George W. and Hannah Brooke Dorsey: landowners, farm family, and physician
Table of Contents
George Washington Dorsey, 1818-1901, & Sarah Hannah Brooke Dorsey, 1827-1912
George Washington Dorsey (1818-1901) was a physician and farmer who owned several properties in central Calvert County, including his home farm on a stream called Governors Run in Port Republic, Maryland, just south of today’s Scientists’ Cliffs community.
George W. Dorsey was married twice. His first wife was Martha Coberth (1826-1840), who was 14 years old when they married and died within a year; she is buried in the Coberth family cemetery in St. Leonard, Maryland. [endnote 1] Dorsey and his second wife, Sarah Hannah Brooke Dorsey (1827-1912), usually called Hannah, lived in the house that is still standing on their former farm, on a privately owned segment not accessible to the public.
Hannah Dorsey was descended from the prominent seventeenth-century settler Robert Brooke. George and Hannah Dorsey’s great-grandson Thomas “Tommy” Turner (1902-2002, also a physician) reminisced about these family connections in his autobiography.
Calvert was organized as a county in 1654 with Robert Brooke as “Commander.” . . . My paternal great-grandmother, Hannah Brooke Dorsey, lived near the cliffs of Calvert, and was a descendant of Robert Brooke. A little couplet was written about her and handed down in the family: “Doctor Dorsey was the smartest fisherman e’re baited a hook, he got in the Royal Family by marrying Hannah Brooke!” [endnote 2]
Hannah’s sister Rebecca and Rebecca’s husband James A. Chesley lived on the next farm to the north from about the 1830s to the 1860s. Meanwhile, in 1881, Hannah and another sister, Anne Harriet Brooke Broome, sponsored a pair of stained glass windows in Christ Church (Episcopal), Port Republic, Maryland, dedicated to their parents and “brothers and sisters gone before.”
Brooke family commemorative window at Christ Church (Episcopal), Port Republic, Maryland, provided in 1881 by the sisters Anne Harriet Brooke Broome and Sarah Hannah Brooke Dorsey.
George W. Dorsey wanted to be sure that Hannah was cared for after his death. Their two-story house figures in an 1896 codicil to George W. Dorsey’s will, registered in 1901.
Great-grandson Tommy Turner recalled visiting that house as a boy, when his widowed great-grandmother was still alive and in the care of “a colored woman who had been born a slave.” [endnote 3]
About the land
In 1820, James Dorsey (ca. 1776-1833) bought the core segment of this Dorsey property, deeded as 262 acres. [endnote 4] At James Dorsey’s death, this tract passed to his son, George W. Dorsey. In 1843, George W. Dorsey bought an adjacent 82 acres from Charles M. Frazier (SS 01/70), for a total of 344 acres. The 1860 Agricultural Census cited in the section About the Farm, below, reports a total of 382 acres, “close enough” given the vagaries of many early- and mid-19th century surveys.
Headstone for a Dorsey grave in the family graveyard on the former Dorsey farm, Port Republic, Maryland. Wayne Neeld’s 1976-1977 documentation for the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (MIHP) CT-167 report identifies this as the grave of James B. Dorsey (1776-1833). [endnote 5]
Later records indicate that the family–mainly George W. Dorsey, his brother, William P. Dorsey (1826-1881), and George’s son, William A. Dorsey (1852-1931)–acquired additional tracts of land, including nearby tracts not described on this webpage. A total of 450 acres is reported in a 1939 deed that post-dates the deaths of the three men and documents the sale of an equity share in the land by one set of heirs to another (AAH 40/473). Our research, however, has not turned up land records that account for this one-hundred-acre increase between the 1850s and 1939. [endnote 6]
Map of the Dorsey property, 1860s-1960s
The Parkers Creek Heritage Trail (PCHT) team has not found definitive information about the extent and boundaries of the land formerly owned by George W. Dorsey and other members of this branch of the family. Our mapping should be understood as provisional.
Tract C. We believe that most of this tract consists of James Dorsey’s 1820 purchase from Thomas Jenkins of Indiana, who had acquired the land from James Mackall Wilson in 1802. It is described in the 1802 deed as containing 262 acres and “on the Northernmost side of the whole tract of land [colonial-era land patent] called Lower Bennett.” [endnote 7] There may have been post-1820 additions and/or boundary adjustments. This tract is in the Governors Run watershed. Our mapping of tract C represents about 250 acres. About 150 acres are owned today by ACLT.
