USA > Maryland > Some old historic landmarks of Virginia and Maryland : described in a hand-book for the tourist over the Washington-Virginia railway > Part 10
USA > Virginia > Some old historic landmarks of Virginia and Maryland : described in a hand-book for the tourist over the Washington-Virginia railway > Part 10
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"Now in the county of Fairfax.
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his useful life, and where the younger children, John Augustine and Mildred, were probably born. The mill was provided with the best machinery that could then be obtained, and so excellent in after years was the flour manufactured for export under the management of George, the son, that its brand always passed without inspection. Large cargoes of it were shipped to the West Indies and other points in schooners, which then came in the deeper waters and loaded at the very doors of the mill. The picture as given is not an ideal of the old structure, but a correct representation of it from a drawing made long years ago. In this mill was ground also, all the flour and meal for the surrounding neighborhood as well as the grists of the grain products of the five large plantations of the Mount Vernon estate.
There are a few still living who have youthful memories of the mill in the closing days of its usefulness, who heard the busy din and clatter of its old wooden cog wheels and saw the dusty miller taking his tolls and the cumbrous ox wains, with their ebony colored drivers bringing in and carrying away their grists.
The shaky tenement stood until the beginning of the fifties. The plash of the pent up waters over its great wheel with foam, and rainbow hues, and the clatter and din of its grinding gear have been silent for nearly three-score years. The long race way which led the hurrying waters from the pond far up the valley across the fields to turn the busy wheel is now a grazing ground for cattle. The springs no longer confined by dyke or dam are scattered and running to waste. Many of the stones of the mill walls have been carried away to be used for foundations of houses in the neighborhood. At the door of a farm house nearby, the great nether stone that ground the whilom grists, now serves as a stepping stone to the doorway. The stream whose depth floated the trading schooners of the olden time, and where the fisherman cast his net for herring and shad; and where the youthful George mayhaps angled and took his first lessons in the art of swimming, have been filled by the descending alluvion from the cultivated fields through the many years, and are now no more than an easy fording place.
Augustine Washington remained at Epsewasson but a few years, but to him they were years of busy life. Besides building the mill as described, he erected the middle and original portion of the Mount Vernon mansion for his son Lawrence, who was then ab- sent from the province and engaged in the siege of Carthagena.
It will be remembered that the mill was one of the last places visited by General Washington in his usual round of inspection of his farming premises, on the day pre- vious to his sudden death. The locality is one rather sequestered and lonely, with rarely a passing traveler.
But go there reader as the writer has gone many a time, if your sympathies and reverential inclinations are for objects like these and take your seat in the drowsy quiet of a midsummer day under the shadowy branches of one of the oaks still remaining of the olden forest; and while you gaze on the briar grown ruins and listen to the murmur of the dwindled stream which goes hurrying on in its course to join the waters of the majestic stream but a mile or two beyond, the mystic veil which hides the vanished years of a century and a half will rise, and lo! all around you will throng the faded scenes and forms of the early days. The fallen stones will move from the scattered heaps under the straggling vines and brambles and take their places in the walls again. The mill of Augustine and George Washington will be itself once more. The water will come pouring down over the mossy wheel. You will hear the clattering of the grind- ing gear, and the plantation wains will bring in and carry away their burdens. You will see the dusty miller taking his tolls and filling the bins. A horseman will ride up, and hitching his horse by the door, go in and hold parley with the miller, and you will not need to ask who he is, for his stately mien and dignified bearing will at once proclaim him the proprietor. You will see, too, the trading schooner waiting at the landing for its cargo for Jamaica or Barbadoes. The early pioneers in rough homespun garb and quaint vehicles will pass along the old highway by you in toilsome march for the new Canaan of their imaginations, there to fix their landmarks and lay the hearth stones. : Anon, you will see straggling companies of provincial troops dressed in kersey
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or buckskin, with heavy flint lock muskets on their shoulders, hurrying up to the camp at the new born hamlet of Alexandria. General Braddock and Governor Dinwiddie, Commodore Kepple and General John St. Clair will ride along in the pomp of vice re- gal chariot and dashing retinue and guards of British regulars in showy scarlet uni- forms bright with gilding and tinsel. War's wild alarum has been sounded, and the frontiers must be held against the encroachments of the French and their murderous Indian allics. Among other passers up the highway, you will see a strippling wagon boy in homely workman's garb driving his own team, and like the rest of the wayfarers hurrying to the camp. He had been for a year in the employ of John Ballentine, haul- ing iron ore to his furnace at Colchester, but the drum and fife of the troopers and the wild rumors of war have opened the vision of his adventurous spirit to other duties and other lines of action.
