By Rebecca Walker Photo provided by Dawn Muir Contributing writers, Doug Lister and Dawn Muir NAS Environmental Department Mattapany – A Foundation of Maryland America is rich with history, and Naval Air Station Patuxent River boasts its own share of this wealth. One particular place, resting on a site nestled between the station’s runways, hangars and office buildings, is the historical Mattapany-Sewall. The mansion is the oldest flag quarters in the U.S. Navy and has been home to many of the senior commanding officers that have passed through Patuxent River for their next tour of duty. But the story of this estate and its land, located off Millstone Road, traces much further back than its recent military use. Jesuit Missionaries Jesuit Missionaries were the first Europeans to settle on the Mattapany estate site. The notion of a colony in the New World open to Catholicism received great support from the Society of Jesus, motivated largely by their desire to convert Indians to Christianity. The Jesuits financed a large part of the first Maryland voyage by soliciting donations from England’s wealthiest Catholic families. Local legend states the area took its name from the Mattapanient Indians who lived nearby. Although the mission was short lived, the missionaries established their plantation on land donated by the Patuxent Indians as a gift to Father Andrew White and the Jesuits. Because Mattapany was given to the Jesuits as a gift from the Indians, and not granted by Lord Baltimore, the Jesuits were forced to give up their Mattapany landholdings in 1642. Political Center of Maryland Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore and Henry Sewall, Secretary of Maryland After the Jesuits ceded Mattapany to Lord Baltimore, various people owned parts of the Mattapany plantation for the next 20 years. Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore, consolidated all the individual land holdings comprising the Mattapany estate, by 1662. One year later, Cecil Calvert granted the entire manor, today known as Mattapany-Sewall, to Henry Sewall, Secretary of Maryland Province, for 15,000 pounds of tobacco. Sewell died in 1665, leaving a bulk of his estate, one of the largest in the colony, to his wife Jane and their five children. Charles Calvert, Governor of Maryland, married Henry Sewall’s widow Jane in 1666, and the property was once again in Calvert hands. Charles Calvert, Third Lord Baltimore and Proprietor of Maryland In the 1660’s, Charles Calvert built a, “fair house of brick and timber with all out-houses and other offices thereto belonging … where he and his family reside being a pleasant, healthful and commodious seat on a point overlooking the Patuxent River.” This is according to an account written by John Obilby in 1671. The former house of Henry Sewall was converted into the colonial magazine. Mattapany soon became the center of political activity for Maryland - complete with a jail, courts and a colonial armory, which housed weapons and ammunition for the colony’s defense. Charles Calvert returned to England in 1684 while religious tensions worsened between Catholics and Protestants in Maryland. Not long after Charles Calvert’s departure did he lose political control of Maryland and all Catholics were forbidden to hold public offices or titles. In 1689, Protestant rebels stormed Mattapany and drove the Catholic Calverts away from the colony. The Mattapany estate was abandoned until reclaimed by the Sewall family once again in 1722. Mattapany-Sewall and Today Nicholas Lewis Sewall, son of Henry Sewall, most likely built the mansion known today as Mattapany-Sewall, around 1742. It is believed that bricks robbed from Charles Calvert’s home, which stood nearby, have been incorporated into the Mattapany-Sewall home. The house, originally built as a 32-foot by 38-foot Federal-style house, had an unhurried air to it, like most mansions built in that period. The finely proportioned rooms entered through arches lined with wood paneling, revealing the thickness of the walls of at least 18 inches, gave a sense of seclusion to the remoteness of the rest of the world. Today, from the main road, the large white house appears distant because of the long lane approaching the main entrance. Shading the numerous house windows are great trees - cedars, magnolias and boxwoods. In 1840, Richard Thomas and Jane Armstrong acquired the property and the Thomas family continued to possess Mattapany until 1932. The Thomas’ added on a two-story two-room section to the house as well as a smokehouse a dairy and a tenant homestead consisting of a house, a barn and a garage. In 1932, a successful Washington engineer named George A. Weschler, bought the property from the Thomas family heirs and renovated further, creating a two-story east wing and the present layout that is seen today. He used the 1,000-acre mansion property as a country retreat and the site for his planned cattle-raising and dairy-farming operation. Weschler had about 75 percent of his renovations to the house completed by 1942 when the U.S. Navy purchased the property, making several more renovations in order to convert it to Quarters A. Today, it is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The property from Millstone Landing Road to the Patuxent River, including buildings and archaeological sites, are in the process of being nominated to the National Register. Dawn Muir, architectural historian at Patuxent River, who is one of the people working to nominate the Mattapany-Sewall complex, explained that because the property is eligible for the National Register, “any alternations that could affect the property’s visual appearance and must follow the Secretary of the Interior Standards for Historic Preservation.” Rear Adm. Tim Heely, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division commanding officer, knows what it is like to balance those standards while making it a comfortable place to live. After all, he gets to enjoy living at the historical site every day. “It is an amazing feeling to know that I am living in a building that has been home to so many generations,” Heely said. “ I am eating in a room that has been used for dining for 280 years and I am sitting under trees that were seedlings hundreds of years ago. “My wife and I like to do formal entertaining in keeping with the grandeur of the house; but you know, they were regular people too, so we do fun stuff as well,” Heely continued. “I think we sometimes believe that everything was always so stuffy and formal - I am sure they all had their light moments as well.” Heely believes it is important to leave traces of his family’s dwelling behind once they leave Mattapany-Sewall. “We want to leave this home with some of our own touches, so we have planted flowers and things that have been with us as we have moved all over the world,” Heely said. “We have planted irises form Japan, herbs from Shakespeare's garden in Stratford, poppies from California and ivy from Mount Vernon.” Doug Lister, Natural and Cultural Resources specialist at Patuxent River, participated in the Mattapany-Sewall archeological dig project. He said the digs are important because the findings give history a more personal touch, “as well as verifies records and fills in gaps that may have been missing in other written records.” Lister said one of the most interesting findings unearthed were two coin weights. “Coin weights were used to determine the amount of precious metal in a coin,” Lister explained. “In the 17th century, coins were worth their metal content - not the value stamped on the coin - and unscrupulous traders would often shave metal off coins to cheat people. Lord Baltimore wanted to use money instead of tobacco as currency in his colony. “Mattapany-Sewall was a port of entry for the Patuxent River and all traders going up and down the river had to stop there to pay taxes,” Lister continued. “Finding these coin weights were significant because it demonstrated first hand, Baltimore’s attempts at establishing a currency-based trade, which ultimately failed. Its also fun to speculate - did Charles Calvert, Third Lord Baltimore, actually handle these coin weights? We’ll never know for sure, but it makes the weights all the more intriguing.” A cultural and natural history driving tour of Patuxent River includes a stop near the Mattapany Sewall mansion and its grounds and outbuildings and can be taken by Naval Air Station employees, families and guests. The driving tour was developed through a partnership between the Cultural Resources Branch of the Patuxent River Environmental Department and both the Exhibit Services Program and the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory from the Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum. Driving tour books that include directions to each tour stop display sign, can be picked up at different buildings on station, including the Natural Resources Building. For more information, contact Laura McDaniels or Rebecca Walker, Environmental Public Affairs, at 301.757.4814/1723. Mattapany means the “meeting of waters,” or the “place where the path out of the forest reaches the water,” in the Algonquian language. The description of Mattapany regarding the meeting of two things is still appropriate today – It is a place where history and the present meet – learning stories of the past, but looking forward to creating more chapters in the future.