Maryland Square | |
---|---|
Alternative names | Steuart Hall |
General information | |
Type | Mansion |
Architectural style | Georgian |
Location | Corner of Monroe and West Baltimore Streets |
Town or city | Baltimore, Maryland |
Country | United States |
Coordinates | 39°17′18″N76°38′57″W / 39.28833°N 76.64917°W |
Construction started | late Eighteenth Century |
Completed | late Eighteenth Century |
Demolished | 1885 |
Technical details | |
Structural system | Timber frame |
"Maryland Square", later known as "Steuart Hall", was a mansion owned by the Steuart family from 1795 to 1861, located on the western outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland, at the present-day junction of West Baltimore and Monroe streets. In the first year of the American Civil War, the property was confiscated by the United States Federal Government as its owner, George H. Steuart, a former United States Army officer, had resigned his commission to fight in the Confederate Army, in the Army of Northern Virginia as a brigadier general.
In 1862, the U.S. War Department built various temporary wooden barracks-style buildings for the Jarvis Military Hospital on the grounds, to care for wounded Union soldiers. The "West Military Hospital" was located on the docks at East Pratt Street, near President Street, at "The Basin" harbor. The Steuart mansion served as the Hospital's headquarters/offices. [1]
After the war, in 1866 General Steuart regained possession of his mansion, but did not live there again. He chose to live at "Mount Steuart", his large family plantation further to the southeast of the city of Annapolis on the South River in Anne Arundel County. The next year Steuart leased Maryland Square for use as a school for upper-class boys; it was renamed Steuart Hall. In the 1870s, it was bought by the Roman Catholic order of the Bon Secours Sisters and used as their convent. The mansion was demolished around 1884 for other development. The modern Grace Medical Center, was constructed on the site in 1919 by the religious order and is operating today. [2]
"Maryland Square" was the Baltimore residence of the Steuart family from around 1795, when purchased by physician James Steuart of Annapolis, son of the politician and planter George H. Steuart. [3] The Steuart family moved to Baltimore from Annapolis in 1795, as Baltimore began to eclipse Annapolis in size and importance. [3] The mansion was located at the present-day junction of West Baltimore and Monroe streets and built on relatively high ground, at the time on the western outskirts of the city. A contemporary writer said it benefited from "a salubrious air". [1]
Among the members of the family who were raised there was the physician and philanthropist Richard Sprigg Steuart, who described the "large and solitary" mansion in his memoirs as having "the reputation of being haunted ... [with] departed spirits coming back to visit their old haunts". [3]
On May 8, 1829, James Steuart's daughter Elizabeth was married to the writer and essayist George Henry Calvert, at Maryland Square. Calvert's father had been opposed to the match on the grounds that Elizabeth had little or no property. The son prevailed in his choice. [4]
On July 19, 1844, the Boston City Greys of the Massachusetts state militia visited Baltimore, and marched in parade with various companies of the 53rd Regiment. George H. Steuart, then a militia general, hosted a party at Maryland Square for the visiting militia. The event was celebrated by extensive coverage in the Baltimore American (newspaper - later the Baltimore News-American, 1773–1986), and was commemorated in a lithograph. [5] In 1846, Steuart inherited the house on the death of his father James Steuart. [6]
From 1841 to 1861, Steuart was Commander of the First Light Division, Maryland Volunteer Militia, a predecessor unit of state militia. After the Civil War, the Maryland National Guard was organized as a type of successor to such local militias. [7] [8] Until the Civil War, he would be the Commander-in-Chief of the Maryland Volunteers. [9] [10] The First Light Division comprised two brigades: the 1st Light Brigade and the 2nd Brigade. The First Brigade consisted of the 1st Cavalry, 1st Artillery, and 5th Infantry regiments. The 2nd Brigade was composed of the 1st Rifle Regiment and the 53rd Infantry Regiment, and the "Battalion of Baltimore City Guards". [11]
Although Maryland was a slave state, it remained loyal to the Union during the civil war. Many slaveholding planters were sympathetic to the Confederacy, including the Steuart family, who held more than 150 slaves. On April 16, 1861 George H. Steuart (1828–1903), then a captain in the U.S. Army, resigned his commission and joined the Confederacy and the Army of Northern Virginia. [12] His father, George H. Steuart (1790–1867), also joined the Confederate Army, though he was by then considered too old for active service. [13]
As a result, Maryland Square was seized by the U.S. government. On May 25, 1862, the property came under the control of the medical director of the U.S. Army. The former Steuart mansion served as the primary administration building for the Jarvis Hospital. The grounds were used for temporary, numerous wooden barracks-type buildings constructed for the care of wounded Union soldiers. [14]
