This exhibit reopened this week in Sandy Spring Museum's main exhibit hall. Members of the community and visitors are invited to explore the changes in Olney from its farming past through its role as a rural crossroads to the suburban shopping malls of today.

Exhibit is open all Museum hours: M, W, Th, 9-4, Sat/Sun 12-4.

Admission $5 and $3 for seniors.

Fair Hill Farm’s history parallels the history of the surrounding Olney community.  First an agricultural addition to James Brooke’s huge Charley Forrest estate, Fair Hill stayed in the Brooke family into the 1790s.  Legend has it that owner Richard Brooke, disowned by the Sandy Spring Friends Meeting for serving in the Continental Army and never reinstated, sometimes rides the community as a resentful ghost. 

As the 19th century brought change to rural Montgomery County, farming diminished at Fair Hill and trade and services grew in importance.  Some of the outlying property remained in agricultural production, but in 1800 the house itself housed eight Irish families working at the nearby Canby Pottery.  Pottery owner, Whitson Canby, built the Olney House (today’s Ricciuti’s) across the road.  More community service found a home at Fair Hill in 1819, when the mansion became a Quaker boarding school for girls with Benjamin Hallowell at the helm. The school closed in 1866, and Fair Hill remained a private home into the 20th century.  

Tragedy struck in 1977, when historic Fair Hill caught fire suddenly and burned to the ground. 

Fair Hill continually served this changing community, as a farm, a community service hub, and a residence.  Today, as a shopping center, Fair Hill will meet the needs of a suburban community.

Exhibit curated by Elizabeth Kay and Sharon Ann Holt

Photos by Dave Burgevin

Designed by Andre Valsing and Ryan Patterson, Cenyx Design.

Sandy Spring Museum thanks the Carl M. Freeman Companies and Fair Hill Shopping Center for sponsoring the exhibit.

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