Originally published in the Cecil Whig
It’s 2 stories high made of stone. It’s been a residence, tavern, farm, office, boarding house, post office, restaurant, even a jail. What is it?
“It” is the Mitchell House, better known as the Fair Hill Inn, located at the corner of routes 213 and 273 in Fair Hill. Rising Sun resident, Tracy Jentzsch, wrote her Master’s Thesis on the structure and recently donated that report and all her research documents to the Historical Society of Cecil County. Tracy said the house has a fascinating history. “On my way to work every day, I passed the Mitchell House, the Fair Hill Inn, and just thought it was such a cool building and I always wondered what the story was around it. It turns out the Mitchell house had led many lives for over 300 years. So I was trying to do a historiography of the structure and describe the material culture of the building too.”
According to Tracy, we are indebted to at least 21 owners for those “lives.” The owners include 2 generations of the Hollingsworths, the Cartmells, the Bakers, and the Hesses. However, it was the three generations of the 18th century Mitchell family that gave the house its name. During the Mitchell family ownership, the Marquis de Lafayette visited the house and at least 5 slaves were doing farm labor.
“During his 1824 tour of the United States, Lafayette was a guest of Colonel George Mitchell and brought with him some cherry trees.” Tracy says those trees are long gone, but their decedents survive. “Parts of the original trees were graphed and are on the Green Farm, one of the properties along 213.”
It was Colonel Mitchell’s father, Dr. Abraham Mitchell, who, as of 1783, owned the five slaves. He then willed them to his wife upon his death in 1817. There are no records of any slaves on the property after 1840.
Tracy notes that the owner with the most longevity was William duPont Jr. who owned the Mitchell house and grounds between 1937 and 1974. Tracy praises his grand pictorial record. “In the 1930s Mr. duPont hired a company to take aerial photographs of the area, including the Mitchell House. They are high resolution pictures, available on line through the Hagley Museum, that you can zoom in on and see incredible detail.”
Tracy credits Anthony Graziano with saving the building. “Mr. Graziano purchased the building from the State of Maryland (1978) as excess property for around $17,000 and he committed to restoring the building. He did a stellar job in bringing the house back to its original form, going so far as to replicating the original stone.”
One reason the house not only survived, but thrived was its proximity to two major roadways: routes 213 and 273. “Route 213, that runs along side of it, became a plank road and that helped bring traffic through the area. There were mills, a wheel wright, and many residences. Route 273, which began as a Native American footpath, developed into an east-west roadway between Baltimore and Newark (Delaware) and then on to Philadelphia.”
Architecturally, Tracy says she found the structure itself to be significant as well as one of the fireplaces. “The original stone structure contains some very fine details. It is not rough cut stone. It was built by a mason who knew what they were doing. Unfortunately the architect’s name is lost to time, but not for the lack of trying!” As Tracy explains, that fireplace created a long standing controversy about the Mitchell House.
“The fireplace is in the front room. It’s a double fireplace which is very unusual for that time period. It had a fire back that dates to 1764. However, Mr. Graziano says that when he bought the house, the fire back was on the property, not in the fireplace. So we don’t really know if that was brought in at a later date or if it was original to the fireplace. A lot of people date the house to 1764 because of that fire back, but we don’t really know. I believe the house was really there prior to that date.”
Tracy gave credit to the Historical Society of Cecil County for assisting her in her research. “The historical society is so well organized and the volunteers are so enthusiastic and easy to work with. They helped me with newspaper microfilm, market indexes, genealogical information, property tax records, and their maps which were very useful.”
You can follow Tracy’s posts on History and Digital Humanities on Facebook – UD History and on Twitter, @Tracy_Jentzsch and @UDHistory.