Riversdale: The House and Its Families

By Jennifer N. Evans and Jill F. Reilly

Flemish émigré Henri Joseph Stier constructed the Riversdale Mansion near Bladensburg, Maryland, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Before the house's completion, Stier planned for his family's return to Europe and left Riversdale in the custody of his daughter, Rosalie, and her husband, George Calvert.

This essay will trace the histories of the branches of the Stier and Calvert families from which Rosalie and George were descended.

It will also depict how Riversdale Mansion evolved over the course of two centuries: the realization of Henri Stier's vision; a golden age as the home of George and Rosalie and later their son, Charles Benedict Calvert; a chameleon phase as a boarding house, a rental home, a country club, and an office building; and its reincarnation as a historic house museum, interpreted to reflect the days of George and Rosalie.

The Calvert Family

In 1625, James I of England granted George Calvert, son of a Yorkshire landholder and graduate of Oxford University, the title "Baron of Baltimore" in recognition of his years of loyal service to the British Crown. Deeply interested in American colonization, Calvert unfortunately failed in his attempt to settle in Newfoundland. King Charles I, James's successor, granted Calvert the territory north of the Potomac River. George Calvert died, however, before the grant was finalized. In June 1632, the final charter establishing a colony called Maryland, in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, went to George's eldest son, Cecil Calvert. [1]

Cecil outfitted two vessels, the Ark and the Dove, which set sail in October 1633 with approximately 140 passengers, mostly Protestants who had some experience farming. The Protestants were joined by about seventeen Catholic gentlemen and two Jesuit priests. Staying behind to protect his interests in England, Cecil appointed his brother, Leonard, to act as governor. On March 3, 1634, the settlers entered the Potomac River and celebrated the Feast of Annunciation on March 25 on St. Clement's (now Blakistone) Island. Shortly thereafter, Leonard Calvert made peace with the local Indians and began to build around a spot soon called St. Mary's. [2]

During the next century, the Calvert family's history continued to be tied intimately to that of the growing colony. [3] In 1748, Benedict Calvert, the illegitimate but acknowledged son of the fifth Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert, married his cousin, Elizabeth Calvert, only surviving child of Charles Calvert, Governor of Maryland, 1720-1727. Benedict's extensive landholdings in Prince George's County included a 7,600-acre estate called "His Lordship's Kindness" and a hunting lodge. A portion of the estate, called Mount Airy, was the birthplace of Benedict's son, George Calvert, in 1768. [4]

George Calvert followed his family's tradition of public service by representing Prince George's County in the General Assembly of Maryland from 1796 to 1799. The young legislator met his future wife, Rosalie Eugenia Stier, in the state capital, Annapolis. [5]

The Stier Family

The Stiers were an aristocratic, landed family from the region around Antwerp, Flanders. Henri Joseph Stier and his wife, Marie Louise Peeters, maintained a townhouse in the port city of Antwerp, north of Brussels in present-day Belgium. In addition to their city residence, the Stiers owned a small, medieval castle, the Castle Cleydael at Aartselaar, near Antwerp, and a country home, Chateau du Mick. [6] Most residents of Flanders spoke Flemish or French, like the Stiers, although the region was under the rule of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire in the late eighteenth century. [7]

Members of the aristocracies throughout Europe, such as the Stiers, regarded with dismay the developments of the French Revolution as they unfolded between 1789 and 1799. The storming of the Bastille launched the bourgeois and peasant (Third Estate) attack on the upper levels of French society. The National Constituent Assembly abolished feudalism and redistributed property from the Catholic Church to the bourgeoisie and "sansculottes" (workers). Many French nobles, Catholic clergy, and aristocrats of France were imprisoned and executed; thousands of others immigrated to parts of Europe and the United States. [8]

The French Republic declared war on Austria and Prussia in April 1792. After months of defeats, the French army claimed victories between September 1792 and April 1793, leading to their occupation of Belgium, Rhineland, Savoy, and Nice. Whenever the Republic gained control over territories, it established republics and abolished feudalism. The most successful faction of the revolutionary French government during this period was the Montagnards. Montagnard reforms included the institution of limited prices (the Maximum), taxes on the rich, poor relief, free education, and the confiscation and sale of properties belonging to émigré citizens. Revolts and protest to these reforms in Normandy, Brittany, Provence, and several cities led to a violent response from the Montagnard government under the leadership of Robespierre. During the Reign of Terror, they arrested over 300,000 treasonous suspects and executed about 17,000, including King Louis XVI. [9]

