Existing comment:
A Building's Evolution: Slave Quarter to Tenant House:
John and Eliza Ridgely, the third owners of the estate, decided to update the design of the home farm in the years just before the Civil War. They tore down several older slave quarters and replaced them with the two stone slave quarters standing today. Rather than a simple, utilitarian design, the new Ferme Ornee (French for "ornamental farm") was marked by decoration and artful layout, designed to show the Ridgely family taste.
As part of the same modernization, they added the bell and the kitchen wing to the overseer's house, and built a new mule barn.
Both of these slave quarters remained in use into the middle of the twentieth century as tenant farmers' quarters.
Through the 1800s, the Ridgelys made several changes to this structure. They added interior doors to convert it from a duplex to a single, larger house. They added a new window to the south wall. Stoves made the house warmer, and a porch (no longer standing) provided a pleasant place to sit on a summer evening.
In 1948, when they sold their mansion, the Ridgelys updated the farm once again. They put an addition on the overseer's house and modernized this building so that it could serve as a residence for their servants. The kitchen sink in this room was added then. So was electricity and a water closet on the second floor.
An enduring mystery:
The windows on the north end of the quarters were fitted with iron bars. Some are still in place. A close look at the window frames will reveal where the others once were.
We do not know the purpose of these bars. Some speculate that the two rooms may have served as a jail. Given the location, smack in the middle of the home farm, this seems unlikely to other pundits. Some speculate that the space may have been used to store valuable seeds or tools, items carefully guarded by the farm manager. Sadly, no written record remains to tell us definitely when or why they were installed. |