John Ridgely, Jr.

John Ridgely, Jr. (1882-1959), the son of Capt. John Ridgely (1851-1938) and Helen West Stewart Ridgely (1854-1929), was the sixth and final master of the Hampton estate. In the late 1920s, he established the Hampton Development Company which constructed and sold houses on Hampton lands near the heart of the Home Farm. John was responsible for selling the mansion with some of its furnishings and 43 acres of land to the National Park Service in 1947 with funds for the purchase and restoration provided by the Avalon Foundation, a Mellon family foundation. This portrait by Stanislaw Rembski (1896-1998), a Polish immigrant who became a leading portrait painter in mid-20th century Baltimore, shows John after he and his second wife Jane Rodney Ridgely (1902-1978) had left Hampton and moved to the Hampton Lower House across the road.