Cresap, Michael, House
Main St. at Green Spring Rd., Oldtown, MDThe Michael Cresap House was the home of the eighteenth-century frontiersman, Michael Cresap, (1742-1775). It is reputably the oldest extant building in Oldtown whose village history dates to the seventeenth century. A Shawnee tribe had an Indian village there.
In 1741 Michael Cresap's father Thomas Cresap (c.1702-1790) a prominent frontiersman, founded Oldtown and built a fortified trading post and home. Until the establishment of Cumberland, Maryland, Oldtown was the only settlement in Maryland west of the Cononocheague Creek in Washington County.
Michael Cresap followed his father's example by building the extant structure as a trading post-home and by exploring the wilderness in search of sites for future settlement. Cresap was one of the outstanding eighteenth-century frontiersmen in the Ohio Valley although he is not as well known today as his contemporaries; Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark. In 1774 Cresap led an expedition to clear the bottomlands of the Muskingum River for occupation. Strained relations with the Indians compounded the difficulties of Cresap's frontier party. On at least two occasions he prevented his men from attacking. The murder of a peaceful Indian family, far distant from Cresap and his party, touched off Lord Dunmore's War (April-October 1774). Cresap served in the war as a captain in the Virginia militia; he was a signatory of the peace treaty.
His stature as a leader is attested to by the fact that western Maryland volunteers at the beginning of the Revolution chose Michael Cresap to command them. In 1775 Cresap led these men to join the Continental Army at Boston, Massachusettes, covering the 550-mile journey in twenty-two days--a remarkable twenty-five miles per day. Once in New England Cresap suffered a relapse of an earlier illness which forced him to resign from his command. He died in New York City on October 18, 1775, en route home.
Cresap's home in Oldtown became the property of his widow. After remarrying she conveyed it to Michael Cresap's son-in-law, Luther Martin (c. 1742-1826), the first attorney general of the State of Maryland, and an eminent lawyer. Martin held the property for a short time; he sold it to his brother-in-law, James Cresap.
Luther Martin's association with Michael Cresap gained national notoriety in the 1790s. Thomas Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia published an account of the murder of the Indian family that touched off Lord Dunmore's War naming Cresap as the culprit. Through several letters published in newspapers, Martin refuted Jefferson's story. The evidence completely exonerated Cresap although Jefferson never conceded.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.