Todd Point Project

Plot Twists Change the Setting

2009-03-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

We have seen many sources name Sarke both in locating and in labeling the Trippe family home. Given what we have learned about the general location of the Sarke tract and given the name of the house that Joanne and Bill are renovating, it is tempting to conclude, “End of story." But the 1730 plot of Trippe’s Regulation—the tract that absorbed the Sarke tract—suggests a change of setting.

Determining the location of Sarke tract was complicated by different boundary waters cited by surveyors in the two plats of Trippe's Regulation—Trippe’s Bay, Swan Cove and "Charleses Creek by side of a Marsh"—and yet another mentioned in a secondary source that placed the Sarke tract “on Todd’s Bay”, not to mention the omission of scale or orientation indictors on the earlier plot. But after closer examination of the 1764 plat, I noticed directional labels that belied the surveyor’s siting of the tract on Trippe’s Bay. When I ignored the water boundary label on the diagram and relied only on compass labels to position the boundary overlay--which resulted essentially in twisting the overlay ninety degrees counterclockwise--the pieces of this tract’s puzzle fell into place… on Trippe's Bay, but to the southwest rather than the northwest, and on Armstrong Bay and Todd’s Bay, too.

With a little allowance for the changes time and tide have wrought upon landforms and their labels, the boundaries plotted in plats of Trippe’s Regulation now fit the maps and aerial shots of the area rather neatly. The allowances seem well justified given the transformation of these landforms in cartographer’s renderings over the same period of time, and historical shorelines for the period (earliest being 1841-1851 drawn in white below) found at M aryland Shore s Online, a web portal of Maryland’s Chesapeake and Coastal Program where property owners can learn more about their vulnerability to erosion, flooding and inundation, as well as technical and financial assistance available to mitigate coastal hazards.

Admittedly this exercise was a crapshoot: my renderings of the surveyor’s diagrams no doubt introduced plenty of error and the boundary plots may already have been distorted in scanning; add to this that the documents are difficult to read, there are discrepancies between the two surveys, boundaries are plotted using perches and natural boundaries have changed over time. So I used ArcGIS Explorer software to calculate a rough estimate of the acreage encompassed by my positioning of the boundary overlay on a satellite image of Dorchester County. Comparing that acreage to acreage calculated by the surveyors in 1730 and 1762 gave me some confidence that my location of these consolidated tracts may be in the ballpark, especially given Elias Jones’ claim in the “New Revised History of Dorchester County, Maryland” that Trippe family holdings “at one time embraced practically all the land between Trippe's Bay and Todd's Point.” (And Trippe’s Regulation included only a few of the many tracts that Trippe owned.)

Having gotten all my excuses out of the way in case I’m wrong, I’ll now hazard the supposition that Sarke Plantation is not built on the Sarke tract, that it may actually have been built on a tract surveyed for Henry Trippe in 1669 and patented under the name “Coney Warren” (meaning a place where rabbits burrow) in 1670—the same year he acquired the deed for Sarke from John Edmondson. Coney Warren is one of the tracts, including Sarke, consolidated into Trippe’s Regulation in 1730. (It also shows up in Maryland State Archives with alternative spellings “Conney Warren” and “Conny Warren". Unfortunately, the surveyor in the 1730 plat of Trippe’s Regulation, labeled it “Cunny Warren” which is rather vulgar British slang for a brothel.) If there is any measure of accuracy to my mapping of the tract, it looks as though much of Coney Warren has been lost to water over the 340 years since it was first surveyed for Henry Trippe and most of that loss had already occurred by 1730. So if indeed the tract called Sarke was on Todd’s Bay, under my supposition, it is only because Coney Warren was lost to the “subsidence” described by W. Laird Henry in “Maryland’s Colonial Eastern Shore”. (For more current and scientific documentation of land loss in Dorchester County, visit Chesapeake Bay Project.)

Even if not built on Sarke tract, Sarke Plantation could still have been the Trippe home. Coney Warren appears to be the first tract Trippe purchased on the greater Choptank River, so it could follow that would be where he would start building. According to “Dorchester First Families”, Henry Trippe’s first land in Dorchester County was located at the head of Trippe’s Creek (now Brooks Creek) on the north side of Little Choptank River. He is mentioned in Provincial Court records as “Henry Tripp of Little Choptanck River” as late as 1674.

