Remarkable Montgomery: Untold Stories

Montgomery Parks and Planning’s Historic Markers Program

Montgomery Planning’s Historic Preservation Office has initiated “Remarkable Montgomery: Untold Stories,” an ongoing project to install historic markers around the county that highlight underrepresented topics in local history.

Both Montgomery Planning and Montgomery Parks will be installing “Remarkable Montgomery: Untold Stories” markers throughout the county in a shared effort to bring greater recognition to people, places, and events with significant histories that we have undervalued in the past. The markers, which offer more flexibility than a formal designation on Montgomery County’s Master Plan for Historic Preservation, tell stories of people and places that shaped our communities, even where physical evidence of those histories may no longer exist.

Focused on equity

The Historic Preservation Office is committed to enacting Montgomery Planning’s Equity Agenda for Planning. In part, this includes acknowledging that the practice of historic preservation has long overlooked histories and historic sites related to non-dominant groups. To begin to address this imbalance, the marker program will bring forward histories tied to county residents’ struggles for racial and social justice and the stories of people who broke the boundaries of their times.

Edward U. Taylor School

19501 White Ground Road, Boyds

Six people stand by a brick wall as two individuals unveil a blue cloth covering an informational sign or plaque.

A group of people pose and smile together in front of a brick wall and historical information sign.

A group of people, including adults and children, gather around and read an outdoor informational sign next to a brick wall.

Two women stand on either side of an informational sign titled "Edward U. Taylor School" in front of a brick wall.

Marker unveiled at Edward U. Taylor School, May 11, 2026

The Edward U. Taylor School is an important part of Boyds’ history that reflects the story of segregation and the fight for educational equality in the county. When Montgomery County started providing schools for Black students in the 1870s, many of the new schools were built onto churches. Even as the County began building one-room schoolhouses, they remained underfunded and inferior to those provided for white students. Local Black teachers, parents, and advocates fought against injustice to improve opportunities for children. Civil rights advocates sued for equal schools and funding, and had landmark wins in the 1950s. As a result of their success, the County built the Edward U. Taylor School and three other modern schools for Black students between 1950 and 1952. These buildings were a major achievement for the community that had lobbied tirelessly for better schools.

When the Edward U. Taylor School opened in 1952, it was celebrated for its Modern Movement-influenced design, with fashionable brick veneer and ribbon metal windows. The school had four main classrooms, an auditorium, a stage, and a cafeteria; however the stage and auditorium were immediately repurposed to serve as classrooms due to overcrowding. The school was expanded in 1954, 1961, and 1969.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education forced Montgomery County Public Schools to end its systematic segregation. In June 1961, the Taylor School became the last public elementary school in the County to desegregate. It reopened as the only formerly segregated Black elementary school to resume as an integrated school. The building stopped operating as a school in 1979, due to low enrollment, and was adapted for specialty uses. Today, the building is a reminder of the Boyds community’s accomplishment in the pursuit of educational equality.
Montgomery County hired the firm of McLeod & Ferrara, specialists in educational and religious architecture, to build the Taylor School and the three other consolidated schools built in 1952. The firm also built the 1954 addition of the Taylor School, while De Groot and Associates designed the 1960s additions.

Source: Addition to Edward U. Taylor School, McLeod and Ferrara, 1954, Montgomery County Public Schools Archive
The Taylor family standing outside the school building after its dedication, circa 1952. Edward Taylor’s family from left to right: John C. Kelly, Sr. (son-in-law), Joan T. Kelly (daughter), Maude F. Taylor (wife), Sonia Taylor (daughter-in-law), Edward V. Taylor (son). Source: Montgomery History photograph, courtesy of John C. Kelly Jr. and Joan Taylor Kelly
Edward Ulysses Taylor

The Taylor school was named after Edward Ulysses Taylor, a lifelong advocate for Black education in Montgomery County. Born in Emory Grove in 1898, Taylor attended the local segregated elementary school and then commuted to Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., because the County did not provide high schools for Black students.

