The geographic name “Sandy Spring” first appears in Quaker records of the 1750s but the village itself came surprisingly late. In 1817 Quakers erected their brick Meeting House; simultaneously a Sandy Spring Post Office opened with James P. Stabler as postmaster. Two years later Stabler and Caleb Bentley opened a general store at the site of today’s Sandy Spring Store and built a blacksmith shop nearby, thus Sandy Spring village was born.
During this period Anglicans and other settlers were taking up lands among the Quakers. Slaves acquired their freedom and worked their own or others’ farms. Together, across the centuries, these neighbors interacted to spin the distinctive web of relationships and institutions that define today’s Sandy Spring – an admittedly peculiar entity often referred to as “a state of mind.”