Colgate: Friends’ Creek Farm
by Brian R. Waesche
The property at 7950 Friends Creek Road is the former private resort of the Craig Colgate, Jr. family. The Colgate vacation home is the more modern of two homes on the property. The Colgate holdings were intersected north-to-south by the waterway Friends Creek, and west-to-east by the Pennsylvania border. The Colgate’s large summer home, though addressed to Emmitsburg, actually stands in the state of Pennsylvania, experiencing dual residency. Unknown to many, hidden up a lengthy, private lane marked by two stone pillars, the Colgate house is set down a drive following Friends Creek into its wooded valley. The drive’s columns, placed beside the low-lying road-bridge where Hornets Nest Road’s designation becomes Friends Creek Road, are the only hint at the secluded Colgate retreat.
The first of the two homes, a frame farmhouse overlooking Friends Creek, is a cozy 19th-century dwelling, accompanied by a medium-sized barn on the Maryland side of the land’s division. Built on the sloping grade to the creek, the farmhouse is raised in the front, exposing a full fieldstone foundation level below the front porch, in contrast to just two upper white-sided stories at the rear. The Colgate drive passes first by this primitive frame house before winding between the farmhouse and a barn, to climb the knoll where the Colgate retreat, called the “Colgate Mansion” by some, oversees the estate.
The main house of this circa-1900 full stone, “Colgate Mansion” appears to have once been, perhaps, half the size, thought to have started as a small stone cottage due to variation in the stone at the center of the construct, suggesting this portion of the house was formerly enlarged by itself. The house today is complete with an upper half-story, making it a proper cape-cod made unique as the upper three bays of the front façade are not constructed like typical dormers, but more so in reverse with the casement, French-country windows, inset in the roof rather than protruding outward. Several additions have also been made to the home, such as a large glass pavilion room, rumored to have once been an indoor pool but is now a flagstone-floored recreation space.
Also on the property is one surviving fishing cabin made of log along Friends Creek, an abandoned fenced tennis-court, concrete-edged stock pond, random open-air chimineas built of mountain stone, and sporadic stone stairways leading into the waters of Friends Creek for fishermen. These stairs, chimneys, and cabin pay homage to the Angler’s Club that the Colgate’s assisted in founding and further allocated their property as its headquarters.
Craig Colgate, Jr. was born in 1912 to Craig Colgate, Sr. and Marion Townsend Colgate at Flushing, Long Island, New York. His mother died this same year, if not during child-birth, within months of welcoming her son. The senior Craig Colgate (born 1875) was the son of Robert Colgate, Jr. (1851-1922), also of New York. Robert Jr.’s father, Robert Colgate, Sr. (1812-1885) was the head of the company that became Colgate-Palmolive after he began mass production and sale of the toothpaste that his father, William Colgate created. William Colgate was born in 1783 at Kent, Great Britain, before immigrating to the emancipated colonies of America. William passed away in 1857 at New York City. The work of William’s son, Robert Colgate, Sr. allowed his Colgate Company hygienic paste to grow into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, headquartered at 300 Park Avenue in mid-town Manhattan. Craig Colgate, Jr., the two-times great-grandson of William Colgate, graduated from Yale University in 1935, before teaching at Deerfield Academy in New England. In addition to teaching, Colgate was also the school’s second swim coach between 1937 and 1942. Deerfield’s most successful sport, since its first swim team was formed in 1921, Colgate was a forerunner to the reputation the school would earn as a top academic swimming competitor. Deerfield is credited today with twenty-one New England Championship swim titles, seventeen of which were won consecutively between 1974 and 1990. Colgate’s affiliation with Deerfield was discontinued at the start of World War II, during which he served as an Army counterintelligence officer in the Mediterranean Theater.
In May 1942, the engagement of Craig Colgate, Jr. and Barbara Hobart was announced, and the pair was wed within the year. From Chicago, Barbara attended finishing school in Switzerland before graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts in 1937. In the early years of the war, Barbara drove an Ambulance for the American Red Cross. When combat came to a close, the couple lived in Illinois, where Colgate, Jr. again taught school before relocating to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to earn a Graduate Degree in History from Harvard, where he was also a member of their championship swim team. In 1946, following graduation from Harvard, Colgate worked a short time for the National Trust for Historic Preservation prior to employment by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.). While an Agent for the C.I.A., between 1947 and 1960, Colgate was stationed in Chicago, Berlin, and Washington, D.C., outside of which he and his wife purchased a home in the D.C. suburb of Bethesda in 1951.
Following his government years with the C.I.A., Colgate became involved with the Kennedy Presidential Campaign for the duration of 1960, of which John F. Kennedy successfully won the race to become the 35th U.S. President. Ballads cast, Colgate became Director of International Trade in 1961, and worked for the commerce department through 1966. Also at this time, the junior Craig Colgate purchased land sixty miles north of Bethesda at Emmitsburg, where he long operated a tree farm for hobby. Colgate and his wife purchased more land in Emmitsburg in 1972, their vacation home likely gained with this purchase.
Already immensely successful, in 1966, Craig Colgate, Jr. founded Columbia Books. The leading agency in the publication of information directories, relating to business, government, foundations, lobbying, and associations. Colgate was active president and publisher to his company until retirement in the 1980s. Columbia Books continues to be operated out of Bethesda, where it was founded, and is known today as Columbia Books & Information Systems (CBIS). CBIS is now also the parent company to several other subsidiary brands.
An athlete, teacher, veteran, public servant, politician, businessman, agriculturist, and member of the Washington Metropolitan Club, Craig Colgate, Jr. died of a heart ailment at the age of seventy-nine on June 2, 1989. Three years later, Barbara H. Colgate moved from her Bethesda home to the District of Columbia in 1992. As worldly as her husband, Barbara was fluent in German and French, an avid tennis player and skier, volunteer at the National Gallery of Art, and generous donor to the construction of the Washington National Cathedral. She was also a tutor to children and enjoyed her garden club.
Barbara Colgate passed away in August of 2004. Her obituary mentioned the Western-Maryland home of her and her late husband, which they called “Friends Creek Farm”. The Colgate’s daughter, Susan Colgate Goldman, recalls, “She [her mother] entertained thousands of people there over the years. She always had something going on there with a big crowd.”
Craig Colgate, Jr. and his wife were survived by three children: Craig Colgate III, Robert Hobart Colgate, and aforementioned Susan of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, at the time of their mother’s death. Each heir received an interest of the Emmitsburg Friend’s Creek property, and in 2005, conveyed the holdings to Friends Creek Farm LLC of Middletown.
The stone Colgate house showing one of the large additions tastefully added with stone “book-ends” complete with a chimney and filled between with cedar shake.
The farm house on the property, in exquisite condition overlooking friends creek.
