Calverton-Galway Local Park features a playground, softball, cricket, four pickleball courts on two tennis courts, and baseball fields across 61.2 acres. The picnic area contains shelters.
M-NCPPC acquired the park in 1965.
History: The Sarah Lee Family Cemetery
When this park opened in 1980, the Parks department placed a single stone reading “Lee Family Cemetery” in a grassy area just beyond the softball outfield.
Here, on land held by the Lee family for close to 100 years, there are an estimated 29 to 50 burials, including Sarah Lee and her husband Peter. Individual tombstones once marked these graves. Thanks to the efforts of descendants Raymond Lee and Bernadette King a protective fence was installed in 2011.
Sarah Lee endured slavery for more than 50 years, much of it on Evan Shaw’s Turkey Flight plantation in Prince George’s County. In 1857, Shaw’s will freed Sarah and her children and granted them a sizable piece of property in Montgomery County. Lee was one of only ten African American property owners identified in all of Montgomery County at the end of the Civil War.
Records suggest the Lee family used lumber from trees on their land to build a home by 1872. Though forced to sell some land to settle tax debt, the family kept nearly 30 acres until 1957 when they leased out the gravel mining rights. By 1962 all the Lee property was out of family hands and was used for gravel mining, a county landfill, and then a park.
Rent a Picnic Shelter at Calverton-Galway Local Park
Picnic shelter reservations are first-come, first-served and are available to rent from April 1 to October 31.
To reserve a shelter, create an online account through ActiveMontgomery
Or you can call the Montgomery Parks Permit Office at 301-495-2525 from 8:30am to 5pm, Monday through Friday.