Time, Tide and Trippe's Regulation

2009-03-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

Captain Henry Trippe may have been the first person who actually lived on the tract of land known as Sarke. Francis Armstrong sold the 350 acre tract he patented in 1663 to John Edmondson on April 15, 1664. Six years later, Trippe purchased the tract from Edmondson on November 9, 1670. According to “Colonial Families of the United States of America”, Trippe “added this land to what had been given by Royal grant in 1663 and it became the family seat in Dorchester County, and so remained until recently, known as Todds Point.” An ambiguous sentence if ever I read one (at least for the purpose of determining if Sarke Plantation was indeed the Trippe family seat). Another history, Elias Jones' “New Revised History of Dorchester County”, comes closer to a definitive statement on Trippe’s residence, noting that he settled on the Choptank in 1663 and at his death left to his son Henry “the family seat called ‘Sark’.” This was the source cited in an application for the National Register of Historic Places that appears to have been filed around 1975 (for the house that Jo and Bill are now renovating) that states “Sarke is an interesting type house which appears to have been built as a summer home in the first quarter of the 20th century, though it may have been constructed around an earlier dwelling house. Sarke Plantation … was owned in the 17th century by Henry Trippe, who made his home there.” Victor’s discovery confirms the applicant's suggestion that an older dwelling house might be hidden by the newer construction.

Hoping to confirm the house, Sarke Plantation, is indeed built upon the provincial tract, I attempted to superimpose old plats on new maps. While I have no plat from Sarke conveyances, I did find one for a 1730 transaction in which Henry Trippe (Capt. Trippe's son) re-patented under the name “Trippe’s Regulation” acreage from a number of different tracts that he owned, including the Sarke tract. (This explains why many Trippe family histories cite "Trippe's Regulation" as place of birth and death.) I counted myself two times lucky at this point: first because the surveyor for this transaction included the outline of Sarke within the new boundary and second because someone recently requested “Trippe’s Regulation” plats from Maryland State Archives so they are among the few from the period that have been scanned and made available online. Evidence that this Sarke Plantation may sit on the original Sarke Tract, and that the tract was waterfront, is given in “First Dorchester Families” in its description of another “tract that adjoined ‘Sarke’ on Todds Bay.” The body of water fits for our Sarke Plantation; however, the water boundaries named in the plats of “Trippe’s Regulation” muddy the water considerably. The tracts are clearly the same; however, the 1762 plat indicates the tract fronts Swan Cove in Trippe’s Bay and the 1730 plat mentions "a Cove or Creek commonly called or knowen by the Name of Charleses Cove by Side of a Marsh".

Superimposing the survey boundaries over satellite images reminded me of earth science lessons that cast continents as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, once assembled now separated by natural forces. The natural force manifest during my exercise was the erosive, accretive and submersive power of water. I’m guessing water’s disruptive power extended to the land office. While the reason for re-patenting multiple tracts is given in various sources as consolidation of holdings, I would guess that a greater motivation was to record reduced acreage resulting from shifting shorelines. The “quitrent” or "quit rent" due Lord Baltimore and, later, property taxes due the colony were based on land value and therefore acreage.

Sarke appeared to have had little or no acreage loss in the seven years between Armstrong’s original patent and the first Henry Trippe’s purchase, since the acreage remained the same and the survey outline is a neat rectangle. However the boundaries in the 173o plat of the consolidated tract “Trippe’s Regulation” cut into Sarke’s rectangle, showing significant land “taken by water” over the sixty years since Henry Trippe purchased it. There is reference made also to “vacant land” added, which is likely a result of shifted sand (harming somewhat my case for financial motivation to resurvey). The 1762 plat shows shoreline changes over the next 30 years were relatively minor, perhaps only because the cove or creek created by the earlier changes offered some protection from the more powerful wind and water currents of Todds Bay. For in Swepson Earle's 1916 "Maryland's Colonial Eastern Shore, W. Laird Henry writes of the unabated loss of Dorchester County's islands and its mainland shores:

...these islands have in larger part been washed away by storms and the tides or the bay, and they seem destined to final extinction as the submergence still progresses and at an even accelerated rate within the last fifty years. By the operation or seismic forces the mainland within this fringe of islands, like the islands themselves, appears upon all its bay frontage to be gradually but steadily subsiding, extensive areas of marsh land, inhabited by fur-bearing animals alone, now appearing where prosperous corn and tobacco fields were cultivated by the early colonists. This is not only known by tradition and the experience of the last fifty or sixty years, but is demonstrated by the existence of immense stumps of oak and poplar trees, from three to five feet in diameter, found in these marshes several feet below the tides, high or low, and which indicate a subsidence of at least three or four feet within the last 200 years.

Another force evident--to my eyes anyway: the lasting impact of man on the landscape. I believe hints of the property boundaries set forth in these 18th century plats are still visible in 20th century aerial images of the area today. Can you see them?

