| Perched on a promontory above the Patuxent, Riverside (1855) may be the only antebellum Sandy Spring home remaining with the original family. Today's occupants,
the Hartges, represent the fifth, sixth, and seventh generations of Riversides' founding Iddings family. Above, Elizabeth Gilpin Stabler Iddings, granddaughter of Isaac Briggs, converses with son Frederick T. Active into old age, at 85 nimble Fred Iddings climbed a tall oak to affix a lightning rod; he worked as a prolific inventor until 90. |
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A game of chess pits Charles Augustus Iddings against wife Elizabeth Gilpin Stabler in the parlor at Riverside. Few early photographs reveal the interiors of old homes. A farmer, Iddings also was a violinist and wood carver. Quakers at the time frowned on the frivolity and wickedness of music. Iddings recorded in his copious journal that he had to retreat to the woods behind Riverside to play his fiddle, which Friends referred to as a "black devil." |