He is going to offer his team to Braddock's quartermaster to haul supplies for the army over the mountains. Very obscure, lowly and friendless was this wagon boy then, but under that homespun shirt and buckskin cap were the lion heart and comprehensive intellect which when ere long the opportunities came to him were to win for him a re- nown as a soldier and commander, world wide and imperishable.
The boy who plodded over the weary roads of the Occoquan with his loads of ore for the furnace became in after years the strategic and trusted soldier, the intrepid lead- er of the riflemen of Virginia and the swaying spirit and hero of Quebec, Saratoga and Cowpens.
The years pass on. The war is over. The French and Indians have receded and peace and safety for the new settlements reign in the place of alarm. Braddock is resting in an unmarked grave in the far off wilderness beyond the mountains. The provincial troopers are back from the disastrous rout at Duquesne to their homes in the lowlands. Col. Washington, the hero of the day, has been elected to the House of Burgesses from the county of Fairfax, and has been down attending the session at Williamsburg, and now we see him coming up the highway in his coach and four with outriders. But he is not alone. Beside him sits a prim, matronly looking lady attired in silk and laces who but the day before was the widow Custis. Now, she is Mrs. George Washington and is going up to preside as the mistress of the manor house of Mount Vernon. Other historic scenes appear and vanish as we gaze, and the Virginia Colonel again rides along as he goes to and from the provincial capital.
Years later the continental armies of Washington, Green, Lafayette and Wayne surge along, going to the closing act in the revolutionary drama.
Not in all the thirteen colonies was there a more historic road than this which coursed down from the mountains by Alexandria, Epsewasson and over the Occoquan at Col- chester and down to Williamsburg. It is one of the most interesting landmarks in our State.
The site of the old mill we have been describing is distant two miles from the Mount Vernon Mansion, two from old Belvoir, one from Woodlawn, the second home of Nellie Custis Lewis, and a half mile from the turnpike leading from Alexandria to Ac- cotink. It will repay a diversion from the beaten line of travel with the varied reflec- tions it will evoke from every pilgrim, whose patriotism and reverence are wont to kindle at every shrine around which lingers an association or memorial glimpse, how- ever faint and dim, of the illustrious personage whose name and fame, are indissolubly linked with so much that we all value and hold in kindly remembrance and holy trust.
WOODLAWN, THE HOME OF NELLIE CUSTIS LEWIS.
The portrait of Miss Nellie Custis by Gilbert Stuart from which the accompanying engraving was taken and which is now in the possession of Prof. William F. Lee of Lexington College, Va., was considered by contemporary judges an excellent likeness and one of the most beautiful faces the artist had painted in the colonies. Miss Nellie was frequently in the company of Stuart at Mount Vernon and other places, the result of which was a very cordial and enduring friendship. The portrait was the most at- tractive picture among the rare paintings at Arlington House, the residence of her
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brother for about fifty years. It is the likeness of a maiden about eighteen years of age, the admired of all who attended the republican court during the last years of Washington's administration as President of the United States.
She is dressed in a plain white garment, in the scant fashion of the day, one of her plump, bare arms forming a conspicuous feature of the picture, her chin resting upon a finger of her gently closed hand. Her sweet face, regular in every feature, is garnished by her dark curls, tastefully clustering around her forehead and temples, while her long hair, gathered in an apparently careless manner on the top of her head, is secured by a cluster of white flowers. The whole picture is modest, simple, beautiful.
