Mattapany Manor

 place with historical importance, estate (manor / mansion land), NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, historical building

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Free entrance - (on the Naval base)
One particular place, resting on a site nestled between the station’s runways, hangars and office buildings, is the historical Mattapany-Sewall. The mansion is the oldest flag quarters in the U.S. Navy and has been home to many of the senior commanding officers that have passed through Patuxent River for their next tour of duty. But the story of this estate and its land, located off Millstone Road, traces much further back than its recent military use. Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore, consolidated all the individual land holdings comprising the Mattapany estate, by 1662. One year later, Cecil Calvert granted the entire manor, today known as Mattapany-Sewall, to Henry Sewall, Secretary of Maryland Province, for 15,000 pounds of tobacco. Sewell died in 1665, leaving a bulk of his estate, one of the largest in the colony, to his wife Jane and their five children. Charles Calvert, Governor of Maryland, married Henry Sewall’s widow Jane in 1666, and the property was once again in Calvert hands. Charles Calvert, Third Lord Baltimore and Proprietor of Maryland In the 1660’s, Charles Calvert built a, “fair house of brick and timber with all out-houses and other offices thereto belonging … where he and his family reside being a pleasant, healthful and commodious seat on a point overlooking the Patuxent River.” This is according to an account written by John Obilby in 1671. The former house of Henry Sewall was converted into the colonial magazine. Mattapany soon became the center of political activity for Maryland - complete with a jail, courts and a colonial armory, which housed weapons and ammunition for the colony’s defense. Charles Calvert returned to England in 1684 while religious tensions worsened between Catholics and Protestants in Maryland. Not long after Charles Calvert’s departure did he lose political control of Maryland and all Catholics were forbidden to hold public offices or titles. In 1689, Protestant rebels stormed Mattapany and drove the Catholic Calverts away from the colony. The Mattapany estate was abandoned until reclaimed by the Sewall family once again in 1722. Mattapany-Sewall and Today Nicholas Lewis Sewall, son of Henry Sewall, most likely built the mansion known today as Mattapany-Sewall, around 1742. It is believed that bricks robbed from Charles Calvert’s home, which stood nearby, have been incorporated into the Mattapany-Sewall home. The house, originally built as a 32-foot by 38-foot Federal-style house, had an unhurried air to it, like most mansions built in that period. The finely proportioned rooms entered through arches lined with wood paneling, revealing the thickness of the walls of at least 18 inches, gave a sense of seclusion to the remoteness of the rest of the world. Today, from the main road, the large white house appears distant because of the long lane approaching the main entrance. Shading the numerous house windows are great trees - cedars, magnolias and boxwoods. In 1840, Richard Thomas and Jane Armstrong acquired the property and the Thomas family continued to possess Mattapany until 1932. The Thomas’ added on a two-story two-room section to the house as well as a smokehouse a dairy and a tenant homestead consisting of a house, a barn and a garage. In 1932, a successful Washington engineer named George A. Weschler, bought the property from the Thomas family heirs and renovated further, creating a two-story east wing and the present layout that is seen today. He used the 1,000-acre mansion property as a country retreat and the site for his planned cattle-raising and dairy-farming operation. Weschler had about 75 percent of his renovations to the house completed by 1942 when the U.S. Navy purchased the property, making several more renovations in order to convert it to Quarters.