Nicholas Merryman - Baltimore Sun
When he returned home, he discovered that hard times had forced the family to sell the farm to a cousin, Gen. John Merryman Franklin, who was president of the steamship company United States Lines.
Mr. Merryman enrolled in the University of Maryland and earned a degree in agronomy. He then became a traveling salesman for Larro Feeds and worked in North and South Carolina. He was also playing semiprofessional baseball for the Tarboro Tar Babies in North Carolina's Coastal Plain League.
Family members said that General Franklin realized his cousin would be a good farm manager and offered him the chance to restore Hayfields to the agricultural prominence it once enjoyed.
"It was a tall order," his daughter said, explaining that in 1824 the Marquis de Lafayette presented Col. Nicholas Merryman Bosley with a silver tankard inscribed "By the hand of Lafayette, Hayfields, the best cultivated farm in Maryland."
Mr. Merryman was a cousin of Wallis