It started as an art project and turned into a tourism project.

Growing up in Montgomery County, MD, I attended Chevy Chase Elementary, Our Lady of Victory (DC) and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.

Receiving a Studio Art degree from Smith College, I focused primarily on the “book arts”, such as calligraphy, woodcut, lettering and gouache painting.

By graduation, I had completed three different Special Study projects: A Gentlewoman’s Journal: Letters of Edith Sampson Healy, a medieval-inspired Herbal featuring botantical woodcuts, and lastly, a painted children’s bedtime story, (ostensibly written by my father, Tim Healy) "CrossPatch, The Flying Horse".

After college and animation school, I moved to Los Angeles to work in the animation industry. When I moved back to Maryland, I began visiting local places to get a “lay of the land”.  I found really neat places - and I had an idea!

In Wyoming, where my grandparents lived, nearly every public establishment, grocery stores, gasoline stations, diners, hotels, etc., displayed a rack of postcards, featuring local and state attractions, which advertised other nearby places.

To celebrate these places of Montgomery County history, what better way to advertise what Montgomery County, MD has to offer than through note-cards, which people naturally share?

In 2010, I received an Individual Artist Grant by the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, MD and Montgomery County government to make sketches appropriate for a note-card set.

I named the project “Days Of Yore: Montgomery County”. Pun intended.

It started as an art project and turned into a tourism project.

Oakley Cabin Heritage Site, Olney, MD

An image suggesting the Oakley Cabin, in Olney, MD is the twelfth image for the Days Of Yore: Montgomery County, MD project.

Save to foursquare The area now known as Olney, was an agricultural area and focused mostly on farms.  Around 1800, artisans, such as blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and potters moved in, turning the area into a center of commerce and trade.  (To read more about the history of former Mechanicsville and Olney, please visit the Sandy Spring Museum's History site).

Oakley Cabin was built as part of a property belonging to a landowner named Colonel Richard Brooke, a Revolutionary War veteran.  This property passed through many hands, each of whom owned human slaves.  There were three cabins in all.  This particular cabin is the only one that is remaining.

Between 1880 and 1920, many different folks claimed to live in this cabin. There were both field hands, laundresses, carpenters, and other artisans or crafters, offering their services to the people on the road.  (To read more about the history of Oakley Cabin, visit the Montgomery Parks site or visit during their open hours and get a tour!

According to the Heritage Montgomery site, "Built in the 1820s as one of three slave dwellings, the cabin was the center of an African American roadside community from Emancipation well into the 20th century."

Neat!
The artist was on her way to a Pick-Your-Own fruit farm in Montgomery County and saw the sign for Oakley Cabin!   Naturally, she had to stop and find out more about this roadside site.

To visit:  3610 Brookeville Road, Olney, MD 20833
Thanks to the Sandy Spring Museum History site, the Montgomery Parks site, and the Heritage Montgomery Site, for their information.

Seneca One-Room Schoolhouse, Poolesville, MD

An image suggesting the Seneca One-Room Schoolhouse, in Poolesville, MD is the eleventh image for the Days Of Yore: Montgomery County, MD project.

Seneca One-Room Schoolhouse, Poolesville, MD

Save to foursquare Built in 1865, this Seneca Schoolhouse had only one room.  Going to school here, a child would be in the same classroom with all of the other children attending school, no matter how old they were or what grade they were in.


The children who did attend here, were often the children of the C&O Canal workers.

The Seneca One-Room Schoolhouse is a museum right now.  Children are also able to visit with their classes.  If you and your class visit, the children can pretend that they are living back in the 1880s and are going to school in that One-Room Schoolhouse.  The teacher for the day dresses in a clothes that he or she would have worn back in 1880 and will teach topics that children learned about back then.  They will learn about the foods that the children ate and the games that they played.

Neat!
This reminded the artist of a one-room schoolhouse, The Stone Schoolhouse, between the towns of Shell and Greybull, Wyoming.   That one-room schoolhouse was old enough to be put on the Historic Registry of Places.  Both of these one-room schoolhouses are now museums.

In order to take a visit to see this Seneca One-Room Schoolhouse yourself, the address and phone number is:

16801 River Road, Poolesville, MD 20837

(301) 972-8588

Open year-round for scheduled school field trips; please see their website or call for details.   http://www.senecaschoolhouse.com/

Glen Echo Park Yurt, Glen Echo, MD

An image suggesting a Pottery Yurt in the Glen Echo Park, in Glen Echo, MD is the tenth image for the Days Of Yore: Montgomery County, MD project.

Pottery Yurt at Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo, MD

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The National Chautauqua Assembly, an adult education movement that was popular in the late 1800s, began a park in Glen Echo, MD in 1891.  They made the sciences, the arts, languages and literature available to rural communities.

The Glen Echo Park had become an amusement part that provided a pool and carousel and many other options for the local residents until 1968.  Then the National Park Service took over and it is currently run by a non-profit organization.

There are many galleries and art studios on the grounds of Glen Echo Park, including the one in this picture.  This structure (one of six) is a permanent yurt.  Yurts are structures that nomads from Central Asia would occupy.  This particular yurt houses a Pottery Studio.

For further historical information on Glen Echo, please visit their website: http://www.glenechopark.org/history-glen-echo-park

To visit Glen Echo, try visiting their site for directions, hours, and events.  Their address to visit by car is: 7300 MacArthur Blvd. | Glen Echo, MD 20812

There is also a walking tour brochure, created by the non-profit organization, "Glen Echo Park for Arts and Culture, Inc."  Find it here.

For more information on the National Chautauqua Assembly, try searching on Google.  My small bit of information, I found here.

Neat!
Not only does the Glen Echo Park have yurts, which is a structure found in Central Asia, but they are also art studios.  I even saw another yurt that had grass growing all over the top of the roof.  As an artist, this would be a dream-come-true!  Secluded, peaceful, but nearby other artists, a yurt studio like this would be terrific!