About Us

The Grassland Foundation Inc. is a 501(c)(3) charitable tax-exempt organization created in 1989 to receive, by bequest from the late Mrs. John Bowie Jr. (Mrs. Audrey Lawrence Bowie), title to the “Grassland” historic site. Since that time, the foundation has been engaged in developing and implementing plans for the restoration and renovation of the property, officially designated as an historic site by the U.S. Department of the Interior for its connections to the Civil War.

The 4-acre property includes the old antebellum brick plantation house at what is today 2719 Hercules Rd. in the National Business Park at Annapolis Junction in western Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

Anderson had returned to Anne Arundel and Prince George’s Counties, Maryland (his place of birth), from Harpers Ferry in what was still the Commonwealth of Virgina, where he owned and operated a dry goods and hardware store. (Today, that restored property is the main headquarters building of the National Park Service in Harpers Ferry).

The foundation operates under an easement granted to the Maryland Historical Trust, which has partially financed the restoration process.

The Bowies sold the balance of the “Grassland” farm to what today is called the National Business Park on the west side of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway at Md. Rt. 32.