Although defeats in spring 1793 led the French military to retreat from Flanders, victories in June 1794 prompted their reentry and reoccupation. [10] As the French revolutionist army crossed the border of Flanders in June 1794, the Stiers fled their home in Antwerp. Like other émigrés of the aristocracy, they feared for their lives. First, they resettled further north in the Netherlands, also part of the Hapsburg Empire. From Amsterdam, Henri, Marie Louise, and their three children, Isabelle, Charles Jean, and Rosalie, sailed to Philadelphia. In addition, Isabelle's husband, Jean Michel van Havre; their three-year-old daughter, Louise; Charles's new wife, Marie (Mimi) van Havre; and two servants joined the Stiers. The family's arrival was noted in Philadelphia's American Daily Advertiser on October 13, 1794. [11] The Stiers had left just in time. By the winter of 1794, Flanders and the Netherlands were completely under the French Republic's control, and the puppet Batavian Republic had been established by 1795. [12]

Although they left their properties behind, the Stier family brought their most valuable (and portable) assets - sixty-three paintings - with them to the United States. Before his death, Jean Egide Peeters, Marie Stier's father assembled the collection, which included paintings by Anthony Van Dyke, Titian, and Rembrandt. [13] As an educated man of culture and a direct descendant of artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Stier greatly appreciated the paintings and understood that the group of Old Word masters in his possession was "the most outstanding collection of its type in the United States at that time." [14]

The family was quickly accepted into the highest social circles of Philadelphia, but Henri Stier desired to reduce the cost of his living arrangements. He had recently received news of additional taxes being levied on émigrés by the French. In addition, there was concern about contracting yellow fever in the city; many wealthy Philadelphians made arrangements to leave the city during the summer and early autumn to escape the threat. [15] For these reasons, Henri Stier, his wife, and seventeen-year-old Rosalie moved to Strawberry Hill, an estate near Annapolis, in the fall of 1795. The van Havre and Charles Stier families remained in Philadelphia, moving to Alexandria, Virginia, by the end of 1795. [16]

By November 1797, the Stiers had once again relocated. This time they moved to what is now known as the Paca House, a large, two-story, brick home in Annapolis built by William Paca, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and later governor of Maryland. [17] Now twenty years old, Rosalie enjoyed the serious attentions of George Calvert, but her father was reluctant to give his approval to the couple. Stier was undecided about remaining in America and did not wish to be separated from his youngest daughter. Calvert persisted. [18] Mimi Stier, Rosalie's sister-in-law, wrote to her husband that George had presented Rosalie with a kerchief pin with his monogram, surround with pearls and locks of his hair. She continued in her letter, "He is a man who cannot be resisted, and my sister loves him well and rightly so. He woos her so tenderly and with such gallantry that a girl must yield. I didn't think it possible for an American to be so amiable or that Calvert could be so gallant." [19] The couple was married on June 11, 1799, in Annapolis. Rosalie adjusted to her new life on Calvert's two-thousand-acre tobacco farm on the Patuxent River, Mount Albion. [20]

Her father, meanwhile, made preparations to build a house on 729 ¼ acres of land near Bladensburg that he purchased in September 1800. [21] From October 1800 until August 1802, the Stiers lived at Bostwick House in Bladensburg, Maryland, while construction on Riversdale commenced. During this time, Rosalie gave birth to the first of nine children, Caroline Maria. [22]

Bladensburg was located in Prince George's County, Maryland, and situated on the main road between Baltimore and a growing new capital city. A branch of the Anacostia River had flowed through the thriving port city until silt from generations of farming made it unnavigable by the late eighteenth century. According to Alan Virta, in his history of Prince George's County, "Bladensburg, in the colonial era, was second only to Upper Marlboro in population and importance." [23] As such, the town still offered certain amenities, such as a store and social opportunities. In fact, antebellum Prince George's County, the "greatest tobacco-producing county in Maryland," boasted a number of estates and prominent citizens. For example, the Richard Lowndes family residence, Blenheim, was located in Bladensburg, and the Snowden family built Montpelier in nearby Laurel. [24]

The Stiers resided at Riversdale from August 1802 to June 1803, when they permanently returned to their family homes in Belgium.

