The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 155

iHMM III I 'i vV InET 1 An old lithograph of Steuart Hall, seat of an estate which a century ago fronted on West Baltimore street in the area occupied today by Bon Secours Hospital The house later became a boys' school. In the accompanying article Mr. Steuart tells of the area as it was long ago. I I Remember 1 The Steuart Hill Colorful Past A rea Mr. Steuart By William Calvert Steuart HE Steuart Hill I knew as a boy in the I don't think Monroe street even existed then.

It must have been an estate of considerable size, comparable to a park. It extended westward to Gwynns Falls and was about as long as it was wide. The manor seemed destined somehow not to go by the name the Old General gave it. First, his neighbors adopted their own name, Steuart Hill. Other sections of the property became known as Steuart's Woods, Steuart's Plain.

LATER these names gave way, rather dramatically, to other names. The Old General's son, also named George Hume Steuart, was a West Point graduate who became, at the age of 33, a Confederate general. Because of this, and also because of the Old General's outspoken sympathies for the Southern cause, the Steuart manor was confiscated for use by Union troops during the Civil War. Steuart's Woods, accommodating men of the 17th Massachusetts, became known as Camp Andrew. Hard by Camp Andrew was a general military hospital known as Camp Jarvis.

The manor house was used as a regimental headquarters. Throughout the manor grounds were ten other hospital installations for the Union sick and wounded. During the war Union soldiers dug a number of long, deep trenches for possible defense of the position. Twenty-five years after the war, when I was a small boy who loved to play in that area, the trenches were still to be seen. They were covered with grass, but they were still deep and clearly defined.

Histories of the Old General and the Young General are somewhat sketchy in the post-Civil War years. The old gentleman went abroad for a number of years, I believe. As far as I know, the West Baltimore property was never returned to him. The Young General lies buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. The old manor became a boys' school after the war, and it was known as Steuart Hall.

That is the use to which the building and grounds were being put when the lithograph reproduced above, executed sometime in the 1870's, was I didn't begin playing in this area until 10 or 15 years later, but I can tell you that the horsecar passing by is one of the Red Line. It was one of several lines (the others being the Green, Yellow, Blue and operated by the City Passenger Railway. The Red Line ran from Gay street out to the end of West Baltimore street. The terminal car barn (which still stands) is only a few blocks west of the site pictured. StEUART'S HILL was a favorite spot for boys in the 1880's and 1890's.

It was out at the edge of town. There were few houses around. The woods were thick and unspoiled. Across Baltimore street from Steuart Hall lived two families, the Lipps and the Harmisons, and I recall that one of the Harmison boys had a pony cart. This pony cart became "the Deadwood stage" in many of our cowboy and Indian games.

We also enjoyed the trenches, and refought the Civil War many times. In his "Happy Days," H. L. Mencken refers now and again to Steuart Hill in his boyhood memories. Steuart Hall, as a boys' school, either moved away or disbanded.

The building was occupied for a time by a Catholic sisterhood, probably until the house was torn down, and the hill leveled, to make way for Bon Secours Hospital. It is amusing, sometimes, how a fellow's boyhood will catch up with him. Not many months ago' a member of my family a fellow who had played many a boy's game of war on Steuart Hill went back to that area, but this time to undergo surgery in Bon Secours Hospital. Considerable excitement came up at the hospital about that time. A man fleeing from the police ran into the hospital.

He attacked and injured a policeman who caught up with him, and soon there were blue-coated officers all over the place, looking for the attacker. My relative, still half under the influence of anesthetic after his operation, got a hazy glimpse of all those blue coats and shouted: "The Yankees! They're regroup-' ing for an attack!" He pretended at first not to believe it when we told him about it next day, when he was himself again. "Well," he said finally with a grin, "I guess we must have beat 'em off. I don't see any Yankees around here now." 1880's has long since been leveled. That area's once widely scattered old buildings have been replaced these many years by row houses which, in turn, are now coming down to make way for redevelopment.

The giant shade trees I knew, the deep woods, the big scars in the earth mementos of trenches dug there during the Civil War have not been seen for many years. But the name Steuart Hill, which now applies to that whole West Baltimore neighborhood, will probably live on and on. That designation, which has already lasted 100 years, was never in any way an official one. It is one early Baltimoreans adopted themselves. Like Topsy, the name "just growed." The hill and the house on it were once a manor.

I have no idea just when the house was built, nor by whom. Maj. Gen. George Hume Steuart, commander of the Maryland Militia through the Mexican War period, bought the house and its spreading grounds early in the 1800's. (This man is known in my family as "the Old General," to distinguish him from his son, to whom we refer as "the Young General." I am related to them, but not by a lineal connection.

We sprang from a common ancestor.) The Old General called the manor Maryland Square. It fronted on West Baltimore street in the area covered today by Bon Secours Hospital west of Fulton avenue. SUNDAY SUN MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 10, 1963.