Hayden family requests new school be named Woodbury

Friday, June 5, 2009

The 172-acre property, formally purchased in April for $5,259,500, was at one time called Woodbury and Woodberry, according to old deeds. The board of education and county commissioners intend to build two schools there, a new library for Leonardtown and some athletic fields in the future.

The deed, dated April 28, stated, "Any school erected on the property shall be named ‘WOODBURY' provided that the Board of Education has no objection to the name and that confirmation is provided that a school named ‘Woodbury' previously existed on the property."

As negotiations continued between county government and the Hayden family, the board of education was unaware the school was already named.

"We didn't know anything about this until the contract was released," said Brad Clements, chief administrative officer for public schools.

However, planning for the new school is at least two years away and so the board of education doesn't have to worry about the school's name for quite some time. When the time comes though, Clements said the name Woodbury would be on a list with other potential names. "I would imagine it would go through the same process," he said when a school gets named.

Clements and other school staff visited the site recently and the Hayden family didn't know for sure where the school was exactly, he said. There was no public school there during the 20th century, according to school records.

According to Janice Hayden, head of the family, "The farm actually had a school on it," said Commissioner Thomas A. Mattingly Sr. (D), who first identified the land as a potential public purchase. "There was a suggestion by some of the children to name the school after the schools that was on the site," he said. Hayden's listed phone number is not in service and she couldn't be contacted.

Aleck Loker's history of Leonardtown, "A Most Convenient Place," had one reference to the school. "In 1830, the Lee family held school at Woodbury (an estate near the old St. Aloysius Chapel north of Leonardtown)." It is not known how long it stayed in operation.

Clements said of naming the school, "There's not an urgency right now."

"It won't hurt to call it that. I'm not sure it's a major issue," Mattingly said.

Town Creek, Green Holly elementary schools and Esperanza Middle School are named after the property they came from. The others are named for the town they are in or near and some are named after notable people. Chopticon High School was named for a local Native American tribe. The origin of the names for Spring Ridge Middle School (opened 1974), White Marsh Elementary (opened 1956) and Greenview Knolls Elementary (opened 1967) are not generally known. "We don't have anything here," in the records to determine why those schools were named as they were, Clements said.

The properties they were on had different names. The Spring Ridge property was called Clocker's Marsh and Greenview Knolls was on Matthew's Folly. Deeds don't name what property White Marsh was on.

Evergreen Elementary School in the Wildewood neighborhood, opening this fall, was named after the environmentally friendly aspects of the project.

jbabcock@somdnews.com