This land holds many secrets. The historic records will play tricks on you. The second you begin to feel like you have a firm grasp of understanding about a particular landscape in the Ag Reserve, you will be reminded that there is much still to learn.
I was searching through the Vintage Aerial page the other night and I came across this picture from the 1970s in the Comus area:
The image caught my attention for two reasons: 1) I don’t recognize the old home at all (at this point, I can normally recognize old homes in the area and place them on the map fairly quickly); and 2) there appears to be a cemetery near the house.
The presence of the cemetery is interesting because the cemeteries in the Ag Reserve are pretty well documented and I’m not aware of any old cemeteries so close to an old home as the above picture shows. Additionally, the only cemetery along Comus Road that I’m aware of in this area is the Pearre Family Cemetery, as seen below.
But here’s the thing, there is no old home anywhere near this cemetery….at least today. To figure out if maybe there was an old home nearby at some point, I went to the overhead imagery to check.
When we look at the site from above today, you can see there is not too much around (the cemetery is a bit hard to see from here, but I’ve been to the site and am positive it is within the red box).
When we look at the overhead from 1979, something interesting appears. Clearly there are some buildings close by, hinting that maybe there was something here.
When we look at the imagery from 1970, it’s even more clear that a farm was located here. At this point, I began to feel confident that this was in fact the location from the Vintage Aerial photo (the clarity is not good enough to identify individual buildings or see the cemetery, but we know it’s in there somewhere).
Using the Maryland Historical Trust page and looking in this area, I came across an entry for the William Pearre Farm and Cemetery. I thought I knew about the Pearre Farm, but it turns out that there are two. The one I knew about was the James Pearre (1823-1912) Farm, which is across Comus Road and a bit down the street from this cemetery. Apparently though, there was a farmhouse built by William Pearre (1791-1864) – James’ father – and it was this farmhouse that was next to the Pearre Family Cemetery.
According to the historic records, William Pearre inhabited a home on this site that had been built as early as the late 1700s. William was a prosperous farmer, cultivating tobacco. Throughout the early 1800s he continued to expand his home and on this property he raised 10 children with his wife, Catherine.
The home remained in the Pearre Family until the early 1900s when it was sold to the Nicholson Family, the last owners of the estate. In 1940 they deeded the cemetery back to the Pearre family. The cemetery contained the graves of William and Catherine Pearre; their daughters, Sarah Ellen Pearre Grunwell and Marrie Virginia (Caroline V.) Pearre Veitch, and Fletcher Roberts Veitch 7 Caroline’s husband. In 1948 George Pearre, James’ son, left a provision in his will to have a monument erected to honor the family as well as money for the upkeep of the cemetery.
Here’s how the home looked in the early 1970s:
In 1971 Columbia Comus, Inc. purchased the land with the intent of building a golf course. It’s unclear why the golf course was never built, but in the process of developing the land, this amazing old home was torn down.
As for William, he was buried in the family cemetery next to where his home once stood. He was a flawed human, but the epitaph on his grave epitomizes the ideals of what I think it means to be a good man: “He performed well all the duties of a kind father and a good citizen.” What more could any of us ask for?