Whence the Name Sarke?

2009-03-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

In the year 1663 Francis Armstrong patented, under the name “Sarke,” a 350 acre tract in what would later become Dorchester County (Maryland State Archives, Liber 6, Folio 240); his was the original patent on that land under the Charter of Maryland. While not one of the original contingent of settlers (comprised primarily of Catholics) that arrived on Lord Baltimore’s vessels Ark and Dove in 1633, he was one of the earliest settlers of Maryland. According to MSA histories of the settlement, Francis Armstrong transported himself and three servants to the colony by 1658. In "History of Dorchester County," he is cited as one of the first settlers of nearby Taylor’s Island, “who cleared the land of timber and made fine farms there.” According to "First Dorchester Families", he was residing across the Chesapeake Bay by 1664: "On April 15, 1664 Francis Armstrong, planter, of the Cliffs in Calvert County and his wife Frances, sold a 350 acre tract called Sarke to John Edmondson, merchant, of the Cliffs in Calvert County. Sarke was located between the lands of Andrew Cooke (Cooke Point) and Thomas Todd (Todds Point)." He eventually settled permanently in Talbot County.

Armstrong appears frequently in MSA records of the mid-17th century, including records of court proceedings related to numerous personal land transactions and to his role as a jurist, until probate and settlement of debts of his estate following his death in 1669. He is described in those records as a gentleman and a planter. While it appears Armstrong himself may never have lived on “Sarke," the description of its location at conveyance seems to confirm that the house called "Sarke Plantation" derives its name from the land on which it was built. But why did Armstrong name the tract “Sarke”?

It was a common practice in the Maryland colony to name tracts after the homeland. Whether this convention was a symptom of nostalgia or of lack of imagination, "Sarke" also may have been so named for its connection to Armstrong's past. Various sites indicate Armstrong was born in 1629 in Ireland, though no history I’ve found indicates the county. However, in 1667 he received by grant from Lord Baltimore, 500 acres in Talbot County that he patented under the name “London Derry” - the northernmost county of Ireland. (The court house in Easton sits on two acres of that tract that were purchased from Armstrong's son Philemon.) He patented another tract under the name “Ireland”, so it does appear that he employed the homeland name convention.

I wonder if Francis Armstrong's earlier choice of "Sarke" to name the tract near Todd’s Point was the symbolic act of a descendant of the Armstrongs of Morton and Sark, a famous border clan of Scotland. Morton and Sark were their “strengths”—towers built with walls as much as 8 feet thick—in Dumfries shire, from which they defended and fought the British for a disputed tract of land lying between the Rivers Sark and Esk. (The verse I quoted in an earlier comment is from "Scenes of Infancy" by John Leyden and describes the gravesite of border warrior hero Johnie Armstrong and his company, who were hung by the British. In this same graveyard, many Francis Armstrongs are buried - possibly kin to the Maryland settler.) When James I of England—son of Mary, Queen of Scots—ascended to the throne in 1603, he pacified the border by relocating families of several border clans, transplanting Presbyterian Scots to northern Ireland, where at the time the majority were Catholic. The earliest of these emigrants from the Armstrong clan settled on the coastline of Londonderry County. I found a reference to one such Armstrong, who “from his cheerful manse at Castlerock, county of Londonderry … can look forth upon the heaving waters of the broad Atlantic, and in the whirlwind of the storm and tempest can hear its wildest music, as the angry waves lash themselves against the precipitous cliffs.”

Many of these Scots-Irish became emigrants once again, this time to the American colonies. It has been suggested that the border clans' way of life prepared their members to be excellent frontiersmen, guerrilla fighters and scouts. Perhaps Francis Armstrong was one of these Armstrongs and thus prepared to pioneer the new colony of Maryland--accustomed to existence with Catholics, raised in hostile environments and forced to settle on Irish seacoasts whilst longing for River Sark's banks. When first he spied the tidal marshes of Todd Point, perchance they brought to mind Leyden's "marshy waste", Solway Moss by River Sark, as the vast estuary of the Rivers Esk and Sark, Solway Firth, brought to my mind the wide mouth of the Choptank. Hence the name "Sarke"?

The Armstrong clan motto “Invictus Maneo” (“I remain unvanquished”) is a fitting one for Sarke Plantation, given that it still stands despite the ravages of Isabel, and for Jo and Bill, given their determination to save it.

