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The Present Past

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by “My Father’s Son”

The Immaculate Collection: Hayland

Outside Emmitsburg, nearly the northernmost one can travel before leaving Maryland for Pennsylvania, stands a mansion time forgot, nestled at the end of a long, private lane in solitude, possibly its savior. This estate, known as “Hayland,” located at the terminus of Mechanicstown Road, off the way to Motter’s Station, is a large, brick, Italianate-mansion oriented to face the 25-foot golden statue of the Virgin Mary atop the 95-foot bell tower at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary. The mansion consists of a “main block” with a lesser-scale wing extending from the rear façade. To begin the study of Hayland, however, the origins of Mount Saint Mary’s (MSM) must first be discussed.

Hayland, sharing borders with the prominent Elder property that held the mansion “Clairvaux” and original Elder home “Pleasant Level,” is in fact the original site of the Catholic college MSM (originally called Chinquopin), where Father John DuBois built a home for himself and a classroom building on land acquired from the Elder family. The fact that Hayland is the original site of MSM also likely explains the presence of a 12-seat privy removed from the property during mid-twentieth century ownership, of which the seat board has been found in a barn on the property. Come 1808, the Catholic Church required DuBois’s relocation of the school to the present MSM campus, sited on the face of Elder’s “St. Mary’s Mount” for better recognition and majesty. DuBois’s land was sold back to the Elder family. Joseph Elder, either the son or grandson of the original Elder, William, then resided at DuBois’s former home built c.1805 or earlier as found by dating of the floor planks still existing in the structure.

In 1846, Joseph Elder, of old age and poor health, moved with his wife to Ohio to live with family, presumably one of his children, and sold the small DuBois home to William Miles, a New York native born to George H. Miles, the son of Colonel Thomas Miles. William’s wife, Sarah “Sally” Mickle, was the daughter of Baltimore’s Robert Mickle and Philadelphia’s Jewish Elizabeth Etting. After purchasing the DuBois home, William Miles, a successful shipping merchant, contracted Emmitsburg Master Carpenter Joshua Shorb (responsible, too, for the later Gothic-remodel of the nearby Georgian-home, “San Marino”) for the hefty sum of $5,000 to enlarge the home purchased from Joseph Elder. The proper, “main-block” of the house at Hayland today is the addition commissioned by the Mile’s family. The Mile’s portion of Hayland is incredibly of post-beam construction, built like a barn of four-by-four members, secured with wooden pins and cross bracing and completely absent of nails. This stately addition is scaled as a manor of its time should be, with 9-foot, 6-over-9 sashes in areas of the first floor (the larger lower sashes sliding upward over the top portions and into a wall pocket, allowing the windows to act as doorways onto a grand, covered, side porch when open). This new, grand home, center-hall in plan, had four bedrooms upstairs and a small, center chapel at the top of the stairs with floor-to-ceiling windows facing MSM’s Grotto. The Miles addition was joined to the original DuBois home by a porch system, leaving the original home as a semi-detached structure operating as a kitchen and servants quarters to the proper Miles manor. The Miles family operated the Hayland plantation with immigrant as opposed to slave labor, documented by the 1860 Census, where in addition to Mr. and Mrs. Miles, Sally’s mother, and the Miles children, were four German field hands and two house servants also recorded. In the late 1800s, the porch between the two structures was enclosed, creating a “back-foyer” to the mansion, toting a final, third staircase when added to the formal front-stair (winding from the basement to the attic level) and primitive stairway left in the DuBois section of the now unified home.

“You had this enclave of very bright, gifted, people that carved out their own cultural center at the edge of the wilderness—a very close-knit community with close ties to Mount St. Mary’s” states Hayland’s current owner, speaking of the original Elder property which came to be divided between the Shorb, Manning, Tiers, and Miles families, all wealthy, well-connected devout Catholics attracted by MSM.

