This excerpt taken from Tom Patton's "Discovering Maryland's Coastal Bays." Tom Patton lives in South Point.

"Rising sheer, gaunt and bare, but strangely appealing...leaping upward from the flat coastal plains...most noted of all the houses on Sinepuxent Neck," was the description in 1940 by one architectural historian viewing the long-vacant colonial dwelling known as Genesar in Worcester County.

Constructed in 1732 and barely withstanding the elements of continuing deterioration, Genesar is largely hidden from South Point Road by thick foliage. It is strikingly incongruous among the neighboring new construction. The slim and simple elegance of Genesar, an exceptional expression of the so-called Transitional Style, stands in contrast to the rambling vinyl boxes of today. The handsome glazed-brick pattern, albeit heavily weathered, remains one of the outstanding features of its kind in the entire country.

In addition to the architectural interest of Genesar, the property carries with it a fascinating tale involving the original landowner, Edward Wale. Was he, in fact, Edward Whalley, a cousin of Oliver Cromwell and, along with Cromwell, one of the regicide judges who sentenced King Charles I to death in 1649? When Cromwell, the Lord Protector, was later defeated by the forces of Charles II, General Whalley fled to New England. Wha(l)ley family descendants believe there is evidence that Wale and Whalley were the same. Or perhaps the son of the same. Many historians dispute this, and therein lies a chapter of colonial history yet to be concluded.

While weighing the arguments on either side of the Whalley legend, a visitor to the property should stand by the outer walls, run a hand over the crevassed old bricks held together by crumbling mortar, and feel a shiver down the spine that comes involuntarily in the presences of antiquities that resound with echoes of the past. Then to read from a diary written by one of the first Presbyterian ministers on Delmarva, visiting Genesar to preach the Gospel:

"My attention is attracted from everything else to an old gentleman...He is clad in a costume of the days of the Protector and bears himself with a military air reminding us of the soldiers of England...I saw that grand old face beam with expression and the soul within seemed to arouse like a lion from sleep when one of the company brought up the subject of the then political situation in England."

As of this writing, one of the last parcels of open space in the original 2200-acre Genesar tract is under development-some 370 acres of tidewater forest and fields and marshes. Still spared the bulldozer's blade is a nearly perfect Delmarva Bay, that circular indentation in the land filled with ground water and rimmed with persimmon trees, pine, red oak, and a low, tangled fringe of groundsel. It's a herpetologist's paradise.

In need of more protection than the current owners can continue to give, Genesar is currently up for sale.