Saving History in the Heart of The Cape

Traveling up a gravel driveway across from the , one will find Goshen Farm, one of the area’s first homesteads that dates back 230 years.

On a recent chilly Saturday morning, an all-volunteer cleanup and restoration crew was hard at work on a tiny cottage that was built on the property in 1930, just a hundred feet from the main farmhouse. This was the second of several group efforts over the coming months as the begins the arduous task of restoring the buildings and surrounding land to their original integrity.

The society is headed up by four dedicated board members: President Barbara Morgan, Vice President Stu Bailey, Secretary Sharon Biondi and Treasurer Karen Bailey. About 50 members are active in the organization, and many of those pitch in during the cleanups.

Morgan was raised in Cape St. Claire, and her husband’s family has even deeper roots that go back for nearly a century. Through her own personal experience and interest, Morgan is a walking encyclopedia of Goshen Farm history.

For their part, Stu and Karen have lived in the Cape since 1992, and their own curiosity about Goshen Farm was piqued during glimpses they got of the house during evening walks. As history buffs, the couple have given huge amounts of time and energy to the society, and Stu Bailey has even written the organization’s business plan.

The farm and surrounding grounds served as a home to several families through the generations, even housing several slaves pre-Civil War. A total of 290 acres was first patented as Leonard’s Neck in 1663. The land was assigned to Alexander Gardiner and John Wray six years later and stayed in Gardiner’s family for nearly two hundred years.

As one of the descendants of the original landowner, Richard Gardiner, Sr., built the farmhouse for his wife, Anne, and their five sons. According to Morgan, two of the couple’s sons fought in the War of 1812, and from the farmhouse perched high on the hill, Anne kept a close watch on the British ships that sailed up the Chesapeake Bay to invade Baltimore.

“The farmhouse has undergone several transformations since first being constructed as a four-room house,” says Morgan. Originally just two rooms on the first floor and two on the second, the home was nearly doubled in size by the Tydings family, who purchased the homestead at auction in 1853. The additional space was not added on but actually came courtesy of a separate structure that was located near the farmhouse.

The Tydings family continued to live in the house for the next several decades as it eventually passed to the youngest daughter, Mary Tydings Brice. Brice lived her life in the farmhouse, though she eventually sold pieces of the surrounding land to Dr. Hugh Hampton Young, a prominent Johns Hopkins University urologist, so he could begin developing the community.

In 1942, Dr. Morris Leon Radoff, who served as Maryland State Archivist, purchased Goshen Farm with his wife, May. The couple poured their hearts into the property, updating the house and transforming the land around it into a tranquil oasis of gardens. “I find it so interesting that, as respected members of the community, the Radoffs could have lived anywhere in downtown Annapolis,” says Morgan, “but they chose to be here, even living without electricity for the first three years, simply because they loved the history.”

At the same time, Cape St. Claire was experiencing vast growth, and the summer houses that once dotted the area were transitioning to permanent residences. As the need for a dedicated elementary school became more apparent, the Anne Arundel County Public School District purchased some of the property from the Radoffs to build in 1967.

A few years later, the school district pressured Dr. Radoff and his wife to sell more land for a proposed middle school, and though they stood firm, the couple was forced into a living trust agreement so they could live in the house for the remainder of their lives.

When May Radoff died in 1991, ownership of Goshen Farm switched to the school district. Though the middle school was not needed by that time, the county owns the property to this day.

Just a few years ago, Goshen Farm was under threat of being razed for the development of retirement homes. Morgan and several dozen fellow farm supporters, including renowned local historian Orlando Ridout IV, spoke passionately against the plans at a board of education meeting, even showing up en masse at a later county council meeting, and successfully blocked the development.

For the next three years, Morgan and her peers persisted in getting the land leased to them from the school district so that Goshen Farm could be repaired and restored. Morgan says, “We had to become a nonprofit organization, establish 501(c)3 status, write a business plan, file articles of incorporation, bylaws, the list just went on.”

In the end, their tenacity paid off. After personal pleas to Superintendent Dr. Kevin Maxwell and County Councilwoman Cathy Vitale, Morgan finally received her wish and a lease was granted to GFPS last September. And the group has been hard at work ever since. “When we first got here, the farmhouse was full of stuff, the outbuildings were full. We removed two tons of trash, including the old shed,” reports Bailey.

The renovation work will take years but the team is well-prepared. Their members include lawyers, general contractors, electricians, artists and more, all of whom have skills to refurbish the farm. Morgan and Bailey are incredibly thankful for the volunteers, whom they credit with bringing “lots of know-how.”

As a leader of local Boy Scout Troop 2214, Bailey also emphasizes that Goshen Farm provides “numerous, almost innumerable, projects for scouts.” His own daughter is organizing a project to put in a self-guided walking trail of the area, while his son is deciding on a project at the farm for his Eagle Scout rank.

The biggest obstacle, as for most nonprofit organizations, is a lack of funding. Though the GFPS has a guaranteed grant from the state of Maryland that will match donations up to $150,000, the challenge, of course, remains in raising funds to receive the matching money. To date, the group has received about $14,000 through various fundraisers, but needs tens of thousands more.

The society has big plans for the site and envisions a day when it will be a museum, educational center and community gathering spot. In keeping with the land’s history of farming, a goal is to develop community garden plots, and Bailey says that a test plot is not far down the line.

Until then, it’s up to the Goshen Farm Preservation Society board and members to organize fundraisers. They have held a successful Halloween event for the past two years and, next month, will hold their first . On Sunday, March 20, from 3 to 5:00 p.m., the group will serve coffee and refreshments set to the sounds of live music at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church at 1601 Pleasant Plains Road.