The Mansion

Henri Stier had definite ideas about his new country house. He settled on a basic design with wings and employed the services of Benjamin Latrobe, future architect of the United States Capitol, to draw up a plan. Unhappy with the slow pace with which the project was progressing, Stier terminated his agreement with Latrobe and contracted with William Lovering to supervise the construction of the house. Stier had previous experience with construction when he built his country home, the Château du Mick, in Belgium in the 1780s. The Riversdale project, however, was a huge undertaking. Stier not only wanted a house but also overseer's quarters, slave housing, and a blacksmith's shop. Even gathering materials was difficult, since Stier estimated 300 to 400 thousand bricks would need to be manufactured on site; he also need large amounts of lime and oyster shells for plaster and mortar as well as nails. [25]

The work progressed slowly, and the Stiers moved into the unfinished house in August 1802. Hearing that it was safe to return to Belgium, the Stiers and van Havres left the United States in June 1803. Mimi and Charles Stier had preceded them by almost two years, returning in September 1801. Henri Stier left the uncompleted house in the care of his daughter, Rosalie, and her husband, George, with the understanding that the couple could live there if they wished. For the next eighteen years, the Calverts made their home in the mansion. [26]

Rosalie worked hard to complete the house and its grounds. Along with her husband, she oversaw the continued construction of Riversdale. Rosalie also took it upon herself to hire William Russell Birch of Philadelphia as her landscape architect. At her request, her father, brother, and sister sent her the most fashionable home furnishings from Europe and advice on selecting quality items in America. [27] For example, Rosalie closed one of her letters to her father with a reminder: "In my letter I asked you to please send me a pair of candelabra to place on the mantel in the drawing room in the same styles as the ones you had here, with bronze figures (those are the nicest I have ever seen)." [28] To compliment the European elegance of the house's architecture, she blended American and European styles in the interior décor and the cultivation of the gardens and grounds. [29] Rosalie explained to her sister, "[There] is a lot of talk about our house, but not because it is so splendid, since many in the Baltimore area greatly surpass it and even more beautiful ones are being built every year. The reason people talk about our house is because of its distinctive style, and people always much admire anything done by Europeans." [30]

From the moment the Calverts established their home at Riversdale, until Rosalie's death in 1821, the mansion and its surrounding plantation bustled with numerous servants and slaves and a growing number of Calvert children. Although the Calverts did not entertain at home as much as many others of their social standing did, Rosalie did host dinners and parties for her select group of close friends. Rosalie and George also were part of a social circle that included European expatriates and diplomats in Washington, D.C. [31]

Shortly before Rosalie's final illness and death at Riversdale in 1821, her eldest daughter, Caroline, debuted on the social scene in the nation's capital. Rosalie had hopes for her daughter to make a good match, although she was a shy young woman. Responsibility fell upon the shoulders of the widowed George Calvert to assist his children in their passage to adulthood and matrimony. The task was not easy for Calvert. While he was pleased by Caroline's marriage to Thomas Willing Morris, he strongly disapproved of George Henry's engagement to Elizabeth Steuart and Eugenia's to Charles Henry Carter. Both children left their father's house in turn and married without his blessing. The youngest daughter, Julia, married Dr. Richard Henry Stuart without any opposition from her father. When George died in 1838, only his youngest son, Charles Benedict, was still unmarried and living at home. A year later, he married Charlotte Augusta Norris of Baltimore. [32]

Changing Hands

After the death of his father, George Calvert, Charles Benedict took charge of Riversdale, molding it into a model farm. Charles Benedict was a leader in Maryland agricultural circles, eager to implement the best new methods and to spread knowledge about farming to others. He actively participated in agricultural societies, serving as the first president of the Maryland State Agricultural Society, and influenced the establishment of the United States Department of Agriculture in 1862. As one of the founders of the Maryland Agricultural College, which would later become the University of Maryland, he contributed his vision, financial backing, and land -- a portion of his Riversdale plantation became the site for the college's campus. Charles Benedict Calvert lived at Riversdale mansion until his death in 1864, at which time his property was divided among his heirs. [33]

Many family pieces, including furniture, house wares, and books, were sold in an auction in 1877, after the death of Charles Benedict's widow, Charlotte. The mansion stayed in the Calvert family until 1887. [34]

During the next eighty years, ownership of Riversdale changed hands several times, and the mansion served a number of purposes. In 1887, New York businessmen John Fox and Alexander Lutz acquired the mansion and 475 surrounding acres. On March 23, 1889, Fox, Lutz, and seven other individuals formed the Riverdale Park Company to develop a suburb convenient to Washington, D.C. They used the mansion as their headquarters during development and later sold it to Fanny Kelley Gordon. According to oral histories, Gordon converted the mansion and operated it as a boarding housing from 1893 to 1912 but eventually abandoned it. In 1912, Thomas Pickford, a builder in Washington, purchased the home and proceeded to restore it. Unable to convince his wife to move to Riversdale, Pickering searched for a purchase or lease arrangement. During the 1910s, A. H. Lofstrand operated the Lord Baltimore Country Club out of the mansion for a brief time. [35]

