Few Sandy Spring homes claim the distinctions of Harewood: fountainhead of the redoubtable Stabler family, Sandy Spring post office in the early 1800s, maiden home office of the Insurance Company, residence of Secretary of State and Mrs. Dean Acheson. In 1794 William and Deborah Pleasants Stabler moved into the log tobacco barn that still forms the skeleton of Harewood. Here their son Edward made his exquisite seals and experimented in agriculture.

Builder of Harewood, William Stabler (1767-1806) and wife Deborah founded the influential Stabler family in Sandy Spring. Deborah was known to stand her ground: When she and William were moving with their belongings from Leesburg, Virginia, a one-ton mounting stone fell off White's Ferry into the Potomac. The ferryman balked at recovering it, and Deborah refused to pay until the stone was winched from the river. It now sits beside a hitching rail at the Sandy Spring Museum.