By the late 1600s, the Addison family was an influential Maryland family. In 1706, Addison’s son Thomas patented a tract of land on the northwest boundary of Battersea, which he called Want Water. Want Water, or Lyles House, was constructed (c. 1706).
In 1736, John Addison, the eldest son of Thomas Addison, sold the 35-acre property at Want Water to a shipbuilder named Humphrey Batts. Batts built or completed the house at Want Water and began building ships on the property. In 1746, he advertised for sale “a new Schooner, of about 36 tons, well built for the West-India or Coasting-Trade.”
A global trade emerged. Batts and his neighbors at Broad Creek actively grew and sold tobacco, constructed ships, and bought goods and African slaves.
During the last decades of the eighteenth century, it was occupied by William Lyles, a close friend of George Washington. It was allowed to fall into disrepair during the twentieth century and ultimately collapsed, probably sometime during the 1970s. Thus was destroyed of one of Broad Creek’s greatest historical assets. In 1998, the ruins — the gambrel ends and two brick chimneys — were stabilized by the National Park Service.
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