After Taylor graduated from Howard University, the Board of Education appointed him as the second ‘Supervisor of Colored Schools’ in Montgomery County. He worked to improve elementary schools and fought for the Black high school he had been denied. In 1927, Taylor became the principal and only teacher at the County’s first Black high school in Rockville, in addition to his responsibilities as supervisor. Taylor’s persistent advocacy was realized when the Board of Education approved the construction of the new consolidated Black schools. After his passing, the School Board voted to name the Edward U. Taylor School in honor of his lifelong work.

“He had witnessed the strain of attending school in Washington, he thought of handicaps that others could not surmount, and of opportunities that might be missed by those who were not as fortunate as he.” —Dedicatory Souvenir and Program, Edward U. Taylor School, circa 1953

Source: Montgomery History photograph, courtesy of John C. Kelly Jr. and Joan Taylor Kelly
A History of Schools in Boyds

The landscape of Boyds highlights the evolution of racial segregation and integration in the public school system. From east to west along White Ground Road: the site of the demolished ‘School No. 5’ (built for Black children in 1878, and reconstructed in 1895), which was associated with St. Mark’s United Methodist Church; the purpose-built, one-room, segregated ‘School No.2’ (built around 1895); and the consolidated, initially segregated, and eventually integrated Edward U. Taylor School (built in 1952).
St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, site of Boyds’ first school for Black children (built ca. 1878). Source: Montgomery Planning
The community’s first one-room, purpose-built schoolhouse, called ‘School No. 2’ (built ca. 1895). Source: Montgomery Planning
Students holding the Boyds’ School No. 2 school flag, date unknown. Source: Boyds Historical Society

Learn more about the Edward U. Taylor School.

Heffner Park and Community Center

42 Oswego Avenue, Takoma Park

Heffner Park and its community center exist because of decades of advocacy by Takoma Park’s African American residents. The park building gave Black residents of Takoma Park a public place to gather and celebrate after years without a place of their own.

Beginning in 1941, Takoma Park’s Black residents, led by Lee Jordan, President of Takoma Park’s Colored Citizens Association (CCA), called for dedicated public facilities. Their requests were ignored while M-NCPPC built the Takoma Park Recreation Center for white residents. Even so, the Black community persisted, and the City of Takoma Park purchased land on Oswego Avenue for a playground for Black residents. When the City failed to improve the lot, residents cleared the land themselves and installed playground equipment.

Takoma Park dedicated the park in August 1952, naming it in honor of Councilmember Herman Heffner. The community gathered at Heffner Park to play and watch baseball, throw horseshoes, and listen to local musicians. Residents remember it as “the place to go,” a long-awaited neighborhood venue. Despite the success of the park, the City of Takoma Park decided to relocate their public works facility from a white-owned neighborhood to Heffner Park. Although the CCA and Black community protested, the City implemented the move and announced a land swap to relocate the park. The Black community lost its baseball diamond and fields, but they gained a community building, which was opened to the public along with the park, in 1959. The building was small and simple, a reflection of the limited funding allocated for the Black community. However, it was embraced by the community, who finally had a public place of their own. This building hosted a short-lived but meaningful Teen Club that offered local Black youths their first opportunity to attend dances, play records, and socialize in public facilities.
A real estate map from 1953 shows the newly built white-only Takoma Park Recreation area, south of the three lots first used for Heffner Park and later for the Public Works Facility (red outline) and the present-day location of Heffner Park (blue outline). Source: Klinge Atlas of Montgomery County, Historic Preservation Division Archives
Herman C. Heffner

Heffner Park was named after Herman Claude Heffner, the first elected official to take formal action supporting Black residents’ requests for recreation facilities in Takoma Park. A retired railway postal clerk, Heffner was a popular civic leader who served as a Takoma Park City Councilmember for 10 years. In the 1940s, Heffner advocated for improvements to the Takoma Park Rosenwald School before raising the matter of a recreation center for Black residents in 1947. Local leader Lee Jordan first proposed honoring Heffner, and the City named the park in honor of the Councilmember in August 1952, as a community leader admired by people “irrespective of race, creed or color.”

