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(Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie)
This turn-of-the-twentieth-century farm complex encompasses a quintessential vernacular farmhouse, frame bank barn, log smokehouse, double corncrib, and frame silo. The dwelling form, comprised of a two-and-a-half-story, five-bay, center-passage house with central cross-gable peak and front porch, appeared throughout the region from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. This particularly striking example includes an octagonal bay window, a side wing once used as a kitchen (predating the existing house), and a later, rear kitchen ell. The property was settled as a tobacco plantation by the locally prominent Magruder family, who owned it from 1734 to 1888. The next owner, Thaddeus Bussard, erected most of the extant buildings, including the c. 1895 bank barn. The family transferred the property to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission in 1971. Recognizing its integrity and potential for conveying life on a farmstead of the period, it was established as the Agricultural History Farm Park.