Miller House Museum acquires artifacts that made an 1800s house a home

The Miller House in downtown Hagerstown is the headquarters of the Washington County Historical Society.

Steadfast Homestead

Miller House Museum acquires artifacts that made an 1800s house a home

Written by Paulette Lee

No electricity, no natural gas. No air conditioning, no window screens. No indoor plumbing. No radio, no TV, and definitely no internet.

Making a house a home in the 1800s might seem a hardship to us today, and even back then it had its challenges. However, as in most eras, if people had the financial means, home life was not only tolerable, but it could be gracious.

So it was for the well-to-do families who lived in what is now known as the Miller House Museum, home to the Washington County Historical

Society. The stately brick neoclassical townhouse sits at 135 W. Washington

St. along what used to be called

“Lawyers’ Row” in Hagerstown, because of its proximity to the courthouse.

The original site for the Bell family of potters in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the house was built in 1825 by William Price, a prominent

Hagerstown attorney who served in the Maryland legislature and was appointed U.S. District Attorney by

President Abraham Lincoln. In 1844,

Price sold the home to the Neill family who lived there for three generations, and then, in 1912, the property was purchased by local physician Dr.

Victor Davis Miller Jr. and his wife.

The Millers expanded the home a few years later to accommodate the doctor’s medical practice, and eventually their heirs donated the building to the historical society in 1966, more than 50 years after the society was formed.

The rooms on the first level at the front of the house, which opens to

Washington Street, were used by

Price as his law office and a reception room, “for the ladies who weren’t part of the business discussions,” said Washington County Historical

Society Executive Director Robyn

Sumner. The museum still has the doors that were closed between the two rooms, but they remain in storage, since the rooms are now used for members only, as well as open-to-

Washington County Historical Society Executive Director Robyn Sumner explains the rather ingenious way baked goods were stored when there was no refrigeration and no screens on windows that had to be kept open in warmer weather. If flies got in while the doors were open, they could get out through the holes on the inside of the tin door panels, but they couldn’t get in when the doors were closed because the panels had pierced openings on the outside that would cut their wings. In the background, a sideboard holds a candle mold on the top shelf. From Belinda Springs Farm, an early 19th-century resort, this sideboard is believed to be the oldest piece of furniture in Washington County. In the foreground on the pine kitchen table are kitchen and dining implements, including a sugar cone, paper fan, spice container, and mortar and pestle. The cookie presses are often used in the Miller House’s free, weekly “Family Fun Activities” (adults must accompany children), from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. On the right are a (nonworking) fireplace for cooking and an iron stove from J.R. Jones Foundry in Hagerstown.

Made of pine (popular because it was inexpensive and readily available), the dough box, when closed, trapped heat and facilitated yeast action, and the top could be used for kneading dough.

FACTS ABOUT THE MILLER HOUSE

•William Price, a prominent attorney in Hagerstown, built the Miller House in 1825.

•The Miller House was added to the National Register of

Historic Places in 1976.

•The home contains more than thirty rooms, from the basement to the attic.

•The town house features sixover-six windows, with six panes of glass in both the upper and lower sash; this is typical of

Federal-style townhouses.

•The parlor features two fireplaces made of Potomac marble, a mixture of limestone and quartz;

Potomac marble was a favorite building material of Benjamin

Latrobe, designer of the U.S.

Capitol building and second

Architect of the Capitol.

•An elegant cantilevered staircase reaches from the foyer to the attic.

•An addition to the town house was added after 1844, used as attorney and physician offices.

•The Neill family installed the Miller House’s first telephone in 1904.

Sumner shows how the foot doorbell placed at the Miller House’s side main door would be placed under the rug in the entry, ringing when it was stepped on so people downstairs could hear that someone entered the building.

the-public gatherings, presentations and special events. The actual entrance to the home, though, was on the side, opening into a foyer, to the left of which is a formal dining room that continues into the heart of every home: the kitchen. Today, the kitchen is a combination of modern conveniences and 19th-century artifacts that reveal a great deal about what it was like to be at home long ago.

More items illustrative of home life in early 19th-century Washington County are being prepared as part of an upcoming exhibit of recent donations from the California descendants of Michael Seibert of Clear Spring. Included among the artifacts will be a Steinsteffer tall case (“grandfather”) clock, and hundreds of documents, including an atypical family Bible containing slaves’ names.

Sugar came in a large cylindrical cone for easier transport. Guests could tell the degree to which they were held in the hostess’ esteem by the size of the piece of sugar she clipped off for them at the dining table. It was a servant’s job (there’s no determination as to whether the household had slaves in the early to mid-1800s) to stand at the table, waving a paper fan to keep away flies and other pests that entered the room from open windows. Imported spices were expensive, so they were kept in the small drawers, and then ground by hand with a mortar and pestle.

Examples of the famed “Shenandoahstyle” pottery, perfected by Peter Bell and his sons in the 19th century, are on display upstairs in the Miller House.