The two-story, wood-framed house on the Annapolis waterfront has seen better days. The walls are cracked, the blue carpet is worn, and floorboards creak under foot.
But in the attic, torn pieces of a poster hang on the wall promoting a "gypsy band" concert more than a century ago - just one of the intriguing signs of the rich history connected with this dwelling built by one of Annapolis' most prominent 19th-century watermen.
Advocates for building a National Sailing Hall of Fame in this Chesapeake Bay sailing mecca say the City Dock lot on which the old home sits would be an ideal location for their new $20 million museum. It is owned by the state and serves as offices for the Natural Resources Police.
But descendants of the home's original owner and other history buffs say the house should be treasured as a remnant of Annapolis' past - not demolished or moved.
"We want to preserve the history that this house represents," said William R. Powell, a great-great-great grandson of the original owner, Capt. William H. Burtis, and a leader among his descendants in opposing the use of their ancestor's home as the site of the planned museum.
Powell and others have combed dusty land records, old newspaper accounts and other archived documents to compile information about Burtis and the house where he lived until his death in 1910.
A New York native, Burtis moved to Annapolis after marrying a local woman, the former Emily Hollidayoke, in 1860. He became a waterman and member of the Oyster Navy, a precursor to the Natural Resources Police, which patrolled the bay beginning about 1870 to keep the peace among quarrelsome harvesters of oysters.
In 1870, he and 200 other oystermen, according to the Maryland State Archives, presented a petition before the General Assembly, "protesting against the present Oyster Law recognizing dredging in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay."
Photographs in the Maryland State Archives show him at a sailing party about 1890 with Gordon H. Claude, the mayor at the time.
Burtis had a streak of flamboyance in him, it would appear. One summer day in 1895, he harpooned a 900-pound shark in the bay off Annapolis, according to news reports at the time. P.T. Barnum-like, he displayed the huge ocean-going predator at Bay Ridge, a late 19th-century resort area near Annapolis, charging the curious "five cents a look."
