Northernmost of Sandy Spring's many villages, Unity and Sunshine are also the most rural. Separated by only a half-mile, their residents probably saw themselves two centuries ago as part of older Unity. Both were oriented toward the markets of Baltimore, Annapolis, and nearby Triadelphia. Unity, once a small commercial hub and substantial village, today is soothingly residential, disturbed only by its increasing traffic flow.

The growth of Unity parallels that of Brookeville, with Griffith's 1794 map showing a "Unity T." While Brookeville was a planned village, however, Unity grew naturally, along the dirt road connecting Rockville and Annapolis. Drovers herding cattle and sheep to Annapolis lodged at Unity's tavern. By 1806 Unity was officially established by the Legislature, and by 1824 it had a post office, store, smithy, wheelwright, and half a dozen houses.

Sunshine's sense of identity probably emerged after the Civil War, when stores and shops opened. In 1870 it captured the Unity post office in the first of several such switches. Soon came an undertaker. Never populous, Sunshine lacked a public school, its students walking to Unity's two-roomer. But Sunshine is a survivor: It now boasts the Brookeville post office in its tiny "mall."

Ridgely's Sunshine General Store stands open for business c.1922. On the porch are owner Thomas A. Ridgely, daughter Marguerite, and cousin George, an employee. The pumps at left dispensed kerosene and gasoline. Located where the shopping strip now stands, Ridgely's sold groceries, fresh meats, ready made clothing, livestock feed, fertilizers--anything from penny candy and nickel ice cream cones to farm tractors.

The Unity home Bleakwood, built in 1877, is prized architecturally for its Victorian features in vernacular farm-house form: Three bays with central passage and cross-gable roof with projecting cross-gable, mingled with Victorian details such as champfered columns, spindlework porch details, flat-sawn ladder porch railing, narrow two-over-two gib Victorian windows, and decorative pressed-shingle tin roof. Bleakwood faces the Damascus Road just west of "downtown" Unity.

Pigs enjoyed personalized attention on Rob Brown's tidy Sunshine farm. The systematic agrarian farmed his 90 acres in ten-acre fields, each in a five-year rotation of hay, pasture, wheat, barley, and corn.

Half Cherokee and half white, Maryland slave Harriett Gaither was purchased by John Henry Howard for $200 and bore their twelve children.