William and Sally Miles’ eldest son, George Henry, “the poet of the mountain” named after his paternal grandfather, is responsible for christening his parents’ home “Hayland.” A poet, novelist, and dramatist, George Miles was an MSM alumnus and English instructor at his alma-mater. At the age of seven, George Miles was placed in the care of Monsignor John McCaffrey, president of MSM, when his parents left the country for an extended diplomatic assignment in Haiti. McCaffrey became George’s godfather and mentor for the remainder of his life. (The Mile’s daughter, Elizabeth, was sent to St. Joseph’s in her parent’s absence.) In line with Hayland’s community’s focus around MSM, Elizabeth wed MSM Mathematics Professor Col. Daniel Beltshoover, and George Ms. Adeline Tiers—the daughter of his MSM classmate, Edward Tiers—both couples resided at Hayland at one time or another.

In 1872, Sally Miles, noted at the time as being “of Baltimore,” sold the stately Hayland holdings, spurring the start of several inhabitants over the next 134 years. The home was long owned by Daniel F. Roddy, owner of the surrounding Clairvaux and San Marino properties (the latter of which his personal residence) and used the Hayland mansion to house farm-managers and various farm hands, who assisted in the Roddy enterprises, utilizing the accumulation of his joined properties. Roddy’s deed lists the Mechanicstown Road property as “Hayland: Parts of the tracts ‘Elder’s Choice,’ ‘Pleasant Level,’ ‘Turkey Hill,’ ‘Enlargement,’ ‘Ramsey Rest,’ ‘St. Mary’s Valley,’ and ‘Buck’s Forest.” In 1940, Roddy’s heirs conveyed Hayland to the Long family, who also rented out the property, first as an entire house and then as divided apartments in the 1980s. In the hands of lifelong bachelor, Jay Clarence Long, who left Hayland to Trinity United Methodist Church of Emmitsburg in 1999 “to be kept, maintained, and disposed of in ways to benefit the church.” Hayland was again sold into private hands in 2006.

Enter the current owners who moved into Hayland only six weeks ago, after masterfully restoring the home for the past ten years. The new family, the first owners to own and reside in the Hayland home since 1900, have restored the home to its near 1850 condition, disguising the homes modernization to keep with its original fashion. Fortunately, much of the home’s original fabric remained intact because of the home’s longtime tenement use, excepting the removal of the two rear stairways to accommodate bathrooms and a second kitchen when converted to apartments.

Hayland’s lengthy restoration—an exciting and stressful time for the owners—was perhaps prolonged by fate to allow the admirable salvation of many comparable Joshua Shorb-features from San Marino to be used in Hayland’s repair. Marble mantles, wood trimmings, doors, fireplace-flanking, built-in cabinetry (the asymmetrical units ironically fitting perfectly alongside Hayland’s flues), a claw-foot tub, matching floorboards, and other features, allow the demolished San Marino to live on as part of Hayland. Also removed, spared from the complete destruction at San Marino, was the gothic privy-house, which made the short, quick journey across Motter’s Station Road to Hayland, where it will be refurbished into a pool-house. An oil painting of a lake and whooping cranes signed by a Marhia Van Der Zubér and dated 1893 was found beneath layers of drywall compound over a mantle between windows, overlooking the area in which the scene depicted once existed at Hayland.

Members of the Miles, Mickle, and Etting families are all buried at Hayland’s nearby Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church cemetery, all prominent families whose lineages have seemingly vanished. Hayland’s current owners, who also have family in the cemetery, have taken it upon themselves to repair and maintain their Hayland family’s resting places. Many thanks go out to Hayland’s new residents, without whose generosity to open their home to the author and share their extensive research, this edition would not be near as informative—they state with pride “we feel that we have restored Hayland to a place that the Miles family could return and once again recognize.” The property, slated for residential sub-division before the current purchase, has been placed in a state of agricultural preservation to secure Hayland’s future.

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The restored Hayland Mansion outside Emmitsburg. The “main-block” front façade built by Miles family c. 1850.

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The right side façade of the Hayland Mansion, exquisitely depicting the scale between the Miles “main-block” and the original DuBois house that is now the manor’s rear-wing.

