Allison Severance grew up on a farm in Howard County. So when she and her husband, Rick Henry, began looking for a house, her childhood experience helped shape the search: It had to be special; it had to possess charm; and it couldn't be new.
They found it over the mountains in Searchwell Farm, built circa 1800 in the Washington County town of Boonsboro.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the farmhouse, along with five outbuildings, was built of limestone by Germans who migrated south from Pennsylvania through the Cumberland Valley. A 21st-century visit to Searchwell, nestled on 5 acres in the long shadow of South Mountain, is a dance back in time.
"The interior was spectacular," Allison Severance said of a house impeccably maintained by former owners. They purchased the farm in January 2000.
The couple paid $380,000 for the property. The house has four bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, basement fireplace (from the original kitchen), root cellar and attic. Across the expansive front lawn, additional buildings of the same locally quarried limestone include a smokehouse, springhouse, bake house, blacksmith's house and servants' quarters. All are original to the property that once exceeded 500 acres.
The couple spent $40,000 to refurbish the small, two-story servants' house that Severance uses as a studio for her pottery business, Coles Pottery. Here, in about 800 square feet of space, she turns the pieces and biscuit-fires them in an electric kiln before taking them to the large wood-fired kiln in one of the outbuildings at the back of the property.
A rerouting of the original road has put the home's entrance in the back. A center hall, with its wide-planked pine floor painted in a black-and-white diamond pattern, cuts through the original 40-foot-square structure.
A huge dining room takes up one full side of the home, its 40-foot length augmented by 10-foot ceilings. Six-inch crown molding and chair rails are painted blue-gray against white walls. The room's fireplace (one of seven original to the house) has intricate carving. Central to the room is a 20-foot-long, cherry wood dining table on oak trestles at which Severance can accommodate 20 people easily.
"One day, at Christmas and Thanksgiving, this table will be lined with lots of grandchildren," she said.
Antique hutches, deep windowsills and mantels throughout the home display a variety of Severance's pottery, from pitchers to mugs to colorful bowls. One room serves as a gallery.
One of the home's most unusual features is an upstairs pulley system that raises the wall between the master bedroom and the bedroom of the couple's 15-year-old daughter, Libby, to create a larger space used by early settlers for Sunday worship meetings.
An L-shaped addition built in 1840 gave the house its kitchen and a "keeping room."
"This [keeping room] is where you would have kept your guests while you were making them coffee," Severance said.
Warm and inviting, the keeping room now serves as a family area, its huge fireplace one of two that are functional, although Severance has plans to restore the others.
The kitchen exemplifies 19th-century farm life with its wide ceiling beams dripping with dried flowers, herbs and a variety of copper pots and pans. A shining replica of an old wood-burning stove is tucked in the room's far corner behind a cherry island with windowed apothecary drawers filled with loose herbs and grains.
The second floor of the addition houses a glass-enclosed summer porch, "a favorite place to hang and jam out" according to Severance, and the bedroom of the couple's 16-year-old son, Matt.
Fond of entertaining, Severance delights in a house she says is "full of sharing."
Searchwell Farm will be part of the Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage in May.
"I love company," Severance said. "It's always tea time here; the kettle is always on."
Have you found your dream home? Tell us about it. Write to Dream Home, Real Estate Editor, The Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21278, or e-mail us at real.estate@baltsun.com. Find our Dream Home archive at baltimoresun.com/dreamhome. Keyword: COLUMN