Fair Hill Quaker school, once the home of Richard Brooke and Whitson Canby's Irish potters, operated almost continuously from 1819 to 1865, when the Civil War forced its closure. "Cannonading on the Potomac...would rattle the windows," recalled teacher Mary Coffin Brooke. "When droves of cattle were driven past the house, on their way to our neighboring farmers to be fattened for the army, the bellowing of the cattle, the galloping of the twenty horsemen in charge, and the barking of dogs bringing in strays, made a pandemonium that rendered sleep impossible." One night General Joseph Hooker's Union soldiers camped on the grounds, fed their campfires with the rails fencing an 80-acre field, and departed next day with Fair Hill's four-horse team and farm wagon.

Honoring a "fighting Quaker," Allan Brooke and members of the Daughters of the American Revolution place a stone at the grave of Revolutionary War Col. Richard Brooke, located where Olney Village Mart now stands. The ardent patriot's breach of the Quaker tenet of non-violence caused him to be read out of Meeting--fate of many fighting Quakers. The stone marker vanished during World War II and was later rediscovered and placed with the Sandy Spring Museum.