The community was founded by Quakers who arrived in the early 18th century[3] searching for land where they could grow tobacco and corn.

[1] A 1901 Department of Labor study documented hundreds of residents who trace their lineage 125 years to free black families.

He was integral in forming the Sandy Spring Farmer's Club and the Mutual Fire Insurance Company.

[10] He attended St. John's College in Annapolis, and he earned his medical degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 1907.

[10] During his fifty-year medical career, Dr. Bird made house calls to his patients, at first in a horse-drawn buggy and later an automobile.

[11] Wood wanted a place to preserve antique furniture, farm equipment, photographs, paintings, and documents of the Sandy Spring area.

[13] The museum was originally located in the basement of a Sandy Spring National Bank branch in Olney.

[14] In October 1986,[15] it moved to Tall Timbers, a brick four-story Colonial house that had been the home of Gladys Brooke Tumbleson, who had died earlier that year.