Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1923-08-25


Of people who appear never to have
heard Of those estates.
And houses which carry in every
architectural detail the implications
of that feudal system of society un-
der which the world lived for thous-
ands of years are now thought of and
spoken of as farms" by those who
live near by. Democracy has tri-
umphed-the democracy Of sign
boards and filling stations and whiz-
zing motors and jazz and sport skirts.
Yet what joy it is to approach some
of the stately old mansions, of the
past through broad avenues of trees
framing pictures Of serene dignity
and assurance remote from those
hurried days in which we live!
What peculiarly satisfying moods
it gives to be the guest for while
at one or two Of the great places
which are maintained in the best ira
ditions Of that forgotten past, places
which are, indeed; the "abode of an
cient peace" GASES of harmony and
dignity and graciousness in per-
picked and chaotic age!
To. those who are stepped in Mary
lands history some Of the soil of this
Eastern Shore Of ours is strangely
appealing. No part of it perhaps
gives quite the emotion which one ex-
reriences at st. Mary's City-that
lovely spot-when autumn coloring
makes the site Of the landing Of the
first settlers an unforgettable demo-
ry. And such a house as Charles
gift on the Patuxent links gone up
with the brave adventures, who came
in cookie shells over thousands Of
miles Of ocean to found new homes in
the primevial wilderness, as few Of
the Eastern Shore houses can hope
to do. Under the roof Of Charles
gift one muses. of the hard bitten and
hardy men who built this first small
house in 1649 as almost the first out
post of civilization in a strange land
of savages and hardships and mys-
terry. Read Defoe's "Moll Flanders"
or Colonel Jack" to sense the spirit
of this first influx of colonists in
Baryland.
Yet there is something of this era,
too, in the land of Bohemia Manor
where old Augustine Herman lived
from 1862. to 1886. His house stood
until 1916, when it was destroyed by
fire. Now on it's site is great new
house on which the owner has insert
ed a decorative medallion with "A.
j. H.-1660" in commemoSation of the
first Maryland map-maker.
Standing on the side Of his house
one recalls Jaspar Danckaert's ac-
count of visit he paid Herman in
December, 1879:
Augustine Herrnans was sick
when we arrived at his house.
He showed us every kindness he :
could in his condition as he was
very miserable both in body and
soul. His plantation was going
much into decay as we'll as his
body for want of attention, There
was not Christian man, as they
term it, to serve him; nobody
but negroes. All this was in
creased by a miserable, doubly
miserable wife.
Now, 240 years after, happy chill
dren play on the terraces Of the
house built where Herman's house
stood. Maryland has a past!
But it is Of a much later period
that most Of, the, Eastern Shore houses
speak-of a period when the colonies
had begun to draw to them men of
wealth and power who saw in the
New World an opportunity to live in
finitely richer lives than England
could afford them. One can recon-
struct the impulse which prompted
some of these ambitious smen from
the grounds they laid fairgrounds
which contemporary duke in Eng
land would have thought BETTING his
dignity, grounds radiating a spirit of
power and mastery which no Ameri-
can estate of today could give since
the ownership of land in the pre-capi-
talist era represented feudal power.
Democracy was not in the air when
these gardens were laid out and these
houses built. They were the nuclear
ganglia of an aristocracy which was
aborted by the industrial revolution,
the rise of capitalism and the prohi-
hilton of Drirno penitnre and entail