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Edgewood was the name of the plantation house  which may
have been built before 1800. At one time when it was owned by the Brent family, it was a
tobacco plantation. Since tobacco depletes the soil, within a few decades the tobacco
was of poor quality. Edgewood had only 200 acres, smaller than its neighbor the
Highlands, which had 700 acres. However, the Edgewood plantation house was
unusually grand for a Maryland plantation, and was more typical of the type of house
one associates with the cotton plantations in the deep South, for instance. There
were at least five slave cabins on the property. |
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| The property passed from the Brents to Theodore
Mosher to John M. Johnson, and finally to Charles M. Keys, who had operated a coal,
wood, and feed business in Washington. (Many of these families are buried nearby, at St.
John's Church.) The Keys family kept it for over 80 years. Charles Keys' sons, Frank and
Enos, raised a number of successful race horses on the farm. Finally,
in 1928, |
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| The front lawn of Edgewood provided a perfect setting
for a Maypole dance for the NPS students. In order to make the Seminary
self-sufficient, most of the land was used as a dairy farm, and barns were constructed about
100 yards to the right of the house in the picture above. The barn buildings are still there
today, as is a long building in which Mrs. Ament raised angora rabbits. The Army
razed the house in the late 1960s, to make way for a new Commissary building. |
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