Essay: “History Sandy Spring”, 1917-1921

Greene, Mary Mary Greene

Historic Sandy Spring

Historic, because for a rural community Sandy Spring has given to our country men and women who have taken a very prominent part in the progress and development of our nation.

First, let us locate Sandy Spring Maryland, consider some of it's characteristics, and find out from whence it derived to name. This village is twenty-eight miles west of Baltimore, Maryland and is seventeen miles almost due north of Washington, D.C It is ten miles from a railroad.

Sandy Spring is not only a village, but is a neghborhood and community also. It is a very small village, but has financial institutions whose business and resources are equal to those of many city institutions of a similar kind which are considered great. It possesses civic or community betterment associations which are old, Note: See Bank Statements appended.

prosperous and progressive. The financial institutions are thus first National Bank of Sandy Spring, the Savings Institution of Sandy Spring, and the Mutual fire Insurance Company of Montgomery County. Among the community betterment associations are a farmers club which dates from 1844 and a womans society, called The Association for Mutual Improvement, which was organized May 1^st, 1857. So far as can be discovered this is the oldest womans club now in existence in the United States. As there were practically no clubs for women in 1857, there was no model upon which is base the organisation and government by this Association. The Association resembled the Business Meeting of Women Friends, the only public gathering of women in Maryland at that time (1867), in that they both had a single officer, sometimes called "the clerk" However, the Constitution of the Mutual Improvement Association is so perfect that it could scarcely be improved upon to-day. This

Note: Mrs. Pierce, a charter member of the association, celebrated her one hundredth birthday in 1924

literary, domestic and horticultural club has been a very positive force for good along many different lines during the sixty eight years of its existence, and has been a model for other somewhat similar organizations. Sandy Spring has a Lyceum Company, whose record of lectures and other entertainments extends over a period of sixty years. Among the noted people who have spoken from the platform of the Lyceum are D A. Anna Shaw, Zeralda Wallace, the mother of Lew Wallace, Dr. Moncur D. Conway, A.R. Spofford, the Librarian of the Congressional Library for many years, M.A Neyman of Germany, Susan B. Anthony, Professor Tormis of John Hopkins University, N. Stanley Newman, who spoke on India, and George Wennar, the authority on Russia. There is a county high school of enviable reputation, which started as a Friends Academy.

The Sandy Spring Neighborhood is extensive and cannot be defined

Note: The Landstown Pensylvania "Novelty Club"

with exactness. In general it may be said to include a tract of land approximately ten miles square. "Sandy Spring Neighborhood" is really an open section of farming land settled by a group of people who are united by the ties of religion and blood relationship, and are distinguished more or less definitely from the inhabitants of the adjacent territory by differences of thought, feeling and custom.

Four or five hamlets within the limits of the neighborhood may be considered sub-communities of the Sandy Spring community.

After many changes either favorable or unfavorable, in agricultural conditions and farm values the Sandy Spring section of Montgomery County has become a most fruitful part of the United States. The crops of corn, wheat, potatoes, and apples produced in this vicinity rival those about which perhaps more is heard. The cattle raising industry is creditable and dairying is intensive. Farming is the chief occupation

tion of the section, but of late years trucking has increased considerably in importance.

The most celebrated writers always refer to certain "centers of settlement Humboldt mentions the central radiant points" of Sandy Spring? The fountain head literally as well as figuratively is a Spring from which the neighborhood receives its name. The first annalist of Sandy Spring writes thus of the spring;

"No longer does the water bubble up through the white sand that gave the Spring its name, as famous once that the neighbors sent to it, some distance round, on account of its peculiar scouring and polishing excellence. Where the red Indian stopped to drink, unfastening the wild beasts skin from his swarthy neck, where the white man chasing the deer the wolf and the bear, first parted the tangled