BGuthrie Photos: MD -- Gaithersburg -- Bohrer Park @ Summit Hall Farm

MD -- Gaithersburg -- Bohrer Park @ Summit Hall Farm:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.17.79.60 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] BOHRER_220521_03.JPG	[2] BOHRER_220521_07.JPG	[3] BOHRER_220521_11.JPG
[4] BOHRER_220521_14.JPG	[5] BOHRER_220521_18.JPG	[6] BOHRER_220521_22.JPG
[7] BOHRER_220521_29.JPG	[8] BOHRER_220521_33.JPG	[9] BOHRER_220521_36.JPG
[10] BOHRER_220521_42.JPG	[11] BOHRER_220521_47.JPG	[12] BOHRER_220521_49.JPG
[13] BOHRER_220521_59.JPG	[14] BOHRER_220521_61.JPG	[15] BOHRER_220521_63.JPG
[16] BOHRER_220521_65.JPG	[17] BOHRER_220521_67.JPG	[18] BOHRER_220521_71.JPG
[19] BOHRER_220521_74.JPG	[20] BOHRER_220521_77.JPG	[21] BOHRER_220521_80.JPG
[22] BOHRER_220521_85.JPG	[23] BOHRER_220521_86.JPG	[24] BOHRER_220521_90.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. BOHRER_220521_11.JPG: Summit Hall Farm Smokehouse This outbuilding located on the ridge of Summit Hall Farm is treasured as the oldest complete historic structure within the City of Gaithersburg. Historically known as the smokehouse, its notched logs and chinked mortar serve as a modern day reminder of the early settlement of Log Town. Although the exact date of construction is unknown, its history may be associated with a long list of prominent owners of Summit Hall or Zoar as it was originally known beginning with Baltus Fulks in 1773; Colonel Edward Burgess in 1783; Thomas Beall of George, wealthy merchant, land speculator and Mayor of Georgetown in 1799; Jacob Swamky in 1807; James DeSellum in 1828; Catherine and John DeSellum in 1847; I. T. Fulks in 1886; Frank and Nettie Wilmot in 1936 and the City of Gaithersburg in 1982. Approximately 14 feet square, the building rests on a fieldstone base. The roof was originally covered with rough wood shakes which have been replaced with machine cut wooden shingles. The purlins and ridgepole have also been replaced with modern lumber and plywood sheathing. The short wide door on the east facade is made from three wide planks nailed to two interior horizontal members. The door was originally designed with a loop leather hinge and peg salt-resistent iron hinge system, but is presently mounted with wide triangular iron strap hinges. A concrete floor has been added to the interior of the Smokehouse but the center section can be removed to expose the original fire pit. In 1990, the City of Gaithersburg commissioned Dell Corporation to make restoration repairs to this important historic landmark.
2. BOHRER_220521_22.JPG: Gaithersburg Summit Hall Farm — Gettysburg Campaign — On Sunday, June 28, 1863, Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart and an estimated 5,000 cavalrymen arrived in Rockville en route to Gettysburg. Armed with a list of Union supporters, Stuart’s men planned to arrest John T. DeSellum as he left Presbyterian services, but shopkeeper Dora Higgins warned him in time to escape. Stuart’s cavalrymen seized new mounts and supplies around Rockville, including some of Summit Hall’s horses, forage, and foodstuffs. Though a slaveholder, John T. DeSellum was an outspoken Unionist and Federal enrollment officer. He wrote: “...Sister and myself rode to church at Rockville. Ominious looks and gestures prepared me for the comeing storm. And soon [Confederate Gen. JEB] Stewart’s cavaldry rode into Rockville, aresting offesnive Union men. And pursued a splendid train of mules, and wagons, capturing them.” In the last Confederate invasion in 1864, Gen. Jubal A. Early’s army camped here the night before attacking Ft. Stevens on July 11-12. Early commandeered the house for his headquarters, and DeSellum lost his remaining livestock, crops, and fencing. When he protested, Early left him two barrels of corn. Soldiers searching the house for weapons missed $3,000 hurriedly concealed under his sister Sarah’s voluminous skirts. DeSellum, Sarah, and their parents are buried nearby. (sidebar) Confederate resources were limited. Cavalrymen provided their own horses and tack, receiving horseshoes, feed, a per diem of 40 cents per horse, and compensation if a mount was killed (none if injured or captured). Units became undermanned when troopers left to search for replacement mounts. As shortages increased, cavalrymen cut hooves from dead horses for horseshoes. Many men impoverished their families to stay in the prestigious cavalry. Union quartermasters had more resources, deploying rations, horses, and equipment by rail or wagon. Still, Federals and Confederates stole livestock to supplement rations. While both sides issued reimbursement receipts for supplies requisitioned from civilians, Confederate money was soon shunned and gold demanded.
3. BOHRER_220521_29.JPG: Built circa 1813, Summit Hall was a plain, two-story structure in the Federal style with massive chimneys at the gable ends. It was substantially renovated in 1887 (shown above) and again changed appearances to its present look in 1937. At an elevation of 500 feet, it commands a panoramic view of the countryside. DeSellum "daily beheld the smoke, and hazy atmosphere -- caused by battle, campfires, and conflagrations" in the August 1862 Battle of Cedar Mountain. "The reverberation of artillery was incessant" during the Second Battle of Manassas, and he "heard firing" in the 1864 Battle of Monocacy.
4. BOHRER_220521_33.JPG: Confederates rout a small Union guard and capture a wagon train containing much-needed supplies.
5. BOHRER_220521_36.JPG: Summit Hall Farm Summit Hall, a 251-acre ridge-top farm in the heart of Gaithersburg, was officially named and patented in 1857 by John T. and Sarah DeSellum. The topography and 500-foot elevation with its panoramic view has attracted settlers since colonial times and probably inspired the name. Today the property encompasses 57 acres of traditional rolling green lawns, reflective ponds, swimming pool, miniature golf course, and activities building. The historic resources include a two-story part-log house which may date back to the colonial Logtown era, an 1860s tenant house, a 19th century family cemetery and granary, and a log smokehouse believed to be the oldest standing structure in Gaithersburg. The history of the property dates back more than two centuries beginning as part of a large tobacco plantation in the 1750s, as the small community known as Logtown in the 1770s, as the prosperous farm occupied by the Confederate Army briefly in 1864, and as a model of scientific farming, astronomy, and agronomy in the 20th century. The first local owner was Baltus Fulks, a shoemaker, who owned lots in Logtown in the early 1770s. By 1828, his daughter and son-in-law Catherine and James DeSellum had purchased Fulks' lots and amassed additional lands to total 242 acres. Their children John T. and Sarah DeSellum inherited the farm in 1847 and experienced the Civil War plundering of Jubal Early's Confederate Troops. John DeSellum also parceled off property for a schoolhouse, the Ascension Church, and the Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory. The Fulks/DeSellum family ownership of Summit Hall continued when Ignatius T. Fulks purchased the property in 1886. Summit Hall was sold to Frank and Zoe Wilmot in 1936. During the Wilmot's ownership, their son William created one of the first commercial turf farms in the United States at Summit Hall. The City of Gaithersburg purchased this 57-acre historic farm in 1982 and established Summit Hall Farm Park which is the crown jewel of the City of Gaithersburg park system.
6. BOHRER_220521_86.JPG: Gaithersburg A Character Counts! City "Mayor Ed Bohrer" Jay Hall Carpenter
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].