Photo: Herman C. Heffner voting in 1938. Source: The Washington Times
Baseball: A popular pastime

Montgomery County had several Black baseball teams that played locally and in nearby counties. Baseball fields provided Black residents with entertainment and a place to socialize when they had few other options under legalized segregation.

Photo: Lee Jordan (top right) and members of the Takoma Hawks baseball team. Courtesy: Sandy Jordan
Lee Jordan

Lee Jordan was a popular community activist in Takoma Park. After playing professional baseball for the Homestead Grays in the segregated Negro League, he returned to the Hill neighborhood, where he worked as a custodian at the all-white Montgomery Blair High School and Takoma Park Junior High. Jordan founded football, baseball, and basketball teams and served as a mentor and coach to the players. He worked to bridge racial divides and welcomed white and Latino players to join the teams he founded. His efforts to integrate youth athletics are considered central to the peaceful racial integration of Takoma Park’s public schools. The City of Takoma Park recognized him as “one of the most influential citizens” in the history of the city.

Photo: Lee Jordan speaking to a group of children, undated. Source: Historic Takoma, Inc.

Learn more about Heffner Park and Community Center.

A Pioneering Woman Suffragist: Lavinia Engle

Forest Glen Neighborhood Park

Lavinia Margaret Engle was a lifelong advocate for women’s rights and social services.

Born here in 1892, before women had the right to vote, she joined the women’s suffrage movement, led the state’s League of Women Voters, and became the first woman from Montgomery County elected to the Maryland House of Delegates.

This marker was placed in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and the dedication of the Montgomery County suffragists who fought for voting rights.
The Engle Family Home

Around 1891, the Engle family built an eight-room house on the land where the park stands today. In the 18th and 19th centuries, before Forest Glen developed as a suburb, previous owners of this property enslaved Black workers and profited from the exploitation of their labor.

Image credit: Atlas of Montgomery County, Maryland, Vol. 1., 1948-1953. Frank H.M. Klinge, Engineers and Publishers.
As a child in Forest Glen, Lavinia Margaret Engle grew up in a community of activist women. Her mother, Lavinia Hauke Engle, was a woman suffragist who raised her daughter to believe in women’s voting rights.

As a small child, her mother took her to meet leading women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, who exclaimed, “Oh, another Lavinia!”

In 1912, Lavinia joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) as a suffrage field organizer. This job took her across the country and eventually to France as a NAWSA volunteer during World War I. Here in Forest Glen, her mother organized for the suffragist Just Government League. Ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 eliminated gender discrimination in voting, but many legal and economic barriers remained, in addition to racial barriers for women of color.

As Executive Secretary of the League of Women Voters of Maryland from 1921-1936, Lavinia worked to overturn barriers to women’s equality.

In 1930 she became the first woman from Montgomery County elected to the Maryland House of Delegates; and in 1933 the first woman appointed to the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. In 1936, she joined the newly created Social Security Board to assist in the organization of their field operations. Engle worked in federal service until her retirement in 1964.

Photo credit: [A Portrait of Miss Lavinia Engle], 1913. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Moore Memorial Public Library
The home remained in the family until 1967. In 1969, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission acquired the property and the home was later demolished.

Lavinia Engle lived the later years of her life in Silver Spring until her death in 1979. Her life reflects a remarkable societal transformation that saw women acquire political power and public influence.

Photo credit: [Lavinia Engle], 1968. Courtesy of the Social Security Administration Historian’s Office.
Black Women Suffragists

Estelle Hall Young, September 14, 1884-August 16, 1938 (pictured on right side of marker)

Black women were early and vocal advocates for women’s voting rights, despite facing racism within the suffrage movement.

Maryland suffragist Estelle Hall Young organized African American women in Baltimore, and in 1920 traveled to Montgomery County to engage Black communities in a major voter registration push following ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Though Maryland did not impose statewide Jim Crow voter suppression, many African American women in Southern states were prevented from voting until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Photo credit: [Portrait of Estelle Hall Young], c. 1920. Courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, Item #PP283.32

“Out of the Home Will Come the Citizen”: Elsie S. Horad & Romeo W. Horad, Sr.