"Nelly Custis," as she was called in her maidenhood, was as witty as she was beau- tiful; quick at repartee, highly accomplished, full of information, a good conversation- alist, the life of any company whether young or old, and was greatly beloved by her foster father, the great patriot. When in June, 1775, Washington was appointed Com- mander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, he placed John Parke Custis, the father of "Nellie," on his staff, in which capacity he served during most of the long war that followed. He was aide to Washington at the siege of Yorktown in the autumn of 1781 and was then a member of the Virginia Assembly but dying that year of fever, his
WOODLAWN, THE HOME OF NELLIE CUSTIS LEWIS.
children, George W. Parke Custis and Eleanor Parke Custis, were left orphans, the for- mer only six months old and the latter nearly three years old, and became the adopted children of Washington, and the fondly cared for inmates of the home at Mount Ver- non. Here a private tutor of collegiate training was provided for them and under the watchful and exemplary care of their distinguished guardians; their young minds were developed for the practical duties of life.
Nellie was born at Abingdon, the Custis homestead on the Potomac just above the four mile run, March 21, 1778. Her mother was a descendant of Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, through her grandfather Benedict Calvert of Mount Airy, Maryland. A paternal ancestor, John Parke, was at one time a member of the English Parliament and afterwards a soldier in Queen Anne's army in Holland and became an aide de camp of the renowned Marlborough at the battle of Blenheim in Germany, fought August 2nd, 1801. Marlborough commanded the English troops and Marshal Tallard those of France and Bavaria who lost the day with 27000 killed and wounded, and 13000 made prisoners. By the victory, the Electorate of Bavaria became the prize of the victors.
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Col. Parke had the honor of bearing the joyful intelligence to Queen Anne who, as a token of her regard gave him her miniature portrait set in diamonds, a thousand pounds sterling and appointed him governor of the Leeward Islands. In the rebellion in Antigua he became obnoxious to the seditious faction and fell by a musket shot.
Washington had a nephew, Lawrence Lewis, the sixth child of Col. Fielding Lewis and Betty Washington, who was the second child of Captain Augustine Washington, who was the second child of Lawrence, who was the first child of Col. John Washing- ton the immigrant to Bridge's Creek, Westmoreland county, Va., in 1657. He had served meritoriously in the revolutionary struggle and toward the close of it was an aide on the staff of General Daniel Morgan the renowned wagon boy of the Occoquan. He was much at Mount Vernon after the retirement of Washington from the presi- dency, and the "blessing" of a "good husband for Nellie when she would want and deserve one" was bestowed upon her. She and Lawrence were married Feb. 22, 1799. Many suitors had sought her hand to be denied for the one her grandfather had chosen and preferred for her over all others. About a month before the happy event the Pa- triot wrote to his nephew saying: "Your letter of January 10th, I received in Alexandria on Monday, whither I went to become the guardian of Nellie, thereby to authorize a license for your nuptials on the 22nd of next month." The wedding took place on the last anniversary of his birthday that Washington spent on earth. Great preparations had been made for the event. The mansion was decked with flowers and evergreens, and ample provision made for a time of festivity and good cheer; and the gentlefolk of the surrounding country invited. There were assembled for the occasion the Dan- dridges, Custises, Calverts, Lees, Lewises, Corbins, Bushrods, Blackburns, Masons, Car- rolls, and many others. The ceremony was performed in the great drawing-room lighted by many waxen tapers, which brought out in strong relief the silent portraits on the walls, in curious contrast with the merry throng before them. The stately minuet was danced and the spirited Virginia reel. Low voices whispered tender words in hall and ante-rooms, and the house soon to be so silent and mournful echoed with mirth and hilarity. It was a brilliant scene. The picturesque costumes of the colonial days were still in vogue,-rich fabrics, and richer colors, stomachers, and short clothes, jewelled buckles and brooches, powder and ruffles everywhere. Mount Vernon never witnessed such a scene again. Ten months later in the same spacious drawing room the scene of these bridal festivities, the body of the great chief lay on its sable bier and at the even- tide of one midsummer day fifty-two years after the pealing of the joyous wedding bells, the bride who was then the cynosure of all eyes and the theme of all praise from the gay admiring throng which had crowded around her, was brought and laid in funeral robes in the hush and silence of death to await the last sad rites of burial in the family tomb, close to the remains of the long departed friends of her childhood and girlhood years.
