Allison Severance grew up on a farm in Howard County. So when she and her husband, Rick Henry, began looking for a house, her childhood experience helped shape the search: It had to be special; it had to possess charm; and it couldn't be new.
They found it over the mountains in Searchwell Farm, built circa 1800 in the Washington County town of Boonsboro.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the farmhouse, along with five outbuildings, was built of limestone by Germans who migrated south from Pennsylvania through the Cumberland Valley. A 21st-century visit to Searchwell, nestled on 5 acres in the long shadow of South Mountain, is a dance back in time.
"The interior was spectacular," Allison Severance said of a house impeccably maintained by former owners. They purchased the farm in January 2000.
The couple paid $380,000 for the property. The house has four bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, basement fireplace (from the original kitchen), root cellar and attic. Across the expansive front lawn, additional buildings of the same locally quarried limestone include a smokehouse, springhouse, bake house, blacksmith's house and servants' quarters. All are original to the property that once exceeded 500 acres.
The couple spent $40,000 to refurbish the small, two-story servants' house that Severance uses as a studio for her pottery business, Coles Pottery. Here, in about 800 square feet of space, she turns the pieces and biscuit-fires them in an electric kiln before taking them to the large wood-fired kiln in one of the outbuildings at the back of the property.
A rerouting of the original road has put the home's entrance in the back. A center hall, with its wide-planked pine floor painted in a black-and-white diamond pattern, cuts through the original 40-foot-square structure.
A huge dining room takes up one full side of the home, its 40-foot length augmented by 10-foot ceilings. Six-inch crown molding and chair rails are painted blue-gray against white walls. The room's fireplace (one of seven original to the house) has intricate carving. Central to the room is a 20-foot-long, cherry wood dining table on oak trestles at which Severance can accommodate 20 people easily.
"One day, at Christmas and Thanksgiving, this table will be lined with lots of grandchildren," she said.
Antique hutches, deep windowsills and mantels throughout the home display a variety of Severance's pottery, from pitchers to mugs to colorful bowls. One room serves as a gallery.
