roots of history
PHOTO : Martin Radigan
Montevideo
a Seneca Landmark
By Knight Kiplinger
At the end of a straight , tree-lined lane off River Road , just west of Seneca Creek , stands a formal Federalperiod house called Montevideo . Completed in 1830 , Montevideo was named ( from Latin for “ I see the mountain ”) for its clear view of Sugarloaf Mountain , 12 miles to the north . It has witnessed all the currents of history that swept over western Montgomery County in the last 200 years .
It was erected on land that the builder ’ s grandfather — the Scottish immigrant tobacco exporter and first mayor of Georgetown , Robert Peter — began acquiring in Tory confiscation auctions after the Revolution in 1781 . His later acquisitions made him the largest
landowner in Montgomery County , with more than 20,000 acres .
Its fields — depleted by tobacco , wheat and corn without nourishment of the soil — saw the decline of the county ’ s farm sector ( and population ) in the early 19th century , later to be rejuvenated by fertilizer ( manure , crushed lime and Peruvian guano ) and crop rotation .
Montevideo was completed in 1830 , the same year the C & O Canal reached Seneca and provided easier access to Washington markets for local farm goods as well as for the Seneca red sandstone sold by Montevideo ’ s builder , John Parke Custis Peter , from his family ’ s quarries and cutting mill near the Potomac River .
In that same year , 1830 , Montevideo witnessed the escape , presumably to Pennsylvania , of three young black men from among the more than 20 enslaved workers at the Peter farms , quarries and cutting mills . ( See Anthony Cohen ’ s and Steve Gullick ’ s account in the fall 2020 issue of PLENTY .)
Thirty years later , Montevideo saw the constant movement of Union and Confederate troops through Seneca and Darnestown , vying in cavalry skirmishes for control of the strategic canal and Potomac River . Then in 1864 , a year after Lincoln ’ s Emancipation Proclamation didn ’ t free the slaves in Unionist Maryland , the enslaved workers of Montevideo and all of Maryland were freed by a new state constitution .
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