Plumb Grove - home of Jonathan Nesbitt, Jr.

I’ve got some photos that I took a couple of weeks back while on my road trip to Four Locks and Clear Spring, and I thought that I might as well put them on here for everyone to enjoy. I didn’t include them in the tour that weekend because there is no known tie between Nesbitt and my ggg grandfather.

Built ca. 1831, Plumb Grove was the home of Jonathan Nesbitt, Jr. (1805-1877), a son of Jonathan (1770-1856) and Mary Cownover Nesbitt (1768-1837).

Also known as the Nesbitt-Warner House (the Warner family being the last private owners during the 1960s)… it is a two story, five bay brick structure with a two story, two bay “ell”. It is particularly significant for its fine exterior and interior vernacular Greek Revival details.

The land on which the home was built had been in the Nesbitt family since 1763. One of the original two tracts being in excess of 1400 acres, and belonging to Nathaniel Nesbitt, father of Jonathan, Sr. (likely the builder of this house), and grandfather to Jonathan, Jr., resident of the house during the Civil War years.

 

View toward the back porch, from the flower bed next to the smokehouse.

 

A farmer by profession, Jonathan Nesbitt, Jr. was also a writer and took an active part in national and state politics, even serving for a while in the Maryland Legislature (and I seem to recall something about that time in the legislature being in the 1850s).

 

Rocking chairs along the back porch

 

 

Close-up of the front of the home

 

 

While not a rebuilt smokehouse, this modern production was built on the grounds, and is based on a pattern used in another local smokehouse, which dates to the correct period.

 

 

Stray fragment of a headstone, sitting in the back of the house

 

Fortunately, the Clear Spring Historical Society took an interest in the old home (looking more like a haunted house in this photo) several years ago, and brought the place back to life. It appears to draw a good crowd of visitors during the Christmas season, and, as recent as last year, some ghost hunters.

Love the place, and what they’ve done to preserve it, but I’m more intrigued with the Otho Nesbitt home just down the road.

 

Otho Nesbitt House, photo taken ca. 2003

 

Otho was a brother to Jonathan, Jr., and left a good deal for us to consider as a Unionist with distinct interests in slavery. I’m hoping to put something together about him for a post on down the line a bit, perhaps in November.

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Tagged: American Civil War, Clear Spring, Clear Spring Historical Society, ghost hunters, ghost hunting, ghosts, historic preservation, Jonathan Nesbitt Jr., Jonathan Nesbitt Sr., Mary Cownover Nesbitt, Maryland, Nathaniel Nesbitt, Otho Nesbitt, Plumb Grove, slaveholder, slavery, Tri-State Paranormal Investigators, Washington County

Posted in: American Civil War, Ancestral tidbits, Antebellum Period, Civil War Memory - General, Digital History, digital rhetoric, Visualizing History