By a provision of the last will and testament of George Washington, made July 9, 1799, "all that tract of land" in the county of Fairfax, and a portion of the Mount Ver- non estate "north of the road leading from the ford of Dogue Run to the Gum spring as described in the derise of the other part of the tract to Bushrod Washington, until it comes to the stone and the three red or Spanish oaks on the knowl-thence with the rectangular line to the back line, between Mr. Mason and me-thence with the line westerly along the new double ditch to Dogue Run by the tumbling dam of my mill-thence with the said run to the ford aforementioned. to which I add all the land I possess west of said Dogue Creek, bounded easterly and southerly thereby-together with the Mill and Distillery, and all other houses and improvements on the premises, making together about two thousand acres," was devised as a dower to the aforesaid Major Lewis and Nellie his wife. On this patrimonial estate, these favored subjects of the General's solicitude erected in 1805 a commodious dwelling-much more pretentious than that of Mount Vernon-indeed the stateliest of all the manor houses of the upper Potomac-and began under the most favorable auspices the establishment of the new home. Nellie was then about twenty-four years of age, It had been five years since she followed the remains of her honored grandfather to their last resting place and Martha, her grandmother, had only three years before, been laid by his side. They
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built their dwelling-place three miles inland from Mount Vernon, but on a high ele- vation, so that it commanded a pleasant view of the river and the expanse of Dogue Bay and its wide stretching valley.
Hardly half of the extensive manor was then cleared and under cultivation. The rest was heavily timbered. The soil had not lost all its virgin richness, and abundant crops were produced even under slave labor.
Woodlawn in Culpeper county was the home of Major Lewis' childhood and he honored the place and its endearing associations by transferring the name to his new home on the Potomac. Nellie's grandfather, in his parental fondness for her and his great regard for the husband of her choice did not forget to supplement his liberal gift of two thousand acres of land for their homestead with other substantial tokens of land and ready cash with which to erect without delay, a suitable dwelling for them so that their patrimony was made entirely ample to maintain their high social standing, and grandmother Martha from her large resources gave them fitting dower for their new be- ginnings.
Under the roof of Woodlawn was ever dispensed a generous hospitality, and many were the distinguished guests from all lands in the early decades of the century who came to cross its threshold and pay their regards to its worthy proprietors. General, the Marquis de Lafayette, on his second visit in 1824 to the land he had so valiantly helped to defend and make independent, came here to renew his fondly cherished ac- quaintance with Nellie, the stately housewife, who was but a child when he had seen her nearly fifty years before in the home of his old commander, and had taken her oft times in her sweet laughing moods upon his knee and kissed her with a parental fond- ness, remembering doubtless the dear ones of his own household so far away in La Belle, France. Nellie was no stranger to the faces of titled dignitaries of the old world, for she had seen scores of them and hundreds of our own celebrities both civil and military, when a child in the elosing years of the war and during the time of the first presidency. At all times and with all conditions of life around, she was the cour- teous, intelligent and agreeable lady, winning and retaining the esteem of all who knew her. Gifted with rare and genuine sympathy she was ever ready in generous response in the joys and sorrows, in the hopes and fears, the prosperity or adversity of those whom she honored with her friendship. The toilers on the plantation always found in her a sympathizer with and a promoter of their conditions. Her religious profession she carried out in every day life and made them a practical reality. She was a zealous member of the Episcopal Church and a regular attendant upon its services either at Po- hick or Alexandria. Always it was her usage, says one who knew her, and is still among the living, to have morning and evening prayers which all of the domestics of the house attended.