Learning the History of Sarke Plantation

2009-03-05T17:28:00.000-08:00

My sister, Beth, is joining us as the blog historian. She is a whiz at geneology and historical research, and has gotten interested in learning more about Sarke Plantation and its inhabitants down through the years. She tracked down a deed to the property dated April 15, 1664, conveying the property from "Francis Armstrong of the Clifts in Caluert County Plantr and Frances Armstrong his wife . . . to the said John Edmondson . . . of Three hundred and fifty acres of land called Sarke lying on the south side of Chop tauck riuer, lying between the land of Andrew Cook and Thomas Todd."

Beth also suggested that Sarke was likely named after the Isle of Sark, the smallest of the four main Channel Islands located off the southern coast of England. The Sark tourism site says of the island: "whilst only three miles long, and a mile and a half wide, it boasts 40 miles of what must be one of the most picturesque coastlines anywhere in the world" (http://www.sark.info/). It is easy to imagine someone homesick for home naming this new- world coastal property after the old.

1795 Map of Maryland

Beth also found these two beautiful old maps of the area. Look forward to more of her finds as she continues to uncover the history of the Todd Point area.

Map of the Neck District of Dorchester County.

(Click on Neck map for link to additional maps; thank you, Beth!)

Seeing the Bones

2009-03-05T06:47:00.000-08:00

The View From the Water Sans Addition

For the first time last weekend, we saw the house sans addition and interior walls. The more we strip away, the easier it is to envision where we are going. As anticipated, we find the exterior of the house more visually pleasing without the addition, and truer to its original conception. Light now streams into the interior - not just through the gaping holes in the house! - but through windows at the ends of the house that were previously in the shadow of the addition. (Our six-year old nephew, Daniel, is particularly delighted by the door to nowhere in the third floor gable.)

Victor and his crew had nearly completed the second floor demolition by the time we arrived on Friday. In its prior life, the second floor was broken up into many small rooms and bathrooms - perhaps to accom- modate the bed and breakfast guests? On our arrival, we found all of the interior walls and all the paneling, tile floors and fixtures gone - either demolished or salvaged to make way for what will become the master bedroom suite, including a fireplace, two walk-in closets, a master bath, and access to an outdoor terrace looking out over Todd Point Creek. Our bedroom will have windows on three sides with great water views on two sides; the fireplace will be located approximately where you can see the chimney hole in the photo above on the left.

The first floor, of course, was demolished before we bought the house, but the removal of the addition has enhanced our ability to visualize elements of the plans for that floor. The photo on the left looks from the living room (the area with a floor) toward the kitchen (currently without a floor). In the far right corner there will be a powder room and, beside that, a pantry and mudroom. The two rooms will be divided by a brick fireplace but will otherwise be open to each other to facilitate as much interaction and flow between the two rooms as possible. We envision the kitchen as the heart of the house, as it is in the home where we currently live.

In the photo on the right, the open area on the end of the house will be a screened porch leading, on one end, into the mudroom and pantry off the kitchen and, on the other end, into the living room. The center bays of the house (living room, entrance hall and dining room) will be extended out the full width of the flanking porches (into the area where the addition had been), with french doors from the living room and dining room opening out to the porches. Another goal borrowed from our current home is to bring inside and outside together as much as possible, which is made easier in this narrow house which has views from two or three directions in every single room!

Victor's Latest Discovery: 18th Century Origins

2009-03-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

Lifting the House

2009-03-01T07:36:00.000-08:00

The house movers worked into the night Thursday night putting equipment and wide flanges in place for the house lifting, and the whole thing was done - and the movers departed - by the time we arrived Friday afternoon. As we turned into the long driveway, the view was subtly changed for the house is now four feet higher than we are accustomed to -- a larger presence at the end of the long drive. Once the masons have completed their work, the house will be lowered onto new foundations but will still be 2 1/2 feet higher than it was originally. For now, we have to climb a ladder to get into the house!

Click on photo for additional house-lifting images.

The house lifting is accomplished by pulling heavy steel wide flanges through the crawl space under the house and setting them on 6x6 wood timbers which are piled in increasingly-high stacks under the wide flanges as they are lifted (with the house on top!) by a computer-operated pneumatic jack. The wide flanges and the stacks of wood timbers - called "cribbing" - support the house while the new foundations are built. Unfortunately we missed all the action, but are hoping to be there to see the reverse process once the foundations are done and the house is ready to be set back down on its new foundations.

Demolition Has Begun

2009-02-26T13:41:00.000-08:00

I'm running out of time for the background story because things have started to move rapidly in real time! To cut to the chase: after nine months of slow but steady efforts -- studying the Act and reading zoning codes, meeting with engineers, county officials, contractors, subcontractors, pool people and pier people -- and after hours and hours of Bill drafting and drawing plans, we were finally ready to file for a building permit. Props to Dorchester County for working with us so cooperatively to get the environmental clearance and for actually issuing the building permit within a day or two of receipt of our submittal package! A great introduction to the county. And our general contractor, Victor MacSorley, was poised and ready to go the minute he had the building permit in hand! It seemed to take forever to get this project underway but it suddenly feels like we are on a very fast track indeed.

