Environmental group seeks historic stone

Legend has it that George Washington used rock to sharpen sword

‘‘Someone felt they’d be better custodians of our heritage,” said Grove resident George Paine, who is among a group of historians and conservationists on the hunt for the historic capstone.

Washington Grove’s Ad Hoc Woods Preservation Group recently undertook the search. The group’s primary mission is to remove trash, address erosion issues caused by stormwater runoff and tidy up the area around the spring, Paine said.

Town historians say the spring, located in the town’s 30-acre West Woods, feeds into Lake Whetstone in Montgomery Village.

It was a gathering place after casual walks or for religious retreats when Washington Grove was a campsite for Methodists in the late 1800s.

With the current drought, the spring is dry. It is about a 10-minute walk away from Washington Grove Lane.

A local legend holds that Washington, while on an expedition in 1755, paused at the spring to sharpen his sword on the capstone.

The spring was named for the capstone, according to Clare Kelly, a historic preservation planner with Montgomery County Park and Planning.

Resident Joan Mahaffey, a descendant of Washington Grove’s first mayor, Roy McCathran, said she started working to find the capstone after seeing a photograph her brother Jim took of the spring in 1961.

Another brother, Bob, had told her that he even went on a ride with the thieves, she said.

It was early afternoon in 1965 or 1966 when Bob McCathran, then in high school, was hitchhiking from Washington Grove to downtown Gaithersburg, McCathran, now 58 and a Gaithersburg resident, said in a telephone interview.

The driver and passenger, brothers who McCathran said he knew at the time, told him they’d nabbed the stone to place in their grandmother’s garden in Gaithersburg, he said.

The driver was about 18 years old, while the passenger was in his 20s, McCathran said.

The brothers lived adjacent to the West Woods, possibly with their mother, he said.

‘‘I do recall saying they should’ve taken it back,” he said, adding that the driver was not keen to the suggestion.

They dropped him off at the intersection of East Diamond and Summit avenues, then the car turned right at East Diamond and drove beyond Gaithersburg Elementary School, he said.

McCathran said he didn’t report it to police, adding that as a teenager, he ‘‘just wasn’t very civic-minded at the time” and didn’t pay attention to it until Mahaffey recently took an interest in the subject.

The Gazette located a man who identified himself as a brother of the driver and passenger. He said by phone last month that he didn’t know anything about the capstone or its removal. One of the brothers is deceased, and the other brother could not be reached.

Residents eventually learned it was missing, but there wasn’t an uproar, Mahaffey said.

Mahaffey said she’s hopeful for the stone’s return, but understands the odds are high, considering it had no distinguishing marks.

‘‘Whoever took it probably is not still alive,” she said. ‘‘I think it was taken in innocence.”

No reward will be offered, Paine said.

‘‘I think it’s perfectly fine a half-century later,” he said wryly. ‘‘It’s not unreasonable to take turns with these things.”