Central Maryland

Lynn mentioned that he was named, in part, for the founder of Montgomery County, Dr. Thomas Sprigg Wootton. The homeowner then asked Lynn to see something in her back yard.

She led him outside and there, on the ground, stood a tombstone which read “Thomas Sprigg Wootton.” It had been there since she and her husband bought the house several decades earlier. The woman had never known what to do with it and asked if he had any suggestions. Lynn was mystified.

On a lark, he called the Montgomery County government later that day and asked if they knew the whereabouts of the county founder's gravesite. After the usual indeterminable amount of hold time, Lynn was told that “they had no idea.”

Thomas Sprigg Wootton’s biography, however, is well known.

A delegate of the Maryland Colonial Assembly, Wootton introduced a bill on Sept. 6, 1776, to separate what was then Frederick into three counties: Montgomery, Washington, and Frederick. These were the first counties in America to be created by a legislative act.

The Thomas S. Wootton High School, Wootton’s Mill Park, and Wootton Parkway in Montgomery County are all named after him.

Sprigg Lynn's family had been longtime friends of the Woottons dating back to the 1700s. Both families were tobacco farmers who were influential during the establishment of Maryland and the United States. Judge David Lynn was one of the justices who repudiated the Stamp Act in 1765, an action that was a precursor to the Revolutionary War.

Wootton lived, died, and was buried on his farm near where the school is now located. The farm was sold to Henry Shouse and Otho Williams, who opened a gristmill on the property. The land was then sold again, this time to Charles Viers, the namesake of Viers Mill Road and school, in 1919.

Finally, developers bought it in the late 1960s and early 1970s to create subdivisions, including the community of Rockshire on Wootton Parkway.

As happened in the movie Poltergeist, Wootton’s gravesite was leveled, unnoticed, during construction of the houses, leaving the tombstone knocked over and disregarded in the yard of one of the houses. The actual burial site is lost to history.

Consequently, the remains of Thomas Sprigg Wootton lie somewhere on the land he once called home and that is now home to many, many others in the thriving county he created.