A Little Bethesda History
from William Offutt's Bethesda - A Social History
"Bethesda's
prettiest and most influential subdivision grew slowly in
the middle of the town. Originally called Edgewood, it was
laid out for Walter R. Tuckerman by surveyor I. H.
Starkey in 1912 on 183.5 acres of what had been the Watkins'
farm. After post office confusion, Tuckerman renamed it.
Edgemoor contained about 250 lots, mostly large, and four,
big, undivided plots.
Tuckerman
built his own home, bravely called "Tuxeden," at what is now
5215 Edgemoor Lane and raised the social and economic level
of Bethesda by about a factor of ten when he moved in.
Colonel Theodore Boal, soon the Tuckerman's next-door
neighbor, designed the house. "We added to it by fits and
starts as the family grew ," Tuckerman said, and the house
finally grew to ten bedrooms and six baths as his family
expanded to five daughters. The ballroom was forty-four by
twenty-two feet with maple hardwood flooring while in the
large dining room (14-by-24 feet) and in the library, which
was even bigger, the flooring was herringbone oak and the
trim mahogany. The carriage house held a two-car garage, a
three-stall stable, a feed loft and two very small rooms for
the gardener and driver. It became a separate home during
World War II.
Tuckerman
planted fruit trees, mostly apple, and raised acres of corn
and wheat. There was a large kitchen garden, and the
Tuckermans also kept pigs, chickens, pigeons, and for a
short time, guinea hens. And he stabled an "indeterminate
number" of horses in the carriage house and at a nearby
barn."
