• Bryan Philpot (1695-1768) m. Mary Johns
  • Brian Philpot Jr. (August 9, 1750-April 11, 1812)
  • 1794 m. Elizabeth Johnson (March 4, 1768-July 26, 1853)
    • Children: Bryan, Mary, Elizabeth, Clarissa, John, Edward
  • Edward Pickering Philpot (November 25, 1809 – February 28, 1890) 1831 m. Sarah Merryman (d.-1867)
  • 1875 m. Anna Merryman (1850-1927)

Bryan Philpot of Stamford, England had two sons, Philip and Thomas. They were sent at various times to live with the Johns, a Quaker family on the Eastern Shore, to learn and develop their tobacco trade.

When Philip died, his son, Bryan Philpot (1695- 1768) was sent by uncles of the banking house of Philpot & Co. to establish a branch in Baltimore. Bryan married Mary Johns and bought “most of the peninsula between Falls and Harford Run south of Baltimore St. and built a house on the northeast corner of the Baltimore St. bridge, then named Phil- pot Bridge”. His house is shown on a Moales 1752 print when the town’s population was 200. A town Commissioner (1750-1751) and one of Baltimore’s wealthiest citizens, Bryan owned the area at the end of the present Fallsway including “The Block” and the Shot Tower. One of two rowhouses built for resale is now The Flag House. He and brother-in-law, Kensey Johns, bought Nicholson’s Manor in 1757. It is amusing to note that the 1768 inventory of Bryan’s estate indicates that he had more animals in town than at “Stamford Quarter”: 3 horses, 1 steer, 2 cows and calves, 3 heifers, 3 bulls, 5 calves, 37 sheep, 21 lambs, 18 hogs, and 11 shoats in town; 2 horses, 2 cows, 2 heifers, 52 pigs in the country. While no buildings are listed at Stamford, one African American family is noted living there in 1768. Bryan’s entire inventory is valued in Pre-Revolutionary pounds at £1900. At some point, Bryan bought land in Phoenix, Maryland, and lived at “Rockford” on Philpot Road. After 1768, his widow, Mary, got permission from the Maryland Legislature (women had no property rights) to sell more than one hundred lots in town and 360 acres within Nicholson’s Manor.

Brian Philpot Jr. (1750-1812), a Revolutionary soldier who fought at the Battle of Brandywine, built Stamford shortly after he married Elizabeth Johnson in 1794. He was 44 and she was 26. They had six children: Bryan who moved to Frederick, Mary Anne who married Capt. John Frazier, John who married Susan Stewart and lived at Rockford, Clarrisa who married Nicholas Bosley Merryman andis buried beside him at Marathon Farm; Elizabeth, who married the Rev. J.G. Blanchard; and Edward Pickering, who would inherit Stamford. It’s conceivable that the north wing was added for the many children. Philpot lore has the brick tenant house being built for Mary Ann and John Frazier.

When Brian died in 1812, the inventory of his estate mentioned no total acreage, just that in crops – 80 acres in wheat and 50 acres in rye. Philpots’s estate was appraised at $5,850.48, of which $240 was five horses, a wagon and harness.

Edward Pickering Philpot (1809-1890) was born at Stamford, graduated from St. Johns College, and served as Colonel of the Baltimore County Cavalry and Vestryman at St. John’s Church on Butler Road. In 1864 he was a Senator in the Maryland General Assembly. He is buried near his father at St. Thomas’ Church in Owings Mills.

At Edward’s birth in 1809, his father was 59 and lived only three more years. His mother Elizabeth, then 41, lived for another 41 years and never remarried. She lived at Stamford for 22 years after Edward married Sarah Merryman in 1831. Conceivably, the early 19th Century style molding was installed and the east center doorway altered when Edward fixed up the house after his marriage. Sarah died in 1867, and Edward married Anna Merryman from Virginia in 1875. He was 66, and she was 25. Their “only daughter”(as the gravestone sadly proclaims) died at five months in 1876 and is buried at St. Thomas’ in the family plot. In his will Edward bequeathed Stamford to Anna for her life, it then was to pass to his nephew Brian, who lived in Chicago. There was no local descendant.

The 1823 tax list showed that Edward owned 1,853 acres: 630 acres at Stamford with a grist mill and a saw mill, 474 acres at Philpots Inquiry, and 749 acres in the late Bryan’s name at various places. Upon his death in 1890, the farm consisted of only 196 acres and a woodlot of 25 acres, known as Philpots Inquiry. The buildings at Stamford included the two-story brick mansion, a brick barn, stone stable, frame cornhouse, stone smoke house, poultry house, two-story brick tenant house, stone dairy, and two unoccupied log tenant houses. Stamford was also comprised of 13.5 acres of wheat and 6 acres of rye, as well as corn, oats, rye, a light wagon, sleigh, and a brown horse in the barn, all valued at $5,688 – less, in fact, than Brian’s inventory value years earlier. In addition, land had been sold and much Philpot equity had evaporated after the Civil War.

In his will, Edward advised:

“My dear wife when I have gone hence I cannot be with you in the body; to think for you and take counsel for you, it is then that you must think for yourself and mark out for yourself your own future career. Indeed you have a difficult task before you. Will you allow me to assist you if I can? Let me assure you that the ways and designs of this world are hard to find out and comprehend. You will, therefore, need the utmost caution and circumspection to avoid its snares and tricks. To accomplish this I know of no surer plan than to avoid as much as possible promiscuous and frivolous company and seek association with the discreet and honourable and to look well into the actions as well as the true motives of all with whom you may come in special contact. Be sure, my dear wife, constantly and habitually to practice charity amongst the poor and afflicted, and above all remember that the securing of good things of this world is right and proper to a certain extent, but as nothing in comparison with the salvation of the Soul, that precious Jewel”

Widow Anna married a Quaker, Edward Eugene Chilcoat (1855-1924), a son of George Chilcoat on Geist Road five years younger than she. When he died in 1924, Anna, then 74 years old and again a widow, was served a bill of complaint signed by 38 defendants (all Philpot relatives) concerning her “intention to sell the property and to construe the meaning of the will”. The suit resulted in a court order to sell the property.

In 1925, Blanchard Randall, a Philpot relative and the executor, sold Stamford to the Green Spring Land Company. Two years later Anna was buried next to her second husband at Baltimore County’s oldest Quaker church, now a private residence, on Beaver Dam Road in Cockeysville. Coincidently Philpot descendants happen to own the house.