The Eagle's Nest is a historic home located at Phoenix,

Baltimore County Baltimore County ( , locally: or ) is the third-most populous county in the U.S. state of Maryland. The county is part of the Central Maryland region of the state. Baltimore County partly surrounds but does not include the independent city ...

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 ...

. It is a large

fieldstone Fieldstone is a naturally occurring type of stone, which lies at or near the surface of the Earth. Fieldstone is a nuisance for farmers seeking to expand their land under cultivation, but at some point it began to be used as a construction mate ...

dwelling begun, it is believed, in the 1690s and completed in 1802 on part of a 2500-acre tract named "The Valley of Jehosaphat" by Richard Smith, Jr., who was granted the land by Lord Baltimore in 1684 in recognition of Smith's service as the first attorney general of Maryland. Smith's descendants owned the tract until Walter Dulany bought half of it in the 1720s and the other half about 20 years later.

Etymology

While the origin of the name, "Eagle's Nest", is unknown, one possible explanation has to do with the fact that a Mr. FitzHugh of Virginia married one of famed lawyer Daniel Dulany's sisters and lived with her at "Fitzhugh Farm", adjoining the original "Eagle's Nest" to the north. The FitzHughs owned, among other properties, a plantation north of the James River named, "Eagle's Nest".

Dulany family

The Dulany family was a prosperous mercantile and land-owning family with an extensive trading relationship with England. Their loyalties lay with the Mother Country throughout the American Revolution, the outcome of which left them out of favor. The Eagle's Nest was confiscated, and the house with some acreage was sold at a sheriff's sale to Thomas Marsh, the property's overseer who lived in the house as it was then. Since the Marshes were Quakers, they had no interest in owning slaves, instead producing 10 or more children in each generation. Thomas's son, Joshua, served as a captain in the Revolution and afterward became financially successful in his management of raising and selling crops and livestock. It was he who built the main portion of the house a decade and a half after Hampton Mansion was built. A copy of his portrait still hangs in the house.

Modern day

The three-part house consists of a tall, -story 5-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

Georgian portion and two long -story portions. The newest portion, the garage wing, incorporates timbers salvaged from the old slave quarters before the flooding of the valley in order to create Loch Raven Reservoir. The house features a profusion of original detail including the fine main entrance, the interior woodwork, the original arcade, period outbuildings including the smokehouse, icehouse, springhouse, and root cellar. Foundation ruins of the barn, tenant farmer's house, and tollbooth still stand, though now on neighboring properties.

Neighborhoods

The late-20th-century neighborhoods built on the eastern portion of the original property, including Golden Eagle, Eagle's View, Stone Eagle, and Eagle’s Nest Country Club (formerly Towson Golf & Country Club) derive their names from the name of the original tract. It 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 1974, and is listed on the Maryland and Baltimore County historical registers.

References

External links

*, including photo from 1971, at Maryland Historical Trust {{National Register of Historic Places in Maryland Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Maryland Buildings and structures in Phoenix, Maryland Houses completed in 1802 National Register of Historic Places in Baltimore County, Maryland