In February 1862, a Massachusetts soldier described the property (by then known as "Camp Andrew", after Massachusetts Governor John Andrew):
We are nicely quartered on a high hill situated on the west of Baltimore formerly owned by Gen. Stewart [ sic ] now of the Rebel Army and the property is now confiscated. There are about 36 acres in the field and a house and out buildings and it must have been a very nice place before the troops went in there. [15]
Jarvis Hospital was closed in 1865 at the war's end. In 1866, on May 15 and June 6, the wooden buildings of the Jarvis Hospital were auctioned off, permitting successful bidders 10 days from the date of auction in which to remove their purchases from the grounds. [14]
General Steuart regained possession of Maryland Square in 1866, but he never lived there again. He lived at "Mount Steuart", the large family plantation on the Chesapeake Bay in Anne Arundel County. When he visited Baltimore, Steuart would stay at the Carrollton Hotel. (This was built in the 1870s on the previous site of the famous colonial/Federal-era "Fountain Inn", at the northeast corner of Light/St. Paul Street and between German [later Redwood] and East Baltimore streets. The Carrollton was replaced by the Southern Hotel, built in 1917). [16]
In 1867, steuart leased the mansion to the Reverend Newman Hank for use as a school for "young gentlemen," named Steuart Hall. One student later recalled that, though the
long corridors, many closets and corners in unexpected places" made a fine place to explore and play, few dared enter after dark. The boys feared "the groaning of the dying, and when the stairs creaked, we knew why - they were bearing out the dead. [2]
At around this time, the building was named Steuart Hall.
In the early 1870s, the mansion was purchased by the Sisters of Bon Secours for use as a Catholic convent. In 1872 they sold the remaining property in lots as part of a residential development known as "Chesapeake Heights." In 1884 the mansion was demolished. [2]
General Steuart died in 1903. Little trace of the original mansion or of the Civil War-era Jarvis Hospital remain.
In 1919, the Sisters of Bon Secours constructed and opened a hospital on the site, their first in the United States, at 2000 West Baltimore Street. [17] The Grace Medical Center continues to flourish today; it is an important part of the modern neighborhood in old West Baltimore, which retains the name of "Steuart Hill". [16]
Spring Grove Hospital Center, formerly known as Spring Grove State Hospital, is a psychiatric hospital located in the Baltimore, Maryland, suburb of Catonsville.
George Hume Steuart was a planter in Maryland and an American military officer; he served thirteen years in the United States Army before resigning his commission at the start of the American Civil War. He joined the Confederacy and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Army of Northern Virginia. Nicknamed "Maryland" to avoid verbal confusion with Virginia cavalryman J.E.B. Stuart, Steuart unsuccessfully promoted the secession of Maryland before and during the conflict. He began the war as a captain of the 1st Maryland Infantry, CSA, and was promoted to colonel after the First Battle of Manassas.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), Maryland, a slave state, was one of the border states, straddling the South and North. Despite some popular support for the cause of the Confederate States of America, Maryland did not secede during the Civil War. Governor Thomas H. Hicks, despite his early sympathies for the South, helped prevent the state from seceding.
The Maryland Army National Guard is the United States Army component of the U.S. state of Maryland. It is headquartered at the old Fifth Regiment Armory at the intersection of North Howard Street, 29th Division Street, near Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in Baltimore and has additional units assigned and quartered at several regional armories, bases/camps and other facilities across the state.
George Hume Steuart, (1700–1784) was a Scottish physician, tobacco planter, and Loyalist politician in colonial Maryland. Born in Perthshire, Steuart emigrated to Maryland in around 1721, where he benefited from proprietarial patronage and was appointed to a number of colonial offices, eventually becoming a wealthy landowner with estates in both Maryland and Scotland, and serving two terms as mayor of Annapolis. However, he was forced by the outbreak of the American Revolution to decide whether to remain loyal to the Crown or to throw in his lot with the American rebels. In 1775 Steuart sailed to Scotland, deciding at age 75 that "he could not turn rebel in his old age". He remained there until his death in 1784.
Dodon, is a 550-acre (2.2 km2) farm and former forced-labor tobacco plantation in Maryland, located near the South River about 10 miles (16 km) south west of Annapolis. Purchased in 1747 by the planter and politician Dr George H. Steuart, it remains the home of Steuart's descendants to this day. Steuart grew wealthy during the colonial era thanks to proprietarial patronage and the forced labor of enslaved people, but his family's prosperity and status was much reduced by the American Revolution and later by the American Civil War.
