The Farm After Hoagland Gates

By 1930 most of the buildings of Broadlands Farm were complete and Hoagland Gates, his wife Margaret and their two daughters, Ann and Elizabeth had settled into life on the farm. Unfortunately, Hoagland’s health began to deteriorate due to an illness which was eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis. At the recommendation of his doctors’, the Gates family began wintering in the south. In 1934, Gates purchased a property in Arizona, and the family began spending winters there.  By the fall of 1943, Hoagland’s health had deteriorated so significantly that he entered a Sanatorium in Asheville, N.C.  His time in Asheville would be relatively short. He passed away there on January 17, 1944. 

 From 1934 until the time of Hoagland Gates’ death, the farm in Maryand was run by James Guibeson, a local farmer. Gates continued to maintain a Jersey herd throughout the period of his ill-health but he stopped importing expensive stock from Jersey. Following Gates’ death, his wife, Margaret Gates, took over the management of the farm and the Jersey cattle herd. With the help of her daughters, and farm hands, Margaret Gates continued to run Broadlands as long as she was able until, in 1958, she began renting the farmland to the Spry Brothers, Inc., which operated multiple farms in and around the Elkton area, primarily growing soybeans. They continued to farm the land until the sale of the property out of the Gates family in 1988.