Victor and Bill confer.

(Oops - smudge on the lens.)

When we first went to look at the house we called Victor to come and take a look with us. He had helped us evaluate another old home a year or two earlier, and we have a high level of confidence in his knowledge of (and passion for) old shore homes. He showed us how to tell by the saw marks that the central bays of the house were the oldest and likely pre-1850s, and how the differing building methods evident on the flanking bays suggested later 19th century origins. The huge addition on the back of the house was built in the 1920's (the first floor of the addition was a ballroom!) and, to us from the beginning, seemed of proportion and out of place with the rest of the house. It blocked the water views from some rooms and reduced the amount of light into rest of the house. Most objectionable of all, though, was the sheer size of the addition. We were in search of a more modest home and removing the addition would reduce the square footage by nearly half! As we are committed in this project to salvaging and reusing or recycling to the extent possible, we explored moving the addition for use as a guest house elsewhere on the property, but ultimately abandoned that idea as too expensive (and still way too much house). We are salvaging doors, windows and wood from the addition, though, to use in the renovation.

Salvaged Doors & Windows in the Barn

Now, just over a week or so following issuance of the building permit, that big old addition is gone. Next step: to lift the entire house and surrounding porch 2-1/2 feet and extend the foundation to the new level of the house. This we hope will protect us from flooding and, for awhile at least, from increasing water levels predicted with global warming. It will also give us even better views out over the water. Stay tuned!

Pre-demolition above; post-demolition below.

(Thanks to Victor for the demo photos.)

What Have We Done??

2009-02-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

We had a month to close under our purchase contract, and lots to do. Switching out of stocks to buy real estate turned out to be a good call given what's happened since in the stock market, but we didn't know that then. What we did know was that we were under contract to buy a house that we couldn't live in and a pool we couldn't swim in, and that to be sure we could get them back into use we had to acquaint ourselves with Maryland's Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Protection Act. Not only was our property located in a Critical Area under the Act, but the house and pool and barn -- indeed, all the buildings on the property -- were located at least partially within the 100-foot buffer zone, where regulatory oversight is particularly strict. Before we went to settlement, we had to be sure renovation of the property would be permitted under the Act. We also wanted some idea of what the whole thing would cost. And of course, we wanted to understand how to be good stewards of what Bill calls "our little piece of the Bay." We were drawn to the Eastern Shore in the first place because we love the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and we want to be part of the solution, and not part of the problem, in bringing the Bay and its watershed back to health.

Thanks to Midge for this birthday trip photo.

Bill and Jo Buy a(nother) House

2009-02-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this is old news to those of you who know us. But I have to start somewhere. . .

About a year ago, Bill and I decided to call off our years long, desultory hunt for waterfront property on the Eastern Shore. The economy was tanking and waterfront property prices didn't seem to be moving down in parallel. We emailed our real estate agent and told her to hold off on looking on our behalf until further notice. She acknowledged our email by telling us she had just one more property she thought we should take a look at - a grande dame in Dorchester County that had seen better days but was just waiting for the right folks to love her and bring her back to her former glory. The house was a 19th century plantation house that had sustained substantial damage during Hurricane Isabel, had been uninhabited (and uninhabitable) for years and had recently been foreclosed by the bank. And it was on 18 acres, had 1000 feet of water front and a huge old pool. Wow! We were excited.

The thing is, our agent wasn't kidding about
substantial damage. Here's what we found when we got there:

(Thanks to Bob & Jim for the first photos!)

Now, I am not afraid of hard work but I am a reasonable person. This looked a little daunting to me. But my husband is an architect (I won't say he's not a reasonable person . . .) and he's definitely not afraid of hard work. He just loved this house. So, instead of putting our house search off till better times, we signed an "as-is" purchase contract for the house, agreeing to close within the month.

After that, we headed up Route 50 to Easton and booked a room at the Tidewater Inn. We made reservations for a celebratory dinner at the Inn's excellent Restaurant Local but sat in the restaurant bar drinking martinis for a long time before ever making it into the restaurant. We were joined in the bar by a friendly and generous ex-boxer from New York who claimed to be in the area doing Tiger Woods' taxes (this was April after all). He toasted us (many times), and we toasted us, and the next morning we drove back to Cambridge to increase our offer, because we could not bear to think of losing our beautiful house to a higher bidder!