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Drayden is an 
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
in St. Mary's County, Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
, United States. West St. Mary's Manor
West St. Mary's Manor is a historic house on West St. Mary's Manor Road in rural St. Mary's County, Maryland. Built in the 1780s according to dendrochronology and with a four-room center-hall plan, and is located on the first recorded English ...
was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1970. Porto Bello was listed in 1972.
The Drayden Schoolhouse was a small, one-room African American children's school featuring grades 1–7. It was open and operational from 1890 to 1944. The land was donated by Mary Ellen and Daniel A. Gross in 1889. The schoolhouse was a one-room design based on a Victorian design like other one-room schools already operational in St. Mary's County. The original green paint is still inside the structure. Exterior paint was added in 2000 to preserve the original sliding planks.
The Drayden schoolhouse was one of three for African American children in the Valley Lee District. One teacher taught grades 1-7 and could have had as many as forty students in the single room. At this time there were no public high schools open to African American students. They did not have a public high school for African American children until 1934. Until that time, most African American children did not have the ability to attend school beyond the seventh grade. Schools were not de-segregated in St. Mary's County, Maryland until 1967.
References
Unincorporated communities in St. Mary's County, Maryland Unincorporated communities in Maryland {{StMarysCountyMD-geo-stub