Wheaton Veterans Urban Park

Just east of this location was once the home for several generations of an influential African American family. In April 1894, Charles and Jane Webster bought an acre of land along the country road that became University Boulevard.

Acknowledgements: The Historic Preservation Office is indebted to the Webster, Sewell, and Horad descendants for sharing their family histories and photographs. Historian Dr. David Rotenstein provided valuable background by sharing a 2017 oral history interview that he and Sarah Shoenfeld conducted with Elsie and Romeo’s son, Sewell Horad, and his wife Evelyn Horad, the last family members to live on the property.
Elsie Sewell Horad (second row, center) with her parents, Martha V. Webster Sewell and Edward B. Sewell (seated), and brothers Bernard Sewell (left) and Dr. Webster Sewell (right)

Photo courtesy of Dorita Sewell.
In 1938, the brick home at 2118 University Boulevard West was built for their granddaughter, Elsie Sewell Horad, and her husband, Romeo W. Horad, Sr.

Elsie Sewell Horad (1898 - 1990) was raised in the District of Columbia, where she taught public school for three decades. She is remembered by her family as being strong-willed and was an active citizen who held leadership positions in the Montgomery County Colored Republican Club and local women’s groups.

Photo courtesy of Dorita Sewell.
Romeo W. Horad, Sr. (1895 - 1968) was a graduate of the Howard University School of Law. Through his real estate firm in the late 1930s and 1940s, he partnered with white realtors Ralph and Joseph Urciolo to sell homes to Black buyers despite restrictive covenants that were intended to keep neighborhoods white. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court found Washington, D.C.’s racial covenants legally unenforceable, and struck down restrictive covenants nationwide later that year.

Romeo W. Horad, Sr. also led the Montgomery County Citizens Council for Mutual Improvement, which advocated for public investment in African American communities and desegregation of public restrooms. In 1948, he ran a groundbreaking but unsuccessful campaign for a seat on the newly created Montgomery County Council.

Image credit: Evening Star, December 27, 1948, via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress
A Family Tradition

Charles Webster began a family tradition of altruism and civic engagement. He served as a trustee for the nearby African American school and campaigned for political candidates that supported Montgomery County’s Black residents.

Over time, Jane and Charles Webster’s farm grew to include several family homes, a barn, smokehouse, chicken house, and children’s playhouse.

It was a popular gathering place for family and visitors for many years, the scene of parties, baseball games, church picnics, and pig roasts.

Photo courtesy of Dorita Sewell.
Charles and Jane Webster’s c. 1903 home was at 2100 University Blvd. West, where the church building is today.

"My great-grandfather planted [orchards]. See, they were fruitful when I came along. When I was a boy, I put a salt shaker in my pocket and stayed out all day and I could pick some fruit or go in the garden and get some celery and eat it and put some salt on it. And that was the way we lived." – Sewell Horad

Transcript of Interview with Sewell Horad and Evelyn Horad. interviewed by Dr. David Rotenstein and Sarah Shoenfeld on May 30, 2017, in Silver Spring, MD.

Photo courtesy of Dorita Sewell.
Charles Webster (middle row, second from left) and Jane Webster (middle row, second from right) gathered with family.

Photo courtesy of Dorita Sewell.
Family and friends relaxed under the front porch of the playhouse built by Charles Webster for his granddaughter, Elsie.

Photo courtesy of Dorita Sewell.
This home, built for Jane and Charles Webster’s son, Clarence, stood to the rear of the property.

Photo courtesy of Dorita Sewell.

