Architectural historians think this house was built in the 1870s or 1880s using salvaged materials from older structures.

We do not know who built the house. But its larger size, its sashed windows, and the fact that it was finished with plaster provides evidence that it was built by someone with access to capital.
Above image: This 1798 tax ledger lists four dwelling houses, which may have housed the Sellmans’ enslaved workers. (Courtesy of Archives of Maryland Online)
Above image: The house never had electricity or running water. Today, it survives essentially unaltered from its late nineteenth-century appearance.

A Tale of Two Houses?
One theory architectural historians are considering is that this house was constructed from two older houses that were joined together.
Image: This drawing shows how two older houses may have been combined to create this house.

Recycled Materials
It’s possible that this house was built from the remains of one or more earlier slave quarters, as a local story suggests. Builders often salvaged materials from other structures and incorporated them into new buildings. Between 1735 and 1864, hundreds of enslaved people worked on the Sellman family’s plantation. The buildings they lived in no longer remain. SERC staff and others continue to study the house to learn more about it.
Left image: The house incorporates hand-hewn timbers from an earlier structure. Architectural historians think these date to between 1780 and 1820.

Transition to Tenant Farming
After the Civil War, the Sellmans transitioned from an enslaved workforce to a system of tenant farming and tenanted farm laborers. Tenant farmers paid landowners rent in return for the use of their land. Farm laborers rented houses on the farmers’ lands. Both Black and white tenant farmers and laborers worked the Sellmans’ land. 

The decline of local agriculture severed tenant farmers and farm laborers from the land, leading them to abandon the modest cottages they had occupied since the end of the Civil War.

Above image: The Cusic-Medley House in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, is another example of a tenant farmer’s house. (Courtesy of George W. McDaniel, reproduced from Hearth & Home)

Who lived in this house?

The Donnell Family
In the 1940s, John W. Donnell and his family lived here. Donnell served as caretaker of Woodlawn House, which was then being used as a seasonal house by the Kirkpatrick-Howat family.
Right image: John W. Donnell (right) with his nephew John Jones in 1932. (Courtesy of Betsy Kirkpatrick-Howat)
Above image: SERC staff found this double-barreled shotgun, ca. 1891–1914, inside the house. It likely belonged to Samuel Asher and may have been passed down from his grandfather, who first came to the property in 1900.

The Asher Family
Samuel Asher and his family were the last owners of the house before SERC took possession of it. The Ashers managed the Kirkpatrick-Howat family’s farm. They built the neighboring house in the 1980s and used this house for storage.

The Sharp Family
The African American Sharp family were the last people to live in the house in the early 1960s. After a fire in 1965, it was left vacant.
“As the physical traces of centuries of farming slowly disappear from the landscape, so too does the evidence of the thousands of men and women who worked in the fields of SERC’s former farm properties and who once lived in the many small dwellings that once dotted those fields.”
—Preston Hull, Historic Preservationist