The Present Past

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The Immaculate Collection: Clairvaux & San Marino

by “My Father’s Son”

“As spring came on, the desire to move obsessed me, and Walter suggested our moving to the ‘Old Dominion,” wrote Louise Closser Hale for Harper’s Magazine 1916 Vol. 133. A bitter New York City winter led Mrs. Hale to agree such an outing was necessary; her restlessness reason enough to travel, while Mr. Hale used the trip as justification to purchase a new motorcar. As Louise Closser Hale, a Broadway actress and writer, packed for the trip, her husband, Walter Hale, a talented artist and Broadway actor/writer himself, took pet-dog “Toby” to test different automobile makes. The couple enthusiastically crossed the Mason-Dixon Line by way of the “Emmitsburg Road” days after departing their 27 N. Washington Square apartment—a seven-story limestone building, adjoining a row of red-brick Georgian mansions. This route was chosen by Walter’s desire to visit his “Uncle Charlie’s” home, bringing the Hales to a lavish collection of homes in Frederick County’s elder land. Pun intended, the Hale’s reached the bounds once belonging to William Elder and wife, Jacoba Clementina Lyvers.

Elder came to the tract “Ogle’s Good Will” on the eastern face of the Catoctin Mountain range’s “Carrick’s Knob” from St. Mary’s County in the early 1700s. The base of the tract was renamed “Pleasant Level,” where Elder constructed the family home, satisfied by the surprisingly flat (or pleasantly level) land at the mountain’s base, necessary for his plantation needs. A devout catholic, Elder named his holdings beyond Pleasant Level, “St. Mary’s Mount,” in homage to his Eastern shore roots and religious interests. The Elders gave part of St. Mary’s Mount to be used as a Catholic College & Seminary in 1808; deemed Mt. St. Mary’s after the land it was erected upon. Pleasant Level was located south of Emmitsburg on the Northeast corner of modern day Motter’s Station Road’s intersection with U.S. Route 15. William Elder’s son, Aloysius, inherited his father’s Pleasant Level property and willed it to Mt. St. Mary’s College (MSM) to preserve the family cemetery sited with the Elder home, and ensure his family’s continued burial there. Aloysius and Josephine Green Elder’s daughter, Ann Rosetta Elder, and husband, James Cretin, resided at Pleasant Level under its MSM ownership with their daughter Mary William Anna Cretin.

Ann Rosetta died at age thirty-seven, and James Cretin remarried Mary Ann Lyvers (likely a descendant of his first wife’s paternal Grandmother, Jacoba Lyvers’ original lineage.)

“We turned off the highway to go to “Uncle Charlie’s,” following an avenue of huge pear-trees out for Easter that must have been centuries old,” Mrs. Hale described approaching the estate called “San Marino.” In 1916, San Marino was owned by Daniel F. Roddy, presuming him the “cordial host” who greeted the city folk. Roddy purchased San Marino from Jonas V. Summers and wife, Frances Eleanor Joy, in March of 1900. Five years prior, the Summers’ had bought the place at a public sale from Charles Augustus Manning and son, Edward Tiers Manning.

Charles A. Manning’s mother was Sarah Ann Schenk Timberlake Manning, first married to Lewis Timberlake. Virginia Timberlake Hale—Walter Hale’s mother— resulted from Ms. Schenk’s first marriage, making Charles Manning the younger half-sibling to Virginia and, therefore, Walter’s “Uncle Charlie.” In 1857, Charles Manning and New Yorker Edward William Tiers joined Joshua Shorb in shared ownership of the San Marino property. It appears that Shorb was then bought-out by the partners, a conveyance then reassigned solely to Tiers. Manning forwent his share of San Marino to Tiers in trust that the continued use of the property and premises be retained for him and his wife for the extent of their natural lives. Manning’s wife, Emily, was Edward Tiers’ daughter, making the gentlemen’s arrangement easier to understand between father and son-in-law. Also agreed were the stipulations that in the event of the Mannings’ deaths, the “rents and profits” of the estate would be given to “support or maintenance the child or children of Emily Tiers Manning until the age of twenty-one is reached.”

Built circa 1780 by one of Pleasant Level’s Elder sons, San Marino, was a well-outfitted estate, down a drive opposite what is today Mechanicstown Road. In addition to the main house were a smokehouse, stone outbuildings, and a two-room privy with lathed wall between a multi-seat out-house and bathing room, utilizing water drawn from Beaver Branch, on whose banks the privy was built.

