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Baltimore County:
Historical Reflections and Favorite Scenes
Waterfront
Water has a soothing quality that calms the spirit and lowers the blood pressure. At least that's the way we see it today. It is by no means clear that our colonial forebears had the same perception. Those who came across the Atlantic in the leaky, wallowing ships of the 17th and 18th centuries were probably glad to get as far away from the sea as possible. Pirates and Spaniards tended to arrive by sea, and malaria afflicted those who stayed by the marshy shores. The early settlers favored the river valleys, with fertile land for farming and streams just large enough to run grist mills. There were farms along the Bay shore, but the allure of waterfront property was not a factor in the early development of the county, and even plantation houses on property that a modern realtor would call “waterfront” were not built close to the water.
One such structure, the late 18th-century Ballestone-Stansbury House, is still standing. The exact date of construction is unknown, and the house has been modified over the years. A two-story front porch relieves the austerity of the Federal-style brick building and gives the house a comfortable, welcoming feel. It would have been pleasant to sit on a rocker on that porch and gaze across the fields in the 1800's. Today the view is of the attractive grounds of Rocky Point Golf Course. The parlor is full of images of George Washington, reflecting the attempt to establish a Washington connection during the restoration of the house for the bicentennial, 1974-77. At that time, the site was erroneously thought to have been granted to William Ball, George Washington's great-grandfather, in 1659. It turns out that there were two deeds, the second of which, in 1671, corrected the deed of 1659. The confusion led to the adoption of the name “Ballestone”, by which the house is called in late-20th-century accounts.
The land was actually first patented to Walter Dickenson in 1659. Subsequent owners were John Dixon (1664), Abigail Dixon Scudmore, John Hayes, and Thomas Stansbury (1725). The Stansbury family lived there for over a century, but the 1900's brought hard times for the Standbury farm as for so many others. By 1969, when Baltimore County bought the land as a park, the house had been damaged by vandalism and neglect. A dedicated group of local preservationists has done a splendid job of restoring the house to a mid-to -late 19th-century appearance, with period furnishings. Elizabeth and I visited the site on a sunny June day and found Winfred “Win” Groth weeding the garden. Mr. Groth is a hard-working volunteer and a font of interesting information about the challenges of maintaining an historic house and the recent history of his neighborhood on Dundalk Avenue. He gave us a tour of the house and the newly-built kitchen building, which has been faithfully recreated in the 18th-century mode, separate from the main house. There was no fire in the hearth and no hearth keeper. We were the only ones disturbing the solitude of the place, while across the lawn, the parking lot of the golf course was packed with cars...