Early Port Tobacco

[Laurie Verge]

I apologize. Cat-slide roof lines were very popular in Southern Maryland and Tidewater Virginia in colonial and 19th-century times. If you have seen a photo of Mrs. Quesenberry's "Cottage" before it was enlarged, you will see a front roofline that starts at the peak and slopes drastically down to form the porch roof. Most cat-slides were small cottages with just one or two rooms downstairs and one room up with low ceiling -- a one-and-a-half story house.

Cats are supposed to be able to cling to almost anything, but the old-timers swore that this type of architecture was so steep that a cat would slide off. The Eli Huntt house in T.B. was a cat-slide in 1865 when Booth and Herold rode by. It is now a 13-room huge Victorian!

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Jonathan,

Shortly after Ed Steers guided us over the Atzerodt Escape Route from D.C.'s Georgetown to the Richters' home in Germantown, Maryland, the Richter home burned down. The site is now a huge development.