Built in 1808, Mount Hebron is best known as the mid-nineteenth century home of Judge Thomas Beale Dorsey, who successfully petitioned the Constitutional Convention to give Howard county status in 1851. Judge Dorsey and his wife raised their family in the arms of Hebron House until all the children were grown and on their own, and continued to live in the House until their deaths in the mid 1850s.
Hebron House was designed by N.G. Starkwether, a prominent architect of the day. Starkwether also designed Wilton, which burned in 1938 and El Monte, where one of the Dorsey daughters lived after leaving Hebron House, and which still stands on Furrow Avenue today. Judge Dorsey was forward-thinking enough for the day to embrace some of the finer details available at the time. Many of the original architectural details remain unchanged today. The house is now owned by Mount Hebron Presbyterian Church, and is available for private functions.
