The Best National Parks You’re Not Visiting #3: Thomas Stone National Historic Site

November 1, 8:36 AMNational Parks Recreation ExaminerRandi Minetor

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the National Parks Recreation Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

He called this house Haberdeventure, or “dwelling place of the winds” in Latin—and when he bought this property, Thomas Stone did not imagine that he would become a leading figure in securing the thirteen New World colonies’ independence from England.

Stone planned a quiet life as a lawyer, plantation owner, and local politician, but as a representative of Maryland to the Second Continental Congress, he signed his name to a history-changing document: the Declaration of Independence. 

Only about five thousand people annually visit this house in Port Tobacco, MD, where Stone lived throughout his career and ended his days in 1787 at the tender age of 44. Part of the original house was destroyed by fire in 1977, so the central section and part of the west wing have been restored to resemble their 1770s appearance. The kitchen, however, burned in the early 1800s, and the remodeled kitchen built by Stone’s descendants in the 1840s is much larger than the original. Stone supported many members of his extended family in this house when they fell on hard times, converting several areas from common space to bedrooms, so the living areas may not have felt quite so spacious in his day.

The short tour of this home covers only the ground floor of the house, but visitors can extend their brief viewing of the opulently appointed colonial home with a stroll along trails throughout the park’s 322 acres. Outbuildings constructed in the 1840s create a sense of the plantation’s heyday.

With the Declaration signed and the Revolutionary War in progress, Stone became part of the committee that wrote the Articles of the Confederation, the precursor to the U.S. Constitution, and he even served briefly as president of Congress in 1784.  

The following year, Stone and his fellow senators from Maryland were part of the historic creation of a treaty between Maryland and Virginia to use the Potomac River for navigation.  The Mount Vernon Conference, which met at President George Washington’s Virginia home, still stands as the most workable cooperative agreement between these two states for commercial use of the river’s waters.

Tragedy struck the lawyer and statesman, however, when his wife, Margaret, suffered a peculiar reaction to an inoculation for smallpox that wrought permanent havoc with her health.  When she drifted into decline in 1785, Stone gave up his legal practice and stayed home to care for her and raise their children.  Margaret died in 1787, and less than four months later, her brokenhearted husband died as well.  Descendants of Thomas and Margaret kept the home at Haberdeventure in the family until 1936. 

Admission is free at the historic site. The house and visitor center are at 6655 Rose Hill Road, and they’re open daily from Memorial Day until Labor Day, and Wednesday through Sunday from September through May.

The Best National Parks You’re Not Visiting #2: Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial

The Best National Parks You’re Not Visiting #1: Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve

For more information:  www.nps.gov/thst