Are there graves on the Intelligence Community Campus in Bethesda?

A new report on burial sites prepared for the Montgomery County Planning Board adds new information about a hidden cemetery where members of the Brooke family were buried on their 19th century farm in Bethesda. Based upon the typical distance and topographical characteristics of burial plots on family farms in Montgomery County, planners have delineated the most likely area of the Brooke farm property where the cemetery might be located. The largest portion of the cemetery zone lies within the Intelligence Community Campus at 4600 Sangamore Road. Smaller portions of the cemetery zone are at the corners of the Sangamore Road-Brookes Lane intersection, including a tiny part of the Shops at Sumner Place property, one garden apartment building of the Sumner Highlands development, and the ground under Sangamore Road itself.

The proposed Apartments at Sumner Place project site does not fall within planners' estimated cemetery zone (encircled in blue on the map above). But it does lie within the larger footprint of the Brooke farm (delineated in red on the map above). As a result, that - and any other future development within the former Brooke farm property lines - should proceed with caution during the excavation process.

Another important question yet to be answered: Are any of the Brooke family's slaves - there were at least 18 owned by Thomas Brooke and his wife, Henrietta, between 1820 and 1850 - buried somewhere on the farm property area? One of their slaves, Lydia Garey, ran away from the Brooke farm in 1835, and Henrietta Brooke bought a "runaway slave" ad in a local newspaper at the time. Some of their slaves were as old as 80 when recorded in the census of 1850. Would they have been buried with the family, or in a separate plot elsewhere on the farm? 

How many of the Brooke family members are buried on the farm land is also an unknown at this point. It is believed that the remains of Thomas and Henrietta were exhumed and relocated to Rockville Cemetery in 1918, but the fate of other family graves - and of those who were enslaved on the farm - is unclear.

Given the desecration of the Moses African Cemetery at Westbard Avenue and River Road, and the disgraceful way Montgomery County elected officials have handled that matter over the last 12 years, questions about the Brooke farm should be taken seriously and addressed in an appropriate and sensitive manner by the County and property developers. That will not be the focus of the presentation of the new burial site report to the Planning Board, which is mainly to just update the County inventory of burial sites, but commissioners will have the chance to review and comment on it at the board's Thursday, May 25, 2023 meeting at 1:35 PM.