History of Whites Hall

Many know of the famed hospital and university founded by Johns Hopkins. But few realize that
Johns Hopkins himself was born and raised in Anne Arundel County. Just a short drive from
Annapolis, in Gambrills, lies Whites Hall, the birthplace and boyhood home of Johns Hopkins.

Whites Hall was originally part of an 1,800-acre land grant to Colonel Jerome White in 1665.  The home was designed as a two-story, brick side passage double pile plan dwelling, and was listed on the Maryland Historic Site inventory in 1969. The main center structure of the house, built in the second half of the 18th century, is Flemish bond brick Georgian and is representative of a house type of which few examples survive in north Anne Arundel County.

Gerard Hopkins purchased the property in 1719. The original center portion of the two-story brick dwelling was constructed circa 1780, with wings on each end added in approximately 1915 and 1950. Johns Hopkins, one of 11 children, was born there in 1795.

After remaining in the Hopkins family for generations, the tract was eventually sold in 1910 to Melvin and Pearl Stewart, of the Stewart Fruit Company. It operated as a produce farm until the 1940s. The Duckett family bought the property in 1941 and used it as their family’s primary residence. The historic site was purchased by a developer in 2003 and parcels were subdivided and developed. 

Today the historic home sits on 13+ bucolic acres, awaiting its next chapter.
 

Johns Hopkins History

​​

Johns Hopkins was born at Whites Hall on May 19, 1795, to Samuel Hopkins (1759–1814) and Hannah Janney Johns (1774–1864). He was number two of eleven children. A family of Quakers, the Hopkins family were slaveholders before freeing their enslaved people in 1778 in accordance with their local Quakers' decree. The family was 86 years ahead of

Maryland's Emancipation Day on November 1, 1864.

​

Johns and his brother Joseph attended the Annearrundell Free School in Davidsonville, MD at an early age. However, they had to return to Whites Hall to work on the farm in 1807. Johns continued to live on the property until 1812, at which time he left for Baltimore at the age of 17 to apprentice for his uncle, Gerard T. Hopkins, in business as a Baltimore wholesale grocer.  He remained living in Baltimore for the rest of his life. 

​

Hopkins invested heavily in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), which eventually led to his appointment as finance director of the company in 1855. He was also president of the Baltimore-based Merchants' Bank. Hopkins was a staunch supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Union, often using his Maryland residences as a gathering place for Union strategists. He was a Quaker and supporter of the emancipationist cause.

 

​Hopkins was a philanthropist his whole life. His philanthropic giving increased significantly after the Civil War. His concern for the poor and newly freed enslaved populations drove him to create free medical facilities, orphanages, asylums, and schools to help alleviate the impoverished conditions for all. 

​

Following his death on December 24,1873, his bequests continued to fund numerous institutions bearing his name, most notably Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University System. At the time, the bequest to the University was the largest philanthropic bequest ever made to an American educational institution.