In 1917, Senator Hiram Johnson of California began leasing Riversdale mansion. In 1929, Senator Thaddeus Caraway of Arkansas and his wife took possession of the house. Caraway died two years later, but his widow, Senator Hattie Caraway of Arkansas, who was the first woman elected to the United States Senate, continued to live there until 1932. Congressman Abraham Lafferty of Oregon was the last private owner of Riversdale. In 1949, he sold the house and four surrounding acres to the county government, which used it as offices for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) until the mid-1960s. [36]

Restoration

In 1967, a group of residents in Riverdale Park, Maryland, formed the Riversdale Historical Society (RHS). After successfully protecting the Calvert Family Cemetery, they began the long process of raising funds and awareness to support the restoration of the Riversdale mansion. At that time, the house served as offices for the M-NCPPC. RHS hosted annual open houses to introduce the community to the story of Riversdale mansion. In 1977, RHS legally incorporated as a non-profit organization. They persuaded M-NCPPC to apply for a grant from the Maryland Historic Trust and move their offices out of the mansion. By 1982, the offices were gone, and a year later, RHS began holding Sunday afternoon tours. [37]

The changes to the house made by various owners over the course of eight decades created a large-scale restoration project. The Maryland Historic Trust grant and fundraising by RHS provided the funding for the restoration. Originally, M-NCPPC decided to restore the house to 1887, because not much documentation existed for any earlier period. In the early 1980s, however, RHS members learned of a collection of letters written by Rosalie that survived in a family collection in Belgium. RHS paid for reproduction of the letters so they could have a set in Maryland. Margaret Law Callcott, a RHS member, set out to edit a volume of the letters, which would become Mistress of Riversdale. Based on this discovery, RHS petitioned the Maryland Historic Trust to change plans for restoration to depict the era of George and Rosalie Calvert. In 1987, the Riversdale mansion closed for restoration and reopened to the public in 1993. [38]

Four years later, on December 9, 1997, the Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt, announced the designation of Riversdale as a National Historic Landmark, officially recognizing the property's national importance. Susan G. Pearl, a research/architectural historian employed by M-NCPPC, prepared the nomination that thoroughly describes and documents the Riversdale mansion. The report includes floor plans; photographic images; maps; architectural information; and a statement on the house's historical significance. Pearl explains, "Riversdale is an outstanding combination of the classic Federal-style Maryland architecture and European decorative detail." The house is also important because of the prominence of the Calvert family who lived there, she continues, "and for the fact that original family papers survive to document the building and furnishing of the mansion and grounds." [39]

Today, the Riversdale mansion, home of the Calvert family, is open to the public as a historic house museum. It is maintained by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and additionally supported by the Riversdale Historical Society. [40]

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Notes

[1] Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Prince George's County Regional Office, The Calvert Mansion "Riversdale" (Riversdale, Md.: M-NCPPC, 1950; reprint 1958), 1-3; Enoch Pratt Free Library, "The Portraits of the Six Lords Baltimore: A History of the Calverts and their Holding in the United Kingdom" <http://www.epfl.net/exhibits/lordsbaltimore/calvertbackground.html>, and "The Portraits of the Six Lords Baltimore: George Calvert, First Lord Baltimore (1580? - 1632)" <http://www.epfl.net/exhibits/lordsbaltimore/george.html>.

[2] The Calvert Mansion "Riversdale," 3-4. Enoch Pratt Free Library, "The Portraits of the Six Lords Baltimore: Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore (1606 - 1675)" <http://www.epfl.net/exhibits/lordsbaltimore/cecil.html>.

[3] For more information about the history of Maryland, see Robert J. Brugger, Maryland: A Middle Temperament (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press in association with the Maryland Historical Society, 1988); Maryland State Archives, "All About Maryland," <http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/homepage/html/mdgov.html>; Maryland Humanities Council, "Maryland History and Culture Bibliography" <http://www.mdhc.org/bibliotest/>. For more on historic sites in Prince George's County, Maryland, see Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, "Prince George's County: Historic Sites and Museums," <http://www.pgparks.com/places/historicsites.html>.