Tract D. 82-acre tract that George W. Dorsey bought from Charles M. Frazier in 1843. Much of the southern boundary follows the routing of the former road to the Governors Run landing, one of at least two roads that connected local farmers to steamboats and other freight vessels. This winding road was replaced at some point after World War II by the relatively straight road that serves travelers today. This tract is in the Governors Run watershed. Its eastern “toe” was subdivided beginning in the 1950s and is now the Governors Run community. The remainder of the tract now belongs to the ACLT.
Tract A. In 1943, this 40-acre tract was sold by Dorsey descendants to the African American farm couple Clarence and Henrietta Commodore. Most or all this tract is in the Parkers Creek watershed. The PCHT team has not identified how or when this land was acquired by the Dorseys.
Tract B. Today, this tract consists of at least three subdivided parcels. Most or all this tract is in the Parkers Creek watershed. The PCHT team has not traced the ownership history and our mapping of this tract as once belonging to the Dorseys is speculative.
About the farm and the Agricultural Census
The archaeologist James G. Gibb used the George W. Dorsey farm as an illustrative example in an article about the federal agricultural census, data that had been collected and archived for 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880. [endnote 8] Gibb’s snapshot of the Dorsey farm in 1850 also included data from the separate federal census of Slave Inhabitants, described in the following section. Here’s what Gibb wrote:
George W. and Sarah H. Dorsey owned a farm in the Port Republic area of the First [Election] District in 1850. A physician by training, George and his wife managed 275 acres of improved farmland [and more than 100 acres of unimproved land] which they planted with the help of 14 slaves (at least half of whom were children). Their farm was valued at $9,000, employed $300 worth of machinery and equipment, and produced 14,000 pounds of tobacco, 40 bushels of wheat, 900 bushels of maize (Indian corn) and no oats. Their wheat and oat crops are inconsiderable as both fall below the averages of 86 and 25 bushels, respectively, for the district. On the other hand, their farm is considerably larger and more valuable than most of the neighboring farms, and their investment in machinery is accordingly greater. Both their tobacco and maize crops fall outside of, and on the high side of the 67 percent range. They are large-scale, well-to-do planters, focusing on tobacco (a cash crop) and maize (an important food item, particularly given the number of enslaved farm hands), while virtually ignoring other grains. [endnote 9]
Reproduced below is part of the Agricultural Schedule (census) ledger page for 1860 that includes information about the Dorsey farm at that date. As the caption indicates, the most striking change from 1850 is the increase in tobacco and wheat production.
In 1860, the 382-acre farm (250 acres improved, i.e., tilled for crops or pasture; 132 acres unimproved) was valued at $9,550 [1850: $9,000], and employed $400 worth of machinery and equipment [1850: $300]. The farm produced tobacco, 43,000 pounds [1850: 14,000]; wheat, 500 bushels [1850: 40]; maize (Indian corn), 800 bushels [1850: 900]; and oats, 200 bushels [1850: 0].
Enslaved laborers on the farm and the federal census of Slave Inhabitants
In 1850 and 1860, the main U.S. decennial census pages are labeled Free Inhabitants, and the enumerations included Free Blacks (as they were called at the time). Meanwhile, enslaved individuals were recorded separately in what is often called the slave schedule, where the printed pages are labeled Slave Inhabitants. The slave schedules are organized by the names of owners and (for the most part) the names of enslaved persons are not provided. However, the listings provide the enslaved individual’s age, gender, and color (“B” for Black and “M” for mulatto).
James Gibb’s description of the Dorsey farm in 1850, quoted above, reports the presence of “14 slaves (at least half of whom were children).” The illustration below provides the information for the 24 individuals counted in 1860, and reports that Dorsey provided 5 dwellings for them. Here’s a summary by age range:
- 60-80, 2 men
- 30-40, 3 men, 2 women
- 12-24, 5 men, 4 women
- 8 and younger, 4 male, 4 female
The 1860 Census of Slave Inhabitants enumeration for George W. Dorsey runs across two pages in the census ledger book. The count of 5 dwellings for the enslaved is in column 9.
