Completed 1811 Architect Abraham Lerew | Roof Standing seam metal Opened 1811 | |
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Location 5430 Vantage Point Road, Columbia, Maryland; Similar Robinson Nature Center, Lake Elkhorn, Lake Kittamaqundi, Elkridge Furnace Complex, Gramercy Mansion | ||
Weddings at historic oakland manor in downtown columbia maryland
Oakland Manor is a Federal style stone manor house commissioned in 1810 by Charles Sterrett Ridgely in the Howard district of Anne Arundel County Maryland (now Howard County). The lands that became Oakland Manor were patented by John Dorsey as "Dorsey's Adventure" in 1688 which was willed to his grandson Edward Dorsey. In 1785, Luther Martin purchased properties named "Dorsey's Adventure", "Dorsey's Inheritance", "Good for Little", "Chew's Vineyard", and "Adam the First" to make the 2300 acre "Luther Martin's Elkridge Farm".
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Background
In 1785, John Sterrett purchased 1,626 wooded acres with several buildings named "Felicity" from Mathias Hammond, a participant in the 1774 sinking of the Peggy Stewart. Sterrett died two years later, with his wife Deborah Ridgely Sterrett selling 567 acres of the property to their son Charles Sterrett Ridgely, and 533 acres to his brother James Sterrett. Charles Sterrett Ridgely was born Charles Ridgely Sterrett, but changed his name to inherit from his maternal great uncle. He was a graduate of St. Johns College in 1802, a future Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, and commissioned the manor house in June 1810. The house was completed in 1811 including a 100 ft-long stone carriage house.
To the east of the Manor, a grist mill was built which stayed in production until being demolished by fire in 1890. The site known as "Oakland Mills" served as a postal stop, and the name was later used for one of the Rouse development company villages.
Charles Sterrett Ridgely forfeited the house in 1826, selling it to Robert Oliver for $47,000 after failing to make payments toward the property. His son Thomas Oliver purchased the manor, expanding it to 775 acres by adding "Talbot's Resolution Manor","Howard's Fair and Amicable Settlement", "Josephs Gift", "Dorseys Search Resurveyed" and "Dorseys Search". Stone outbuildings with a capability for 1200 bushels of ice were constructed. He sold it for $58,459.95 in 1838 to George Riggs Gaither, who operated the manor as a productive slave plantation producing wheat, corn, oats and hay. The nearby "Oakland Mill" operated as "Gaither's Mill". A small granite quarry was also operated by the plantation. George Riggs Gaither built the stone Bleak House on the property for his son, George Riggs Gaither Jr, who would become Attorney General of Maryland. As the civil war approached, Gaither formed "Gaithers Raiders" part of the "Howard County Dragoons", sixty men which practiced at Oakland Manor prior to becoming a confederate army unit furnished by Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks. The troops marched on 19 April 1861 through Ellicott City to Baltimore, responding to the Baltimore riot of 1861, before heading South to join J. E. B. Stuart.
In October 1862, six Union troops from New Jersey raided the Oakland Manor as a Southern sympathizing plantation with the owners joining the Confederate Army. The farm was sold again after the Civil War to the Phillip and Katherine Tabb who switched from slave farming to raising thoroughbreds with a half mile oval track situated along Columbia pike. In 1874, Katherine Tabb's father Francis Morris of New York purchased Oakland, testing corn silage and trenching techniques that gave Oakland an agricultural engineering status from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. Five trench 117 ft long silos were put to use onsite. In 1877, Morris began a significant grounds improvement program removing Hawthorn hedges and replacing them with wood fencing thought the property manufactured at the Oakland Mills sawmill.
The property had been subdivided to 406 acres in 1909 by owner Thomas Findlay, who removed the racetrack. Oakland was reduced to 350 acres by 1921 with one 8-room tenant house. From 1950 to 1966 the property was operated by Miriam J. Keller as the Oakland Manor Health Farm. After divorce proceedings, the property became the most important land purchase for Rouse Company development project of Columbia. Attorney Bernard F. Goldberg negotiated the deal early in his career before his prison term for misappropriation of land development funds. In 1966, the Rouse Company purchased Oakland and used it as temporary headquarters, then leased it to Antioch College and Dag Hammarskjöld college. By 1976, The property surrounding Oakland Manor was reduced to 8.26 acres. The building was leased to the Red Cross from 1977 to 1988. In 1988, Rouse divested itself of the property maintenance by selling Oakland to the Columbia Association for $185,000. The same year, the association leased 1060sf of the former slave plantation to the African Art Museum of Maryland.