Richard Sprigg Steuart (1797–1876) was a Maryland physician and an early pioneer of the treatment of mental illness. In 1838 he inherited four contiguous farms, totalling approximately 1900 acres as well as 150 slaves.
George Hume Steuart (1790–1867) was a United States general who fought during the War of 1812, and later joined the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. His military career began in 1814 when, as a captain, he raised a company of Maryland volunteers, leading them at both the Battle of Bladensberg and the Battle of North Point, where he was wounded. After the war he rose to become major general and commander-in-chief of the First Light Division, Maryland Militia.
Dungannon,, was a thoroughbred racehorse owned by the tobacco planter and horse breeder George Hume Steuart (1700–1784), who imported the horse from England to race against his rival, Charles Carroll of Annapolis (1703–1783). Dungannon won the Annapolis Subscription Plate, in May 1743, the first recorded formal horse race in colonial Maryland, and the second oldest in North America.
Benedict Swingate Calvert was a planter, politician and a Loyalist in Maryland during the American Revolution. He was the son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, the third Proprietor Governor of Maryland (1699–1751). His mother's identity is not known, though one source speculates that she was Melusina von der Schulenburg, Countess of Walsingham. As he was illegitimate, he was not able to inherit his father's title or estates, which passed instead to his half brother Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (1731–1771). Benedict Calvert spent most of his life as a politician, judge and planter in Maryland, though Frederick, by contrast, never visited the colony. Calvert became wealthy through proprietarial patronage and became an important colonial official, but he would lose his offices and his political power, though not his land and wealth, during the American Revolution.
Jarvis U.S. General Hospital was a military hospital founded in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1861, at the beginning of the American Civil War, for the care of wounded Federal soldiers. The hospital was built on the grounds of Maryland Square, the former residence of the Steuart family, which had been confiscated by the Federal government at the outbreak of war. The hospital closed at the end of the war.
The Washington Blues were a company of Maryland Volunteers which saw action during the Battle of Bladensburg and the Battle of North Point, during the War of 1812.
The Maryland Line in the Army of the Confederate States of America was made up of volunteers from Maryland who, despite their home state remaining in the Union, fought for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Of approximately 25,000 Marylanders who volunteered, most fought in the Army of Northern Virginia, and it was not until late in 1863 that a Maryland Line in the CSA was formally created. However, by this late stage in the war, few men wished to leave the units they had fought alongside for more than two years, and the exiles' dream of an independent Maryland Line in the Confederate army would never be fully realized.
The Steuart family of Maryland was a prominent political family in the early history of Maryland. The Steuarts, of Scottish descent, have their origins in Perthshire, Scotland. The family grew wealthy in the early 18th century under the patronage of the Calvert family, proprietors of the colony of Maryland, but their wealth and status was much reduced during the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.
Grace Medical Center, formerly known as Bon Secours Hospital, is a hospital in Baltimore. The hospital is part of LifeBridge Health, a nonprofit healthcare corporation that was formed in 1998 and currently operates several medical institutions in and around Baltimore, Maryland.
Like other border states, Maryland found herself in a difficult position at the start of the American Civil War, with loyalties divided between North and South. Although Maryland herself remained in the Union, Maryland militia units fought on both sides of the Civil War. Many militia members travelled south at the start of the war, crossing the Potomac River to join the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
William Steuart was a stone mason in colonial Maryland, and Mayor of Baltimore from 1831 to 1832. He was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army during the War of 1812, and saw service during the Battle of Baltimore, where he commanded the 38th United States Infantry foot regiment.
The First Light Division of Maryland Volunteers was a militia unit based in Baltimore and formed in around 1841. Its commander was the militia general George H. Steuart. Elements of the division participated in the suppression of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859, but its members found themselves in a difficult position at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Many of the citizen volunteers, especially the senior command, wished to secede from the Union and join the Confederate States of America. However, Maryland remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War and as a consequence of this the division was disbanded. Many of its members left Maryland and went south to fight for the Confederacy.
William Frederick Steuart (1816–1889) was a Maryland-born medical doctor who served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was a surgeon in the 3rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, a unit that formed part of the brigade commanded by his cousin, General George H. Steuart. After the war he returned to Maryland and served as resident physician at the Maryland Hospital for the Insane, an institution founded largely thanks to the efforts of another cousin, Richard Sprigg Steuart.
William Steuart was a wealthy planter in colonial Maryland. He inherited the estate of Dodon in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, from his father, planter and politician George H. Steuart.