From San Marino, described as “one of the show places of the northern part of Frederick County,” Roddy operated a Lime Kiln and quarries for over forty years, providing stone used to build the first great roads of Maryland. Maryland and Pennsylvania agricultural regions benefitted from Roddy’s shipments of prime lime. Roddy’s kilns stood on the border of the San Marino property, along the road that would become “Old Kiln Road,” connecting the Motter’s Station road to that of Roddy’s childhood, aptly named “Roddy Road.”

Just as San Marino was built by William Elder’s son, its land, too, was from William Elder, conveyed away from Pleasant Level after MSM sold Dr. James Aloysius Shorb the land left them by Aloysius Elder against his Will. James Shorb was an Emmitsburg physician and original student of MSM, whose purchase of “part of St. Mary’s Increase” contained both the homes San Marino and Pleasant Level. In 1853, Shorb sold the 200-acre San Marino property as a means to “settle a debt” with Emmitsburg Master Carpenter Joshua Shorb. San Marino was noted as containing “an elegant brick dwelling,” where Dr. Shorb’s family first lived. James Debarth Shorb, the son of Dr. and Margaret McMeal Shorb, controlled thousands of acres in Southern California during adulthood. He was first to use pipes there for irrigation and designed the city of San Gabriel’s water-supply system. In this vicinity, James DeBarth Shorb established the towns of Alhambra and San Marino, a town of expansive homes named after his 1841 birthplace. Joshua Shorb embellished the San Marino dwelling with Gothic Revival architectural elements. It is believed that Joshua always resided in Emmitsburg and never lived at San Marino.

Haled by its intricate architecture, the second stop by the Hales was to San Marino’s neighboring estate, the Gothic mansion “Clairvaux.” Dr. James Shorb reportedly constructed the Greek-Revival, Normanesque chateau Clairvaux at Pleasant Level, around 1850, probably completed and inhabited by the Shorbs near 1853 (the year they sold their former residence, San Marino.) The construction of Clarivaux may have been the craftsmanship of Joshua Shorb (listed as having the largest and most successful wood carpentry business in Emmitsburg at the 1860 Census.) Clairvaux’s construction could also have been the source of the debt settled between the doctor and carpenter with the San Marino property. The former Elder home allegedly stood nearby Clairvaux until 1862.

Shorb’s sale of Clairvaux eventually allowed the Cretin family to reclaim the property, whose 1876 deed called it “the rest and residue of the real estate specified and described in a deed from the President and council of Mt. St. Mary’s College to a certain James Shorb.” After thirty-three years, John Cretin’s wife, Emily, sold Clairvaux to neighbor Daniel F. Roddy, whose heirs sold to Marie Gloninger Rial in 1940, with inclusive water rights to Wolf’s spring and reservoir and “piping to mansion as done by John T. Cretin.”

The abandoned Clairvaux mansion was engulfed by inextinguishable fire in the 1970s that could only be left to burn itself out. Two earlier fires at Clairvaux claimed a summer home and barn. In 1986, MSM, who again took ownership of the property when Marie Rial’s family sold to the seminary in 1978, demolished the ruinous, stately brick walls left by the fire. Like other historic farms in the area, all structures of the San Marino property—Roddy-era lime kilns included—have been more recently demolished under ownership of Kline Farm Properties LLC. The fenced Elder graveyard remains today visible from Motter’s Station Road, a parcel preserved under MSM ownership since Aloysius Elder’s conveyance.

Walter Hale died of Cancer in 1917. Louise relocated to Hollywood in 1929, where she appeared in a large amount of movies over a short time before her death in 1933. A book, We Discover the Old Dominion, was published by Mrs. Hale, also containing illustrations by Walter Hale, one being of the Emmitsburg Clairvaux Mansion with his new roadster in front.

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Courtesy of Beck Images
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The Normanesque chateau “Clairvaux” constructed at Pleasant Level by Dr. James A. Shorb.

Courtesy of Maryland State Archives
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The San Marino Farmhouse, constructed south of Mt. St. Mary’s University, the longtime home to prominent citizen Daniel F. Roddy.