Gate Posts to a Mysterious Past

By Rande Davis

Traveling north on Route 109 from Poolesville, you may have noticed the grand white gateposts that stand rigidly at attention, eerily guarding a mysterious history of the grounds behind them. Except for a few outbuildings, there is little evidence today to tell passersby that one man’s dream to bring a West Point to the area existed on this property a long time ago.

If you traveled back in time to April of 1910, you may have come upon Sydney Johnston Lodge standing at those gates, dreaming of turning the property into a military academy. At that particular moment, right where the current ranch home sits, stood a three-story colonial-styled home that had been a girls’ academy, and had then become a boarding house. Mr. Lodge, a graduate of Fork Union Military Academy and Richmond University, was visiting his mother on Easter break from his instructor position at the New York Military Academy (NYMA) at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York. NYMA sits at the foothills of Storm King Mountain, which is home to the United States Military Academy at West Point.

If Mr. Lodge had inquired from locals at the time, they would have told him that the property had been, since 1874, a highly-respected, all-girls academy called Briarley Hall Seminary for Young Ladies and Little Girls, and originally called Briarley Hall Female Academy. It seems that even in 1874, the marketing mantra for a successful enterprise was still "location, location, and location.” You see, while not mentioning curriculum at all, the original advertisements for the female academy emphasized that “the boarding and day school for girls was one half mile from Poolesville and only four miles from Sellman’s Station (near the current Dickerson station) on the Metropolitan Railroad and that a stage passes by the school four times daily.”

The twelve-acre site, which originally was part of Chiswell’s Inheritance in Poolesville, remained an all-girls academy until sometime past 1906. Along with classical education, the school catalog emphasized that the “girls are taught to act from a high sense of honor and duty, and to love all that is beautiful and right. Religious instruction, without sect or creed, is constantly given, as it is this alone [that] gives learning its true value.”

It took Mr. Lodge two years to accomplish his dream of opening and operating a military school on the site. The school opened in 1912, and subsequent school catalogs describe the school’s sixty-by-forty-foot gymnasium, which is attached to the north side of the current home. In its first year, the military academy had thirty-three cadets (seventeen from Maryland) enrolled. In 1915, Charles W. Woodward joined the faculty, but later he became a lawyer and eventually the Chief Judge of the Montgomery County Circuit Court. It is for him that Rockville’s Woodward High School was named.

The students’ uniforms were exact replicas of those worn by West Point cadets and were made of the same gray cloth, trimmed with black braid with an Academy emblem on the cap and collar. For cadets to participate in any of the school’s sports, which included baseball, swimming, football, tennis, basketball, and track, they had to maintain an average grade of eighty percent in their class work and seventy-five percent in conduct.

The rigid military standards produced strong students, yet the school was not strong enough to sustain the devastating impact of the Depression. Declining enrollment forced Briarley Hall Military Academy to retreat into bankruptcy on March 26, 1930. The abandoned building became an easy target for squatters and eventually reached a state of such disrepair that the owner, Mr. Thomas Perry, decided to demolish the main building (by controlled fire) rather than face what he considered to be excessive repair costs.

Many connections to the school remain with area residents. Captain Lodge’s son, Lee, still resides in Frederick, Maryland as does Mary Tipton Bodmer, whose mother, Sarah Elizabeth White, taught two years at the academy. Elsie Lee White, the mother of Poolesville/Dickerson resident, Boo White Davis, graduated from the girls’ seminary.

Today, the original academy’s clubhouse, a guard-house, gymnasium, and water well give proof that our area once had a proud and distinguished private educational institution. Now, as you drive by, give the old place a silent salute, and, remember, nothing in life is permanent.

Facts and quotes for this article came from The Montgomery County Story, Vol. 26, #2 (May 1983) published by the Montgomery County Historical Society, Mary Charlotte Crook, author and editor.