Experiment with flue-curing tobacco
The historic preservation specialist Wayne Neeld described one of Dorsey’s tobacco barns in his 1977 report for the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties, slightly edited for this webpage. This barn still stands on private land, not accessible to the public:
- There are two modern tobacco barns and, on the crest of a hill, a third tobacco house which is of great historic interest. With its sheds, this barn measures 36×68 feet overall. The frame of the main block, however, is a standard 24×40-foot (ten tobacco-hanging “rooms”) post-and-beam structure. The members of this frame are hewn and joined together via mortise-and-tenon joints secured by trunnels. This frame has been placed upon 3-foot brick piers and the floor has been dug out into a pit so that there is a distance of 4 feet between the sills and the earth below. The present owner says that his father told him that this was done in order to accommodate a flue-curing apparatus.
- There is other evidence that the main block was an airtight barn. On all but the north wall, pieces of siding remain which reveal that the building was covered with heavy vertical siding. Each board was approximately 1 inch thick, 9 inches wide, and 13 feet long (eaves-sill). The boards are rabbeted on the edges for half-lapping (vertical shiplap). Such siding is obviously designed to prevent any flow of air. however, this special siding does not appear to be weathered. [endnote 10]
Neeld concludes the barn was constructed, at the latest, during the final third of the 19th century, a period when a few Southern Maryland farmers experimented with flue-curing as an alternate to the traditional air curing favored in the region. Flue-curing barns apply warm air to the tobacco from a furnace and a system of flues not unlike those used to force hot air through a home.
George W. Dorsey figures in this story in an important way. When the archaeologists James Gibb, Patricia McGuire, and Julia King studied Calvert’s experiment with flue curing, they found an 1861 patent for a flue curing system submitted by two men from Baltimore and George W. Dorsey of Port Republic (U.S. Patent 32,610).
Julia King wrote that by 1867, Dorsey was promoting his device, writing in the Maryland Farmer that he had been using the furnace “with entire satisfaction, increasing greatly the value of the tobacco cured by it.” [endnote 11] The furnace and flues were manufactured in Baltimore and advertised for sale at prices ranging from $110 to $150, a very high price for Southern Maryland tobacco farmers at the time. King writes that “even the wealthiest farmers would have been hard pressed to afford the flue.” The use of the device was short-lived, and it is last mentioned in the Maryland Farmer in 1873.
Dorsey land transfers and sales from 1860 to 1960
This section presents a simplified description of key land sales by the Dorseys. The earliest examples for which we found records date from the mid- and late-19th century and include complex interfamilial allocations in 1860 (WD & DK 2/339) and 1883 (SS 1/72).
Leaping ahead to 1939, decades after the death of George W. Dorsey (1818-1901), we found records for several transactions, including the trio described here. The first took place in April 1939, when George W. Dorsey’s remaining heirs sorted out their mutual equity interests in the land near Governors Run (AAH 40/473). In November 1939, what we call tract C on our map was subdivided and two large sections were sold. Flippo and Annie Gravatt purchased about 150 acres (AAH 43/389). Of this land, the 35-acre bayside section became part of the Scientists’ Cliffs community. Most of the remainder, about 110 acres, was kept in an undeveloped state and, after the Gravatts died, was acquired by the ACLT in 1987. This segment is now traversed by the ACLT’s East Loop hiking trail. Meanwhile, in the third transaction, also in November 1939, Philip P. and Mattie Weems purchased about 100 acres (AAH 43/391). In recent years, this privately owned parcel was called Eastview Farm.
In 1943, the Dorsey heirs sold tract A to Clarence and Henrietta Commodore. Recent surveys indicate that this parcel comprised more than 40 acres. In 2013, the ACLT purchased about 36 acres from the Commodore heirs, and soon blazed a hiking trail named for the trust’s past president, Karen Edgecombe.
Meanwhile, the segment of land that we identify as tract D was held by members of the Dorsey family until 1960. Ownership passed back and forth in the family: here’s a simplified account. In 1893, George W. Dorsey (1818-1901) sold the land to his son William A. Dorsey (TBT 02/119). William A. Dorsey died in 1931. For a period, the land was held by a group of family members, and in 1948, it was transferred to George W. Dorsey (1887-1962), William A. Dorsey’s son. After this second George W. Dorsey’s sale of the land in 1960, most of the bayside section was subdivided to form the community of Governors Run, while a succession of owners held the undeveloped section to the west. The ACLT bought the western 78 acres in 2021. It is now transected by the ACLT’s Oriole hiking trail.
