USA > Maryland > Some old historic landmarks of Virginia and Maryland : described in a hand-book for the tourist over the Washington-Virginia railway > Part 3
USA > Virginia > Some old historic landmarks of Virginia and Maryland : described in a hand-book for the tourist over the Washington-Virginia railway > Part 3
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The structure of cut stone and massive walls, thanks to the reveren- tial care of generations of owners is still in a good state of preservation. In the colonial days when it stood alone it must have presented a stately appearance with its wide porch on the
CARLYLE HOUSE .- FRONT VIEW.
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SOME OLD HISTORIC LANDMARKS
west and its spacious veranda on the cast, commanding an extensive view of the river and the heights of the Maryland shore beyond. The lower apartments arc wainscoted to the ceiling and ornamented with carved work in oak.
The builder of the Mansion House with a commendable reverence for the associa- tions of older days, which witnessed the founding of the town, while he had to
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CARLYLE HOUSE, REAR VIEW.
obstruct the building on two sides would not allow it to be altered nor hidden, and it now stands apart with its lower floors, *council chamber and all, just as the council left it in 1755. The personages who composed the council were: Gen. Edward Braddock,
*The council house where the governors and commanders of the king deliberated in secret sessions, is but little changed. Its massive structure has endured well through the long years. In its untenanted chambers the cricket chirps and the spider fashions its web.
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OF VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND.
Commodore Keppel; and the colonial governors: Shirley of Massachusetts, De Lancey of New York, Morris of Pennsylvania, Sharpe of Maryland, Dinwiddie of Virginia, Dobbs of North Carolina, General St. Clair and Benjamin Franklin. They met to provide against the alarming emergencies from the encroachments of the French and Indians on the western frontiers.
Alexandria is connected with other towns and cities by the Southern Railway, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Chesapeake and Ohio and the Norfolk and Western railway lines; and Steamers ply regularly to Baltimore, Norfolk and other points. Thirty-nine trains of the Washington-Virginia Railway Company pass through the city daily. Fairfax Court House is fourteen miles distant, Manassas twenty-seven, Winchester ninety, Fredericksburg fifty miles, Richmond one hundred and ten miles and Norfolk two hundred and ten miles.
The city and county of Alexandria were included in that portion of the District of Columbia ceded in 1791 by the State of Virginia to the general government.
The District was ten miles square and contained 100 square miles. The square lay diagonally, each angle facing one of the cardinal points of the compass. In 1846, all that portion of the District consisting of about 36 square miles lying on the west bank of the Potomac was ceded back to Virginia.
Before the final establishment of the seat of government on the Potomac, offers of land and money for that purpose were made, by the inhabitants of Trenton, Lancaster, Wright's Ferry, York, Carlisle, Harrisburg, Reading, Germantown, Baltimore, George- town and Williamsburg, and the question of a choice of location was the source of long and bitter contentions until at last settled in accordance mainly with the wishes of Gen. Washington.
Alexandria was the county seat of Fairfax county from 1754 to 1800. About this time the District of Columbia was formed and Alexandria then became the seat of the new county of Alexandria. At the same time the county seat of Fairfax was established at its present location.
"In Alexandria in 1775 was held a convention of delegates from Virginia and Mary- land to consider questions relating to the navigation of the Potomac and the import duties thereof. This meeting led to demands from Pennsylvania and Delaware which resulted in an adjournment until September, to Annapolis, Md., where there were pres- ent, delegates from five States, who, after diligent conference, adjourned to meet rep- resentatives of all the thirteen States in Philadelphia, which body framed the Constitu- tion of the United States. It can therefore be said that the American Union owes its birth to Alexandria."
