The Hance-Chesley Cemetery
Table of Contents
The Hance-Chesley cemetery is the burial ground for members of two families joined by marriage. We start with Benjamin Hance (1755-1812) and his wife Elizabeth (1766-1823), whose maiden name was Dorsey. Benjamin was the grandson of John Hance (died 1709), an English Quaker who arrived in Maryland 1659 and settled north of Parkers Creek.

Map by Exa Marmee Grubb, 2024. Drawings by Barbara Grosvenor, 1996. Several headstones display the symbols shown in Grosvenor’s drawing. Students of gravestone art associate the obelisk with a generalized 19th century American interest in Egypt, also noting that the shape points toward heaven. The weeping willow is said to represent sadness at the death of a loved one; some commentators note the willow’s presence in the Bible and describe the tree as a symbol of renewed life and immortality. The rose is said to stand for love and beauty.
Hance graves
By the time of Elizabeth Hance’s death in 1823, this branch of the family owned upwards of 800 acres of land that extended from the Bay to the cemetery and beyond, to the west and south. In the 1830s, Benjamin and Elizabeth’s son Young Dorsey “Y.D.” Hance (1791-1855) and his family acquired and moved to a large farm on the Patuxent River, called the Taney Place. In 1777, well before the Hance’s move, that property was the birthplace of Roger Brooke Taney, later Chief Justice of the United States and the writer of the majority opinion in the infamous Dred Scott case.
Y.D. married (in succession) the sisters Henrietta (1794-1821) and Eloise Chesley (1798-1849). Henrietta died before the move to the Taney Place, and was buried in this cemetery where, years later, she would be joined by her two brothers, John R.E. Chesley (1792-1853) and James A. Chesley (1802-1868), as well as by her former husband, Y.D. Hance, and her sister Eloise. We assume that the multiple family connections motivated the family, then at the Taney Place, to bury Y.D. and Eloise at this location.

In Memory of Benjamin Hance
Died March 13, 1812
Aged 57 years

In Memory of Elizabeth
Wife of Benjamin Hance
Died Sept. 20th, 1823,
in the 57th year of her age
Footstone: E.H.

Young D. Hance
Died Dec. 1, 1855
In the 64th year of his age.
Amid all the troubles and temptations of life, the deceased ever clung to the Cross of Christ, as the steel anchor of his hope. An affectionate husband, an indulgent and fond father, a hospitable and kind neighbor, may his posterity imitate his virtues and follow him as far as he followed Christ.
Footstone: Y.D.H.
Stone maker: A. Gaddess, Balt.

In Memory of Henrietta M. Hance
Wife of Young D. Hance
& daughter of Thos & Henrietta Chesley
Died Dec. 11 [or 14] 1821
aged 27 years 6 mos. 8 days
The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them. Prov 11.6
Stone maker: Meridith, Maker, Balt.

In Memory of E.A. Hance
Wife of Young D. Hance
& daughter of Thos & Henrietta Chesley
Died April 9th, 1849
Aged 50 years 9 mos. and 15 da.
“Rest in peace and enter into joy of my Lord” Prov. 3 C. 24 v.
Footstone: E.A.H.
Another member of the Hance family buried in this cemetery is John Hance (1796-1859). Genealogical sources differ about his parentage: some state that his father was Benjamin (1755-1812), while the family source we have relied upon states that his father was Benjamin’s brother Elisha Hance (died 1812 to 1816). All sources agree that John was referred to as Captain, respecting his militia service in the War of 1812, and that he later served as the lighthouse keeper at Cove Point, located on the Bay about 12 miles to the south. John Hance’s family turns up in the census for this Parkers Creek neighborhood in 1860, the year after John’s death.

John Hance
Born Oct. 15th, 1796
Died Feb. 18th, 1859
Aged 62 yrs. 4 mo. and 3 days
Footstone: J.H.
Not buried here are some of John Hance’s descendants who kept to the Quaker faith and followed its abolitionist teachings. Several of these individuals, including one of Benjamin and Elizabeth Hance’s daughters, moved to Ohio and New York state in the first decades of the 19th century.
Forthcoming: Webpage with more information about the Hance family and their landholdings in this area.
Gravestones made in Baltimore
We believe that all the gravestones in the cemetery were made in Baltimore and transported by freight schooner or steamboat, probably to the landing at Governors Run. Maker’s marks can be seen on two stones: Henrietta M. Hance (died 1821), Merideth, Maker, Balt.; Young D. Hance (died 1855), A. Gaddess, Balt. Both makers are listed in the 1831 edition of Matchett’s Baltimore City Director[y], where their names are spelled Meredith and Gaddes.

