on Montevideo again .” When she died in 1854 , she was buried next to her husband , son and daughter in the Peter family plot at Montevideo — after nightfall , by torchlight .
Most of the blended Peter- Nourse family decamped across the Potomac to Leesburg , Virginia , in 1854 or ‘ 55 , when Montevideo was inherited by the Peters ’ oldest son , Thomas , who lived in the big house with his wife and children for another 20 years or so .
The Peters ’ lands south of River Road — including their sandstone quarries and cutting mill — were sold to D . C . investors in 1866 for $ 70,000 . Montevideo and its surrounding fields were sold to prominent local farmer Joseph Dyson in 1878 . He and his heirs owned the old estate for 66 years , never living in the house but renting it to others .
One of the more colorful tenants was a local farmer and canal-side Seneca merchant named Bill Gunnell , who rented the big house in the 1880s and 1890s . According to the 1973 recollections of 98-year-old local sage Lewis Allnutt , Gunnell played fiddle for square dances and made moonshine in the onetime Peter children ’ s schoolhouse out near the cemetery . “ It was mostly corn whisky ,” Allnutt told his neighbor Austin Kiplinger . “ A fellow could almost always get a drink up there if he had a mind to .”
By the mid-20th century , the once-elegant house was abandoned in disrepair , owned for 14 years ( 1944-1958 ) by D . C . lawyer James Barnes , who was a former Illinois congressman and aide to Presidents Franklin D . Roosevelt and Harry Truman .
Austin Kiplinger , a 40-year-old journalist and publisher ( The Kiplinger Letter and Kiplinger ’ s magazine ) who was then living in Chevy Chase with his wife and two sons , first saw Montevideo — unoccupied and open to the weather — on a country drive in 1958 . He bought the house and 150 acres and completed the restoration in 1960 . He later acquired another 250 acres of adjoining land , running north across Dry Seneca Creek and west to Partnership Road .
Kiplinger and his wife Gogo — and later his son Knight and daughter-in-law Ann — hosted
annual barbecues with square dancing in their 1906 bank barn , a tradition interrupted only by the COVID pandemic of 2020- ’ 22 .
Montevideo is still a highly productive farm . The Billy Willard family of Poolesville leases its land to grow corn , soybeans and winter wheat for global markets . Pastures support the sheep flock of the Amanda Cather / Mark Walter family , who manage the property and grow organic vegetables and raise grass-fed livestock at their own Plow and Stars farm , within Montevideo .
Known for its architecture , its sweeping views of Sugarloaf and the Catoctin hills of Virginia , its fertile fields and its complex history , Montevideo remains a treasured gem of Montgomery County ’ s Ag Reserve .
Knight Kiplinger , today ’ s steward of Montevideo , is a lifelong journalist , history buff and preservationist ; he chairs Historic Medley District , the nonprofit which maintains the 1866 Seneca Schoolhouse , 1793 John Poole House and 1910 Poolesville Bank / Old Town Hall building .
Montevideo ’ s 400 acres is home to Plow & Stars farm and activites of the Seneca Valley Pony Club and Potomac Hunt .
Photos , p . 38-39 : Knight Kiplinger plenty I spring sowing 2023 39