Discover Delmarva: The Mystery of Dorchester County’s Handsell House

DORCHESTER COUNTY, Md. — Just a few miles off of Route 50, in Dorchester County sits a brick house. This has been one of Dorchester County’s biggest mysteries for generations. But today, the story of this house is being discovered one chapter at a time.

“When we first encountered this place, it really was a mystery. It was a house covered in ivy in the middle of a corn field, and nobody knew anything about it.”, says Midge Ingersoll, a founder of the National Preservation Historic Society.

They call the site Handsell. And since 2005 the Nanticoke Historic Preservation Alliance has uncovered a story much bigger than one house.

“The big thing about here is that three cultures have lived on this land, including the native people that were here before the English came.”, Ingersoll tells WMDT.

“With English encroachment on the village, they were eventually pushed out. And of course, with the English and the European settlers, they brought enslaved Africans.”

By the 19th century, the area was home to a Black sharecropping community, even as the land stayed in white ownership for generations. Today, the Alliance is putting the finishing touches on a brand-new addition to the property: the Three Culture Center.

“It’s more than just a brick house with antiques and a museum… this has to be a place where we tell stories about three cultures.”

And that new center is getting a remarkable centerpiece -1730s wood paneling, original to a Dorchester County home, that had spent the last century on display at the Brooklyn Museum.

“It took six days of scrambling and talking to a lot of people and a lot of Zoom calls, but we were able to manage to get Brooklyn Museum to pull the material from an auction and agree with us that we could purchase it”

With each new revelation, the mystery of Handsell continues to unfold.

“The more you learn, the more questions you have, and they take you on various tangents.”

For more information about the Handsell House, visit their website: restorehandsell.org