The Commonwealth Farm: “Everything We Put Our Hand to Prospered”

Peachwood Neighborhood Park

For nearly 60 years, this land was part of the Commonwealth Farm, home to a women’s commune that began in Belton, Texas in the late 1860s under the leadership of Martha McWhirter (1827-1904).
Central Hotel, Belton, TX c. 1884-1885

Women’s lives in 1860s Texas were often marked by subordinate status, grief, and isolation. The Belton women found community with each other through a prayer group and eventually through dreams that they interpreted as divine instruction to leave their husbands and establish communal households together. There, they could follow their beliefs in celibacy and spiritual sanctification. For the first time, they controlled their home lives, labor, and earnings. After establishing several successful businesses, the women gradually overcame hostility to their unusual lifestyle, though the perception of their ‘strangeness’ lingered. Membership peaked at 50 in 1880.

Photo credit: [Central Hotel, 1884-1885], di_01144, Courtesy of the Woman’s Commonwealth Archive, The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin |
Group protrait of Commonwealth Farm Women c. 1901 (left), The Woman’s Commonwealth at Mt. Pleasant, Washington, D.C., c. 1902 (right)

In 1898, they used their accumulated wealth to retire to Washington, D.C. There, they ran a boarding house and a small farm, but left time to pursue arts, culture, and social causes including women’s suffrage. As it had in Texas, the commune’s financial success relied in part on the labor of people of color who lived and worked alongside the women but were not admitted as members. Membership gradually dwindled as the founders died and as some younger women left.

Photo credits: (left) [Group Portrait c. 1901], di_01145, Courtesy of the Woman’s Commonwealth Archive, The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin; (right) “The Woman’s Commonwealth of Washington,” Ainslee’s Magazine, 1902: Vol 10, Issue 2, p. 134.
The Commonwealth’s 120-acre farm location on New Hampshire Ave., 1916 (left), newspaper advertisement (center), and postcard of the farm (right). The Commonwealth Farm was a popular destination for travelers and diners.

In 1903, the Commonwealth bought a 120-acre farm north of Colesville. It acquired wooded land, productive fields and orchards, and a c. 1875 farmhouse from carpenter Charles Collinsgru.

Commonwealth members tended livestock and produced butter, eggs, milk, fruit, and vegetables. Always enterprising, they expanded the farmhouse and ran it as the Commonwealth Farm, an upscale country restaurant and retreat.

Through the 1930s, the farm was a popular destination for Washington elites, where the women served their “famous chicken dinners” to wives of senators and diplomats and those looking to escape the city heat in summer.

Image credits: Real Estate Atlas of Part of Montgomery County, Maryland, 1916. Edward Deets and Charles Maddox, Rockville, MD.; Advertisement, Page 4, Pt. 4, Evening Star, Washington, D.C., November 29, 1931; The Commonwealth Farm Inn, Postcard, c. 1947. Colourpicture Publishers Inc., Boston, MA.
More Recent History

In 1946, only two members were living and most of the farmland was sold. Martha McWhirter Scheble (1883-1983), a second-generation Commonwealth member named in honor of Martha McWhirter, lived on the land until her death in 1983.

A stone retaining wall that once lined the driveway is still visible from New Hampshire Avenue.

Beltway March of 1966: A Call for Housing Justice

Forest Glen Metro Station

On June 8, 1966, fair housing activists with the Action Coordinating Committee to End Segregation in the Suburbs (ACCESS) began a 66-mile march around the Capital Beltway. They started at the Georgia Avenue exit and walked for four straight days to circle the Beltway on the shoulder.

ACCESS members viewed the Beltway as a symbolic “noose of segregation” that prevented Black families from moving out to the suburbs. Throughout the region, developers, property owners, management companies and realtors had systematically shut Black people out from for sale and rental housing.

The march was part of a broader direct action campaign throughout 1966 and 1967 that targeted segregated apartment complexes and housing developers’ homes and offices in the DC suburbs. By early 1967, ACCESS was focused on housing for Black military service members, who struggled to find homes near their bases.

The Montgomery County Council addressed housing discrimination by adopting a fair housing ordinance on July 20, 1967, and on August 15, 1968, a broad fair housing law that complemented the Fair Housing provisions of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1968.
The marchers faced some harassment from motorists and onlookers on overpasses, but also saw supportive signs and were sometimes joined by sympathetic passersby. J. Charles Jones, head of ACCESS, leads the group.

Photo credit: Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post.