For nearly forty years Nelly was mistress of the Woodlawn mansion, and here were born to her four children-Agnes the eldest, dying at a school in Philadelphia; Fran- ces Parke, who married General E. G. W. Butler, and died at Pass Christian, Missis- sippi, a few years ago; Lorenzo, and Eleanor Angela, who married Hon. C. M. Con- rad, of Louisiana, and died in New Orleans many years ago. Major Lawrence Lewis died at Arlington, November 20, 1839, and one summer day, July 15, 1852, Mrs. Nelly, his wife, followed him, full of years and honors to the burial vault at Mount Vernon. She had passed four years beyond the three score and ten line. To the watcher from farmhouse and village, that must have been a lonely and mournful funeral procession indeed, as it slowly wended its course down the long Virginia highway from the Shen- andoah to the Potomac. The hearse containing the remains of the aged grandmother, and a solitary carriage accompanying, with the two surviving grandsons, one of whom was lately living to tell of the impressive circumstances of the event. Late at night their journey was finished, and the coffined form of Nelly was placed in the parlor at Mount Vernon, where, more than fifty years before, crowned with bridal wreaths "the fairest lady of the land," Washington himself had affectionately given her in marriage, and commended her to the protecting care of the one favored claimant of her choice, and where she had received the congratulations and blessings of so many of her kinsfolk
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and friends. Many of the citizens of Alexandria and Washington and the surrounding country came to pay their tributes of fond remembrance and regard to "Nelly" as she lay in state in the "Mansion," and to see the last of "carth to earth." Down in the family burial-place, just by the waters of the river on whose pleasant banks she had passed so many happy days in childhood and youth, her dust is very near to that of her kind and loving guardians. A marble monument marks her last resting place with the following inscription:
"SACRED
to the memory of Elcanor Parke Custis, granddaughter of Mrs. Washington, and adopt- cd daughter of General Washington." Reared under the roof of the Father of his Coun- try, this lady was not more remarkable for the beauty of her person than for the supe- riority of her mind. She lived to be admired, and died to be regretted, July 15, 1852, in the seventy-fourth year of her age. Another handsome monument in the same iron inclosure marks the resting place of her daughter Eleanor Angela Conrad.
With the return of many of our national decoration days the writer in humble tribute to her womanly excellence and exemplary virtues and in reverent remembrance of his- toric associations has deemed it a pleasure to strew these apparently neglected graves with flowers. Even in her last closing years Nelly retained many traces of her early beauty and vivacity. She passed away at Audley, a homestead of nearly sixteen hun- dred acres in Clarke county, near the Shenandoah, belonging also to Major Lewis, where she had lived over twenty years after leaving Woodlawn.
The writer has been told by her grandson that the early home life and associations of Mount Vernon, lingered ever with his grandmother as beautifying visions, and that she never wearied in recounting them to her children and grandchildren. A theme dearest of all to her heart was the story of her social relations with the fond and indul- gent maste: and mistress of the Mount Vernon home whose passing away from her she long and deeply mourned. Her love and reverence for Washington amounted almost to worship and who will wonder at her constant devotion, knowing all the circum- stances and harmonious relations of the beginning and sundering of their united lives. The bright particular star which had set in glory to the world was to her a continuing radiance, growing brighter and brighter to the close of her eventful years. "All who knew the subject of our sketch," says her niece, Mrs. General Robert E. Lee, in her memoirs of George W. Parke Custis, "were wont to recall the pleasure they had derived from her extensive information, brilliant wit, and boundless generosity. The most ten- der parent and devoted friend; she lived in the enjoyment of her affections. She was often urged to write her memoirs, which might even have surpassed in interest to her countrymen those of Madame de Sevingc and others of equal note, as her pen gave free expression to her lively imagination and clear memory. Would that we could re- call the many tales of the past we have heard from her lips, but, alas! we should fail to give them accurately. One narrative is retained, as it made a strong impression at the time. She said the most perfect harmony always existed "between her grandmamma and the General," and that in all his intercourse with her he was most considerate and tender. She had often seen her when she had something to communicate or a request to make of him at a moment when his mind was entirely abstracted from the present, seize him by the button to command his attention, when he would look down upon her with a benignant smile and become at once attentive to her wishes, which were never slighted. She also said that the grave dignity which he usually wore did not prevent his keen enjoyment of a joke, and that no one laughed more heartily than did he when she herself, a gay, laughing girl, gave one of her saucy descriptions of any scene in which she had taken part, or any one of the merry pranks she then often played; and that he would retire from the room in which her young companions were amusing themselves, because his presence caused a reserve which they could not overcome. But he always regretted it exceedingly, as their sports and enjoyments always seemed to interest him."
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