Round About Hills, Colonial plantation house in Glenwood, Maryland
Round About Hills is a plantation house in Glenwood, Maryland, featuring a wood frame with a stone end, gambrel roof, and a one-story hip-roofed porch across three bays. The main structure received a stone kitchen addition in 1820 and includes a long screened porch with visible rafter tails.
The property was built around 1773 on land granted to early settlers as part of colonial expansion in the region. Thomas Beale Dorsey inherited it in 1794 and later traded it for Cooksville, a stagecoach stop.
The property displays stone structures built for enslaved workers and farm buildings that show how colonial plantations in Maryland were organized. These constructions speak to the social arrangements that defined life on such estates centuries ago.
The house sits on roughly 3.2 acres and can be viewed from the road, though it remains on private property in a residential area. Visitors should respect the site's private status and approach it with care as a historic location.
The exposed rafter tails on the long screened porch are a handcrafted detail that shows how owners in the 1800s chose to display structural elements as design features. This choice reflected personal taste and economic standing of the time.
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