and baseball diamond, spoke to the estate holder and local community, and, later, did more research. Remarkably the farmhouse and the baseball diamond (consisting of dugouts, grandstand, backstop, and baseline fencing) was previously documented and determined ineligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

I am so proud that the documentation and research that I completed in 2010 helped to convince the Maryland State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) to reverse the previous determination of ineligibility and determine both the farmhouse and the baseball diamond eligible for the listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Both, without question, are historically significant under the National Register Criteria for Evaluation.

Today, the ball diamond has been converted to use as a public park and the house is being restored. You can learn more and see some wonderful updated photographs here:

W. Winters, The Capital Gazette, Home of the Week: Henry Wilson’s Historic Farmhouse in Galesville, April 2018.

Best,

MB