Postscript: the Cliffs Hotel in Governors Run in the 1940s and 1950s
The Governors Run community was the site for a steamboat landing from at least the time of the Civil War. At first, small craft carried goods and passengers from shore to steamboats anchored in deeper water. In the 1870s, a wharf was built. Steamboat service continued until the early 1930s. (The Parkers Creek Heritage Trail has a webpage devoted to steamboats under construction.)
As our map indicates, we believe that the Dorsey property included the landing. This postscript, however, concerns the Dorsey-owned hotel at the site. We have not determined when this business got its start, but it turns up in promotional newspaper in stories in the 1940s, when George W. Dorsey (1887-1962) was the owner. By this time, steamboat service had ceased, and Governors Run had evolved into a recreational location, attracting beachgoers and fishermen who rented skiffs or bought seats on fishing-party boats for a day on the Bay.
Excerpts from a promotional article about the Cliffs Hotel at Governors Run, Calvert Independent, 7 June 1945, p.1.
In March 1944, a chatty column in the Calvert Journal cited George W. Dorsey “for answering our request of last week in this column for information as to how Governor’s Run got its name.”
- This is the interesting way Mr. Dorsey tells it: “It seems the First Governor of Maryland had established a beach-head about this point, and had wandered some distance up the trail, probably inspecting this part of his domain, or looking for a mint patch when he was approached by an attendant who said softly, ‘Don’t look now, your Excellency, but I think we are being followed.’ On assurance that Indians were near at hand, the Honorable Gent, it’s said, made a very hasty and successful embarkation to a waiting ship. The speed made, it is said, was noteworthy, hence the name ‘Governor’s Run.’ This is the story that was told me.” [endnote 12]
The next week’s paper quoted another (unnamed) source with an alternate legend. But the columnist declared that he preferred Dorsey’s “more picturesque version.”
The Cliffs Hotel at the end of Governors Run Road, seen from the fishing pier, 1955. From a private collection.
Endnotes
1. Find-a-Grave entry for Martha Coberth Dorsey, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/110304925/martha-dorsey, consulted 30 March 2025.
2. Turner, Thomas B., Part of Medicine, Part of Me: Musings of a Johns Hopkins Dean, [Johns Hopkins Medical School], 1981, p. 3.
3. ACLT interview, September 22, 1996.
4. This information is from secondary sources, including Maryland Old Graveyards, by Jerry and Mildred O’Brien and Merle L. Gibbons, 1986.
5. Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (MIHP) CT-167, pdf-page 15, https://apps.mht.maryland.gov/mihp/MIHPCard.aspx?MIHPNo=CT-167, consulted 12 March 2025. At least one family genealogist has identified this headstone as that of James Dorsey’s son Robert L. Dorsey (George W. Dorsey’s brother) and suggests that a footstone at the site may mark James B. Dorsey’s grave. (Vivian Gray, Early Tombstones of Calvert County, 1960, pp. 17-18, cited in the Find-a-Grave.com entry for James B. Dorsey; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/96565097/james-b-dorsey, consulted 12 March 2025.)
6. The increase in acreage may be explained by an entry in Ailene Hutchins’s 1982 book Calvert County, Maryland: Early Land Records that describes William P. Dorsey’s 1866 purchase of land from Octavius Bowen, although no acreage is specified (p. 132). By that year, Bowen had moved to land just north of the Dorseys, and the sale of a portion of this newly acquired property would be a good fit. The deed survey Hutchins quotes, however, suggests that William P. Dorsey may have purchased part of Bowen’s prior farm, about a mile distant.
7. From a transcription by Edna Lines, for the Daughters of the American Revolution, in the collections of the First Christian Church, Baltimore, Maryland, accessed via FamilySearch.org.
8. At this writing, the Agricultural Schedule census is only available on microfilm. For more information, see the National Archives web page: https://www.archives.gov/research/census/nonpopulation.
9. Gibb, James G. “Using Calvert County’s Agricultural Censuses:1850-1880,” Calvert Historian, Winter 1990, pp. 9 ff.
10. Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (MIHP) CT-167, op. cit., pp. 2-3 (pdf-pages 9-10).
11. King, Julia A. “Tobacco, Innovation, and Economic Persistence in Nineteenth-Century Southern Maryland,” Agricultural History, vol. 71, no. 2, 1997, pp. 207–36. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3744247. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.