[4] The Calvert Mansion "Riversdale," 4-6. The Calvert family made a lasting impression in the history of Maryland and Prince George's County. See Garry Wheeler Stone, "Manorial Maryland" Maryland Historical Magazine 82 (Spring 1987): 3-36; Richard Cox, A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Calvert Papers (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1973); Louise Joyce Heinton, Prince George's Heritage: Sidelights on the Early History of Prince George's County, Maryland from 1696 to 1800 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, [1972]); R. Lee Van Horn, Out of the Past: Prince Georgeans and Their Land (Riverdale, Md.: Prince George's County Historical Society, 1976). For information on individuals and branches of the Calvert family, see John Bailey Nicklin, "The Calvert Family," in Maryland Genealogies: A Consolidation of Articles from the Maryland Historical Magazine. 2 vols. (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1980); Sara Catlin, "Benedict Calvert, Esq.: Man of Maryland." Riversdale Letter 19 no. 2 (Spring 2002): 2-3; John Beverly Riggs, "Certain Early Maryland Landowners in the Vicinity of Washington" Records of the Columbia Historical Society vols. 48-49 (1949): 249-263; Anne E. Yentsch, A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves: A Study in Historical Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Alice Coyle Torbert, Eleanor Calvert and Her Circle (New York: William-Frederick Press, 1950).

[5] On George Calvert, see The Calvert Mansion "Riversdale," 6; Margaret Law Callcott, ed. Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, 1795-1821 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 16-17.

[6] For more information about Stier homes, see Riversdale Letter vol. 7, no. 29.

[7] "Belgium: History," Encyclopedia.com. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/belgium_history.asp>

[8] "French Revolution," The New Encyclopaedia Britannica vol. 4 (15th edition, Chicago: 1995), 978-979.

[9] Ibid.; Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Emigration during the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), 40.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Mistress of Riversdale, 1-2.

[12] Christina A. Davis, ed. The Riverdale Story: Mansion to Municipality (Riverdale Park: Town of Riverdale Park, 1996), 4; "Belgium: History," Encyclopedia.com, <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/belgium_history.asp>; "French Revolution," The New Encyclopaedia Britannica vol 4 (15th edition, Chicago: 1995), 978-979.

[13] Mistres of Riversdale, 2.

[14] Friends of Preservation vol. XVI, no. 1.

[15] Mistress of Riversdsale, 3-5.

[16] Ibid., 7.

[17] Ibid., 14-16.

[18] Ibid., 17-19.

[19] Ibid., 19.

[20] Ibid., 19-22.

[21] Today the remains of the Mount Albion plantation are known as Goodwood.

[22] Mistress of Riversdale, 22-24.

[23] Alan Virta, Prince George's County: A Pictorial History (Virginia Beach, Va: Donning Co., 1998), 40.

[24] Ibid., 86.

[25] Mistress of Riversdale, 27-28; on plaster and mortar, see The Riversdale Story,8; for more information on construction, see Riversdale Letter vol. 17, no. 66 and vol. 18, no. 67.

[26] Mistress of Riversdale, 35-38.

[27] Ibid., 135-137.

[28] Ibid.; quote taken from Rosalie Calvert's 17 November 1806 letter to Henri Stier, as cited in Mistress of Riversdale, 152.

[29] For more information on Rosalie Calvert's involvement in planning and maintaining the garden at Riversdale, see Jill F. Reilly, "Rosalie in Her Riversdale Garden" <http://www.lib.umd.edu/RARE/MarylandCollection/
Riversdale/essays/rosaliesgarden.html>.

[30] Letter from Rosalie to her sister, Isabelle van Havre, 20 July 1806, as cited in Mistress of Riversdale, 145.

[31] Ibid., Chapter 5, "Completing the American Chateau," 135-178.

[32] Ibid., 374-378.

[33] Ibid., 387-388

[34] Ibid., 388.

[35] Ibid.; Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, "Riversdale Mansion: History," <http://www.pgparks.com/places/eleganthistoric/
riversdale_history.html>

[36] Ibid.

[37] To find more information about RHS and the mansion's restoration, see Ann Ferguson and Leigh Ryan, "Preserving Riversdale: A Brief History of the Riversdale Historical Society" Riversdale Letter vol. 19, no.1 (Winter 2002): 2-3.

[38] Ibid; Mistress of Riversdale.

[39] Only about 3 percent of properties on the National Register of Historic Places are granted status as National Historic Landmarks. Riversdale had been listed on the National Register since 1973. "Riversdale Designated a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior" Riversdale Letter 16 (Spring 1998): 1-2, includes the quoted passage from the Riversdale nomination by Susan G. Pearl. The historic family papers to which she refers include Rosalie Stier Calvert's letters to her family. Margaret Law Callcott edited a volume of Rosalie's letters, Mistress of Riversdale.

[40] For more information about visiting Riverdale, see <http://www.pgparks.com/places/eleganthistoric/riversdale_visitor.html>.

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