September 2014
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THE DARNESTOWN CIVIC ASSOCIATION Volume 51, Number 3 www.darnestowncivic.org September 2014 CIVIC ASSOCIATION NEWS & NOTES Notes from the President By Lisa Patterson-Troike DCA Hoedown DCA By-Laws Update th October 17 The DCA By-Laws have been updated to be consistent See page 13 for details! with our membership year and to better define the composition and responsibilities of the DCA Board. The By-Laws changes were presented at the DCA Town Next DCA Town Meeting Meeting in June and were unanimously approved. th Sept. 18 | 7:30 PM th Sept. 18 7:30 PM Hoedown October 17 ! th Darnestown Presbyterian The 44 Annual DCA Hoedown is set for Friday, October 17th. The adult only event takes place here in Darnestown Church at Smokey Glen Farm located at 16407 Riffle Ford Road from 6:30 pm – midnight. It is a one of a kind experience Route 28 at Turkey Foot Road lead by a one of a kind square dance caller, Mac McCall. Mac has been calling at our Hoedowns for most of the 44 years we have been gathering. BBQ chicken and ribs, Inside this Issue seafood bisque, potato salad, pasta salad, green salad, Notes from the President…..……………………… 1 rolls, fruit pies, beer, wine, sodas, dancing, hayrides and Little Acorn Staff………………………………………. 2 The History of Darnestown………………………. 3 more are included for only $35! It is truly a memorable Softball …………………………………………………… 9 experience. Don’t dance? Come and watch your friends Boy Scouts ……………………………………………… 10 and neighbors on the dance floor. You will laugh until DSRC News……………………………………….……. 12 your sides hurt! RSVP form is located on page 13, and Homesteading Corner………………………….… 14 payment must be received by October 10th. School News & Events……………………………. 16 Church News………………………………….……… 19 ….continued on page 7 Darne Bloomers Club …………………………….. 21 Community Interest…………………………….… 25 Service Providers…………………………….……… 33 Darnestown Directory…………………………... 34 1 THE LITTLE ACORN STAFF Editor: Susie Gooch ([email protected] - preferred) ([email protected]) Proofreader: Sarah Scherer ([email protected]) The Darnestown Civic Association Board (DCA) President: Lisa Patterson-Troike ([email protected]) Vice President : Bob Thompson ([email protected]) Chairman: Arthur Slesinger ([email protected]) Treasurer: Guy Armantrout ([email protected]) Trustee: Karen Hinrichsen ([email protected]) Trustee: Dick Jurgena ([email protected]) Trustee: Chris Collins ([email protected]) Corresponding Secretary: Michael Gottlieb ([email protected]) Recording Secretary: Susan Allaway ([email protected]) The DCA Committee Chairpersons Compliance: Michael Gottlieb ([email protected]) Darnestown Village: Chris Collins ([email protected]) Directory: Sarah Scherer ([email protected]) Environment: Arthur Slesinger ([email protected]) Flag Program: Tim Sanders ([email protected]) Historical Soc. Rep: Vacant Membership: Vacant Membership Database: Jean Jurgena ([email protected]) Parliamentarian: Chris Collins ([email protected]) Safety: Chair: Dick Jurgena ([email protected]) Co-Chair: Kevin Keegan ([email protected]) Seneca Forest Project: Karen Hinrichsen ([email protected]) Social: Lisa Patterson-Troike ([email protected]) Softball: Dave Bivans([email protected]) Utility Reliability: Art Slesinger ([email protected]) Website: Guy Armantrout ([email protected]) Neil Agate ([email protected]) Zoning & Dev: Pam Dubois ([email protected]) Happy autumn to all of our Darnestown neighbors!! 2 the river, the soldiers captured a number of canal boats in the area of Violette’s Lock, turning one sideways to create a bridge for his soldiers to cross. They abandoned their plan to burn the other boats after the boat captains persuaded them to have mercy on small businessmen. Instead, Stuart’s men transformed the boats into obstructions by turning them sideways and then draining the water form that section of the canal. Route 28, Darnestown looking west; late 1880's Courtesy Montgomery Historical Society Violette’s Lock was named for Ab Violette, the last lock keeper, whose house has disappeared. Several years ago, The Little Acorn was Standing on the lock looking toward Seneca, honored to run a series of informational Violette’s Lock is on the right, a lift lock that raised articles detailing the history of our charming and lowered canal boats about eight feet. The town. It’s always enlightening to revisit our lock on the left is a guard lock though which local past, and with new neighbors arriving every grain boats were admitted to the canal. Both year, we thought that this would be a great locks were built of Seneca sandstone. North of the time to run our historical series again. Here locks was once the small village of Rushville, where thirsty canallers or quarrymen purchased now, is Part Three of the series. Enjoy! moonshine whiskey from “Aunt” Pricilla Jenkins. The