Wye House in Talbot County, Maryland, began in the 1650s as the estate of planter Edward Lloyd and grew into a vast plantation sustained by the forced labor of enslaved people. Its present main house, built between 1781 and 1784 by Edward Lloyd IV and attributed to builder Robert Key, is a notable wooden-frame residence at the transition from Georgian to Federal design. The estate also preserves a rare orangery with its original 18th-century heating system. Frederick Douglass was enslaved here as a child, and the site remains central to the history of slavery, memory, and descendant communities, while recent archaeology has revealed evidence of African beliefs and resistance.