When the capital moved to Annapolis in 1695, the chief reason for the existence of St. Mary's City vanished. County courts continued meeting here until 1708 but after that, most buildings were abandoned and rapidly decayed. Farmers soon began planting tobacco and corn where houses and inns once stood. St. Mary's remained farmland for nearly three centuries afterward. By the 1750s, two men—William Deacon and William Hicks—owned all the land of the old city. John Mackall purchased the property from Hicks in 1774 and created a plantation that eventually grew to 1,715 acres. The building you are standing in is the only survivor of this 18th-century plantation.
Dr. John Mackall Brome inherited most of the property in 1840 and over the next two decades, developed one of the largest plantations in Southern Maryland. Enslaved African Americans worked its fields growing wheat, corn, and tobacco; and raising livestock. After slavery ended in 1864, Brome turned to tenant labor. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to bring a railroad to St. Mary's City. By 1912, twenty-five years after Dr. Brome's death, all but 250 acres of the home plantation was sold to others.
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