Big things coming
Gov. Hogan’s new home latest news from Davidsonville
Davidsonville is big. It’s 30 square miles, stretching from Y Worry Farm and the 288-year-old Anne Arundel County Free School north of Route 50, south past The Vineyards at Dodon to Harwood.
The big farms have been replaced by big houses and a training center for motorsports legend Travis Pastrana. There are still big horses like the ones that once ran the steeplechase each spring at Roedown, just fewer of them. They grow medical marijuana there now, too.
And the big secret, an underground missile base that once protected Washington, D.C. from the communist attack of our nightmares, is still there, just defanged and transformed into underground office and storage space beneath the county police academy.
The big news in Davidsonville now is that Larry and Yumi Hogan plan to move in after they depart the governor’s mansion in 2022. The couple bought a big place, 6 acres down a gated road that surrounds a 5,642-square-foot home with three gas fireplaces, garage space for four cars and heated floors.
But for all its size, Davidsonville remains small. People know each other.
“I sent him a note saying there goes the neighborhood,” said Bob Neall, Hogan’s former health secretary.
Neall has a lot of formers behind his name. Former delegate, former state senator, former county executive, former health care executive.
But he always has and probably always will be a Davidsonville guy. Maybe the Davidsonville guy.
Davidsonville is named for Thomas Davidson, a plantation and slave owner who moved there in 1839.
To almost anyone living there, the Davidsonville Market at the corner of Central Avenue and Davidsonville Road is the center of the community. Neall’s father opened it, and he and his brother, Billy, grew up working there. The family still owns the land, although another family operates the market.
“It’s a great community, very civic community,” he said. “People look out for each other.”
If you want to know what’s happening in Davidsonville, there is no one better to ask than Gail Enright.
She’s been the writer, editor and personification of The Villager, the Davidsonville Community Association newsletter mailed to every resident for five decades. Enright moved full time to the community 55 years ago, after spending summers there on family land that dates back to the 1880s.
“I was in at the beginning of the community association,” she said. “I started typing an IBM Selectric. I’ve been writing and collecting stuff ever since then.”
The community center is around the corner, a registered Historic District that includes 15 buildings.
The big news in Davidsonville before the Hogans’ plan was reported was the imminent move of the post office away from the corner. Holy Family Catholic Church owns the land and has other plans for it.
Sometime later this spring or summer, it’s been delayed a few times, the mail will move west down Central Avenue away from the historic heart of Davidsonville, next to the Harvest Thyme Tavern.
Enright has been all over the story and featured an
update in the March-April edition of her newsletter.
“It should be no surprise that the March opening of the new post office is not a certainty. A phone call to the office revealed that the move may take place in April. So we can assume that the box holders in Davidsonville will receive this issue of the Villager as expected.”
Sometimes what happens in Davidsonville is just too big to contain.
This spring, an ill-informed amateur genealogist went to the All Hallows Chapel, founded in 1692, and scrubbed the headstone inscriptions. She wanted a better photo for the site billiongraves.com. Howls went up on the internet, and the community of volunteers who have kept the historic spot a peaceful oasis were horrified.
The Rev. Jeff Hual, the 44th pastor of the church and as of Saturday the immediate past president of the Rotary Club of South Anne Arundel County, is working with her to repair the damage in a neighborly way. No police.
It’s part of the charm of Davidsonville. So is its location.
“It’s the fact that it is within easy distance of Washington, easy distance of Baltimore and obviously easy distance from Annapolis, and yet you feel like you’re in the country,” Hual said.
Hogan, of course, isn’t the only celebrity to chose Davidsonville.
Roy Clark, the late Country Western star guitarist of “Hee-Haw” fame, lived here for 18 years.
“The only reason he moved is that his business took him to Branson, Missouri and Oklahoma,” Neall said.
Pastrana moved from Annapolis to Davidsonville, where he set up camp off Governor’s Bridge Road. His training facility remains, but Pastrana has departed for Severna Park.
Enright suspects it might have been too quiet for city folk.
Despite the newcomers, there are plenty of farms left. Haybayles still dot the landscape off two-lane roads. Space for cows has been turned over to horses, like Hunter Ridge Stables at Bridgefield Farm.
Neall has connections with at least one famous farm family, that of County Executive Steuart Pittman.
Pittman’s family, which has owned Dodon Farm for eight generations, were also plantation and slave owners.
He grew up in Washington but spent weekends and vacations on the farm. His father, a lawyer, was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to head the country’s fallout shelter program as the nation braced for nuclear war.
Neall was a contemporary of Pittman’s older stepbrother, Andy. Neall’s younger brother Billy was summer pals with Steuart Pittman.
“They’d come on weekends,” Neall said.
Today Dodon Farm is home to a winery run by his sister and a dressage training center — fancy dancing for horses.
But it is still a farm. Pittman got his start in public office in Anne Arundel County on the soil conservation board.
Two years ago, when a 600-pound hog got on the loose, it was corraled by 4-H club members on Dodon Farm after it was spotted harassing one of his horses.
Hogan already knows all these big facts about Davidsonville, or some of them.
The home he and his wife sold in Edgewater last year was really Davidsonville-adjacent and shared a lot of the same characteristics.
He probably knows about the hiking trail at Davidsonville Park, about four miles from the corner on Patuxent River Road.
Jeff Holland, The Capital’s walks and ramble columnist, recently explored it with his new dog Millie.
“From one prominent overlook, the surface of the Patuxent River gleamed in the light of the low afternoon sun, the water brimming the banks with its spring flood,” he wrote.
Hogan undoubtedly knows about Homestead Garden, the sprawling — dare we say big — landscaping business that is home to displays and greenhouses and llamas. It hosts community fundraisers and tree giveaways.
The governor also should know most of his neighbors will be affluent and white. The median income is 142,596 a year. Voters tend to go Republican.
Hogan certainly knows Chad’s, a barbecue joint he’s said to be fond of that both Davidsonville and Edgewater lay claim to. Pittman, a Democrat who’s had a few policy squabbles with Hogan, has his own favorites and offered them to his soon-to-be new neighbor.
“Great Sandwiches at the Davidsonville Market,” he wrote in a text message when asked about sharing tips for the governor. “And Killarney House pours a good Guinness.
“Look forward to seeing you there.”