History of Darnestown Crossing the river by Violette’s Lock are the Part Three remains of a 2,500 foot-wide rock dam built by the C&O Canal Company around 1828 of quarry waste ROWSERS FORD (Violette’s Lock, Lock #23, from nearby Seneca quarry in order to impound Milepost 20) the water that fed into the 18-mile section of canal down to Little Falls. Waters impounded by This was an important river crossing during the this dam flowed into a five-mile pool know as Civil War. John Mosby used Rowsers Ford on his Little Seneca Lake, which now supports heavy raid up to Seneca. Jeb Stuart is thought to have recreational use by people from the entire crossed here just before the Gettysburg campaign Metropolitan area (25 feet average depth; 70 feet in the summer of 1863. After the Union Army max. depth; 505 acres; 15 miles shoreline). crossed at Edwards Ferry on June 25 and 26 in Violette’s Lock is a haven for canoers and kayakers pursuit of the main body of Lee’s Army, Stuart’s who use its shores as a launching site above the cavalry came from Dranesville down to the banks Seneca “breaks”, or rapids. Boaters can cross to of the Potomac at Rowsers Ford. The water was the Virginia side and enjoy mild whitewater higher than usual – too high for artillery and through one of the original skirting canals ambulances – but Stuart decided to cross there excavated by George Washington’s Patowmack anyway. His men unloaded and carried the boxes Company. of ammunition across the river by hand. The guns C.M.E. CHURCH and caissons were dragged across the river completely submerged. The night was dark and On the hilltop to the left of Violette’s Lock Road, a moonless, so the men could not see clearly where weathered clapboard shell was built about 1900 they were to enter and exit the water. They to serve the local Colored Methodist Church stayed close to each other, drifting down the river congregation. The African American community with the current until someone would appear at Seneca was established as much as 125 years from the from the Maryland shore to tell them ago by ex-slaves who worked in the quarries. how to straighten their lines. After they crossed 3 DARNESTOWN Darnestown was first settled about 1730, when from around the area would bring their grain to Maryland was still a colony of England. The first the mills of Darnestown to transport it directly settlers in its general area were Scottish or Irish from there down the canal to Georgetown. After frontiersmen, descendants of men who had the railroad came to Gaithersburg and fought in the Revolutionary War under Germantown in the early 1900’s, there was no Washington, who had helped put down the more need for the mills in Darnestown and they Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, and who had petered out by the 1930’s. fought with General Braddock in the French and Indian War. They were mostly Calvinists. One of In the 1800’s, mail was brought by stagecoach them was Ninean Beall, a tavern keeper, who from Rockville three times a week, and the people came about 1750. He had a number of daughters of the neighborhood rode out on horseback to be who married community leaders, including there when it arrived. The ladies dressed for this Charles Gassaway, who built an estate to become occasion in long riding skirts, hats with drooping known as “Pleasant Hills” (now known as the feather, gauntlets, and always carried riding Kelley farmhouse in Spring Meadows). For a whips. As they cantered up the dusty road (Rt. 28, while, the town also took the name of the large based on an old Indian trail) to Darnestown, dogs, tract of land on which it was built “Mount chickens, and pigs flew out before them. They Pleasant”. When a post office was later built, would arrive early and draw their horses under Charles Gassaway’s son-in-law, William Darne, had the shade of nearby trees where they gossiped become the largest landowner, and the town was and flirted with the young men of the community. renamed Darne, then later Darne’s Town, and After dropping off the mail, the stagecoach then eventually Darnestown. continued on through Dawsonville to Poolesville. Residents would sometimes take a “packet boat” The Darnestown area became a town between to Washington or Georgetown for shopping. It 1815 and 1820, but tobacco farming in the area took nearly all day to travel from Seneca to had so impoverished the soil that it didn’t attract Georgetown, and the time could vary by several many farmers until the Quaker farmers of Sandy hours. Passengers would impatiently pace the Springs introduced crop rotation and Peruvian canal bank or wait inside Johnny Riley’s stone lock guanos fertilizer. Residents continued to farm house. The packet boat had a saloon, captain’s tobacco, which they sent on barges down the river room, and a kitchen, and could hold as many as 50 to Georgetown.