Whitehaven: The Original Dent Family Home in Maryland

A map from 1734 surveying 1,330 acres of land for Whitehaven, a Dent family plantation located on the border of Charles and Prince George's Counties, Maryland.

When visitors to Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site see Julia Dent Grant’s childhood home, White Haven, they often notice that it is painted Paris Green. Why is the house called “White Haven,” they ask? The short answer to this is that Julia’s father, Colonel Frederick F. Dent, named it after his family’s ancestral home in Maryland, which was called Whitehaven. The longer answer to that question involves exploring the Dent family of Maryland and their Whitehaven home.

The Dent family was considered one of the many first families of Maryland and the Chesapeake region. They first arrived in America around 1658 when Colonel Dent’s ancestor, Colonel Thomas Dent, came to reside and practice law in the rapidly growing village of St. Mary’s. While residing in St. Mary’s, Thomas Dent began acquiring large amounts of property using the headright system. The headright system was a practice used in many colonies to promote population growth. It awarded fifty acres of land to any colonist who covered transportation costs for another person emigrating to the new world. By using the headright system, Thomas Dent was able to create a decent land holding that extended throughout modern-day Prince George’s and Charles counties. The land holdings helped establish the Dent family as members of the upper-class within the Mid-Atlantic region. Thomas Dent used some of the land he gained to create a family home called Guisborough, which he named after his hometown in Yorkshire, England. Guisborough was granted to Col. Thomas Dent in 1663 and became his family’s home for the last thirteen years of his life. Following his death, his widow, Rebecca Wilkinson, remarried the owner of a neighboring plantation, John Addison.

The White Haven plantation originally constructed under Colonel William Dent's ownership was located somewhere in the Pomonkey region between Charles and Price George's Counties.

John Addison is vital to the origins of the name “White Haven,” as it is where his family originated from in England. Addison took on the role of father to Thomas and Rebecca Dent’s six children, including Colonel William Dent. Apparently inspired by his stepfather’s ancestry, William Dent built his own home in Maryland that he called “Whitehaven.” Located on the border of Charles and Prince George’s counties, this place became the ancestral home of Col. Frederick Dent’s family and the namesake of the future Missouri home. Following Col. William Dent’s death in 1704 he willed Whitehaven to his eldest son Thomas, who in 1715 sold it to his younger brother Peter Dent. Peter expanded Whitehaven, increasing the size of the plantation from 824 acres to 1,330 acres through various re-surveys of the property. The large plantation that Peter Dent created became the home of Col. Frederick F. Dent’s grandfather Peter Dent Jr., who instead of continuing the family tradition of public service decided to live a quiet life as a farmer and member of high society.

(Only a year after William Dent established his Whitehaven home, John Addison had a separate home called Whitehaven that was built in what is today Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River).

Colonel Frederick F. Dent’s father, George Dent, returned to the family trade of public service by leaving Whitehaven and pursuing a career as a surveyor. Through his career as a surveyor his biggest project was the survey and platting of the town of Cumberland, Maryland, where Col. Frederick Dent was born and raised. Following Peter Dent Jr.’s death, the Whitehaven plantation was split between his son Theodore and his nephew George Washington Dent. Both men chose farming over public service and transformed their portions of the property. Theodore Dent took his half of Whitehaven, plus some surrounding Dent plantations, and combined them into a new plantation he called “Independency,” while George Washington Dent owned Whitehaven until 1806 before selling it to a cousin and moving to Georgia, where the soil was better suited to tobacco farming. Due to the fact that Colonel Frederick F. Dent was born after his grandfather had passed, he never experienced Whitehaven at its full 1,330 acre size but would have known of it as his family home through his father. This family connection is most likely why, upon acquiring his farm in St. Louis, Missouri, he chose the name White Haven.

While the Maryland homes of Col. Frederick Dent’s ancestors are lost to time and exist today as parks, preserves, and air force bases, some remnants remain. In the case of Maryland’s Whitehaven, the home itself was lost, along with its exact location, but through the family records and Col. Frederick F. Dent’s connections, its memory lives on.

Further Reading

Newman, Harry Wright. The Maryland Dents: A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Judge Thomas Dent and Captain John Dent who Settled Early in the Province of Maryland. Richmond, VA: The Dietz Press, 1963.

Newman, Harry Wright. Charles County Gentry: A Genealogical History of Six Emigrants- Thomas Dent, John Dent, Richard Edelen, John Hanson, George Newman, Humphrey Warren. All Scions of Armorial Families of Old England who Settled in Charles County, Maryland, and their descendants showing migrations to the South and West. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1971.