Chesley graves
This cemetery also includes the graves of four Chesley sisters and brothers, including Henrietta and Eloise, introduced above, the wives (in succession) of Y.D. Hance. Their brothers are John R.E. and James A. Chesley.
John Reeder Egan Chesley (1792-1853) was a lawyer who first practiced in Washington DC and later in Calvert County. The 1830 census lists John R.E. Chesley as the head of a household that included his wife and possibly his brother, James A. Chesley, along with five enslaved individuals, including two with ages reported to be greater than 100. We have not been able to identify the specific location. In the 1820s and 1830s, John R.E. Chesley was active in politics and newspapers carried his advertisements for legal services, e.g., as administrator of estates. By the time of the 1840 census, however, we found no listing for John, nor any further advertisements. In 1850, three years before his death, the census lists him as a member of the household headed by his brother James. One possible explanation for John’s apparent change of circumstances is offered by news accounts from 1885, 32 years after his death. These stories covered the criminal trial of John’s grandnephew, Thomas C. Hance. Hance’s attorneys presented an insanity defense, citing prior cases in the family, including that of John R.E. Chesley, whose final years were described by one witness as those of a “raving maniac.”
Although the Chesley family had been established in Calvert County since the early 1700s, James Alexander Chesley (1802-1863) attended the University of Georgia, then received his M.D. degree from the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine in 1823. In 1824, he set up a practice in Georgia but, by 1825, he had returned to the Baltimore where he married his first wife, Catherine Ann Yates. After about one year in Hagerstown, James moved his practice to Anne Arundel County where Catherine passed away. Soon, he returned to Calvert County where he may have moved in with his brother John R.E. Chesley.
In 1835, James A. Chesley married Rebecca Somervell Brooke (1814-1882) in Baltimore. Rebecca’s sisters also married into Calvert County families; for example, Sarah Hannah Brooke (1827-1912) married George Washington Dorsey (1818-1901), another physician who owned a large farm less than a mile south of the cemetery. Rebecca outlived her husband by nearly twenty years and was buried in a Roman Catholic cemetery in St. Mary’s County. Our research has not turned up information to account for this outcome.
In 1838, at about the time Y.D. Hance and his second wife, Eloise, moved to the Taney Place on the Patuxent, the couple sold James A. Chesley (Eloise’s brother) 336 acres of land. In 1858, after Y.D.’s death, Chesley purchased an adjoining parcel of 121.25 acres from Y.D.’s son John A.C. Hance. Rebecca inherited the 457 acres after James’s death. Octavius Bowen bought the land after Rebecca’s death in 1882.
Another land sale by John A.C. Hance is very relevant to the cemetery. In 1864, John T. Chambers purchased 254 acres, just north of the Chesley’s 457 acres, and the Chambers deed reserved from the tract “33 square perches [about 0.2 acres] for the burial ground of the heirs of Y.D. Hance.”
James A. Chesley was a farmer as well as a physician. His success in this undertaking received mention in an 1851 Baltimore Sun report from the Fourth Annual Agricultural Exhibition and Cattle Show of the Maryland State Agricultural Society. Here are the prizes awarded in the tobacco category: “first premium to Wm. Cress; second premium to James A. Chesley.” Enslaved labor performed the work on Chesley’s farm. The federal census slave schedule for 1850, when Chelsey held 336 acres, lists 7 enslaved individuals. By 1860, when the farm reached the size of 457 acres, the count of the enslaved reached 24.

In Memory of Jno. R. E. Chesley
son of Thomas and Henrietta Chesley
Died Sept. 10th, 1853,
aged 61 yrs. 3 mo. 25 da.
“For all shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace”
Footstone: J.R.E.C.

To the memory of Dr. James A. Chesley
Son of Thos. & Henrietta R. Chesley
Born June 20, 1802,
Died April 9, 1863
“Rest in Peace.”
“And enter into the joy of thy Lord.”
Footstone: J.A.C.
Forthcoming: Webpage with more information about the Chesley family.
Brochure about the cemetery first produced in 1996, last updated in 2017. The cemetery was refurbished by the Calvert County Garden Club in 1994, and was maintained in the early 2000s (including repairs to broken stones) by ACLT volunteers led by Susan Curley.