Middle Plantation
Middle Plantation, Davidsonville, Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Built circa 1670 for Mareen Duvall (1625-1694) and his first wife, Marie Bouth (1639-1672). Soon after its completion it was said to be, "as luxurious and courtly as any of the manors of the English gentry". Since demolished, the manor was inherited by a junior branch of the Duvall family and in 1959 an historical marker was erected on its site by the Society of Mareen Duvall Descendants....
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Duvall was a French Huguenot from a landed family who in America became a successful businessman and subsequently a substantial landowner and Maryland's Commissioner for the Advancement of Trade. In 1664, he received the second of several patents granted to him for 600-acres, a gifted from the 2nd Lord Baltimore. Duvall named it "Middle Plantation" probably because it lay between the South and Patuxent Rivers:
At Middle Plantation, Mareen Duvall, undoubtedly the most eminent and best beloved of Frenchmen to have settled in Maryland, lived the patriarchal life of a seventeenth-century Maryland planter, merchant, and country gentleman surrounded by his family and servants... His dwelling conformed to the architectural conventions of the 17th century, small and compact as characteristic of colonial homes in that day, whose features were basically Jacobean with a few innovations that had crept into Provincial Maryland.
The clapboard house stood two stories high and contained eight rooms; outbuildings included a milk house, servant's quarters and linen quarters. The kitchen was connected to the main house by a hyphen; and, Duvall's chamber contained a feather bed, eight leather Prussian chairs and a "large looking glass" - a luxury for 17th century colonials. Duvall slept downstairs, as did the caretaker, while upstairs his sons slept in one bedroom and his daughters in another.
Duvall died in 1694, leaving the Middle Plantation to his third wife and widow, Mary, for her lifetime and afterwards to his son, Judge Lewis Duvall. In 1695, Mary remarried Col. Henry Ridgely (1635-1710) who took control of the property despite tensions between Mary and her elder stepsons. By 1700, Mary was living with her husband at Catton - that would become part of Belair Mansion - and conveyed her life interest to her stepson Lewis who moved into the plantation (then evaluated at 844-acres) with his wife Martha Ridgely, her husband's niece. They remained here until 1708 when they moved to South Carolina.
Lewis died in 1724 and his widow and their daughters returned to Middle Plantation. It was finally passed to their youngest daughter, Anne Duvall (1709-1761), who married three times and held it until her death when it became the property of her eldest son, Joseph Way, Jr. For a brief period it was conveyed to Zachariah Hood, Stamp Collector for Maryland, who sold the 711-acre plantation in 1767 for £995 to Nicholas MacCubbin (1710-1783), High Sheriff of Anne Arundel County.
By 1773, Maccubbin had sold off part of the estate, leaving him with the manor and 493-acres. That year, the Middle Plantation was purchased by the brothers Thomas Henry Hall (1744-1788) and William Hall (1748-1815) - great-grandsons of the original owner, Mareen Duvall. Thomas later moved to Washington County and conveyed his share to his younger brother who lived here until his death in 1815. It is generally presumed that it was William Hall who knocked down the original manor and replaced it with a larger house.
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