Hampton preserves the core of the Ridgely estate, whose Georgian mansion, completed in 1790, was once considered the largest private home in the United States. Built on wealth from tobacco, trade, ironmaking, and later horse breeding, the estate expanded from an eighteenth-century landholding to twenty-five thousand acres at its peak under Charles Carnan Ridgely. Its formal gardens, orangery, and grand interiors reflected great wealth and social standing, but that prosperity depended on the labor of more than three hundred enslaved people. Today, the mansion, grounds, and surviving slave quarters reveal both the estate’s architectural distinction and its deep ties to slavery and Maryland’s changing history.

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Attribution

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Attribution

Hampton, Maryland · USA