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Though the former commercial glory of the old town of Alexandria has waned and well nigh disappeared before the newer conditions of trade and traffic-though no square rigged vessels lie now a days in her docks, discharging their cargoes of sugar, molasses and other tropical productions from Barbadoes, Jamaica, Trinidad, Santa Cruz and other islands of the Caribbean Sea as in the years long gone-though the rumble of the long and incessant wagon trains from the west, which once crowded her streets and made every class of its citizens prosperous, has been silenced by the swifter transit of the railway train, still, there is a prestige remaining for it which the passing of the decades cannot destroy. It will always be one of the places of the Old Dominion state to attract pilgrimages from lands afar, on account of its interesting historic associations; and doubtless, it will become the pleasant abiding place for large accessions of people, who love the quiet, and whose business or social inclinations will keep them close to the National Capital. It will not lose its mature and leisurely ways. Its old and sub- stantial houses will be preserved with pious care to afford to coming generations of patriots fond glimpses of the vanished past, when an infant people threw off the tram- mels of kingly power, and merged into a life of independence.
( town of old with changeless life, With graves and memories dear, Thy ways bear impress all of strife, But ne'er with line of fear!
Though leaves drop on dismantel'd way- Though quaint old houses fall,
Still, is brave struggle of thy day Carved on each massive wall.
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SOME OLD HISTORIC LANDMARKS
O day of pride, O day of power When ships at anchor lay,
And East held out its hands,
And the gray piers on thy fair shores Were gates to many lands.
At Jones' Point just before crossing Great Hunting Creek, a wide estuary of the Po- tomac, stands the Light House which marks the spot where was planted the initial stone of the boundaries of the district, which was ten miles square.
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UNITED STATESY
JURISDICTION OF
MARYLAND
THE LIGHT HOUSE. ONE OF THE FORTY "JURISDICTION Under which is Buried the "Initial Jurisdic- tion Stone" of Dist. of Columbia. STONES" OF THE DISTRICT LINES.
The District of Columbia, was authorized by Congress in 1790. The survey of its boundaries was made in 1791. After the completion of the survey the line was cleared of trees to the width of twenty feet on each side of the line. Along this forty foot lane through the woods and over the hills and valleys, stone monuments forty in all, were set exactly one mile apart. They were of free stone, four feet in length, two feet in the earth and two feet above, and on each one of them was the inscription-"Jurisdiction of the United States." After the lapse of a little more than a century, all but two of these monuments remain in place, but in various states of preservation.
At Jones' Point was also the site of Old Fort Columbia, a fortification of wood and earthwork, mounting some heavy guns, among them the cannon left by Braddock's army in 1755 as too cumbrous to transport over the mountains. This fort was the first attempt by the government to guard the river approaches to the National Capital. It was not dismantled until after the trouble with France in 1798-9. The heavy stones that made the battery, still lie at the end of the point, and some of the guns which made its armament are stuck up as posts at street corners along the river front. Just before this fort was demolished-for it was in 1794 only a ruin-Congress determined to build another one on the Potomae.
John Vermonnet was appointed by Gen. Knox, Secretary of War, in May, 1794, to take control and direction of the new fort, etc., to be built upon the Potomac river. General Washington selected the site for the new fort, a riverside knoll nearly opposite Mount Vernon, and part of the old manor of Warburton, in Maryland. Charles Digges had purchased the land before 1740, and naming it a manor, affected lordly manners. He had his river barge built like a Venetian gondola, and it was manned with negro
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And wharves bedeck'd with princely dower Loomed up in grand array.
When fruitful West sued at thy doors,
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OF VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND.
slaves wearing the costumes of gondoliers. His daughter, Jane Digges, married Col. John Fitzgerald, one of Washington's aides in the Revolution, afterwards Mayor of Alexandria. The land was bought of Thomas A. Digges in 1808 for $3,000, and the new fort was begun in 1809.
Battery Rogers, some years since dismantled, was during the civil war a strong earth- work a few hundred yards above the Point with an armament of heavy guns.
As you cross Great Hunting Creek, to the left on the Maryland heights is seen Fort
SEMINARY RIDGE AND EARLY PICKETING GROUNDS, FROM ELECTRIC RAILWAY BRIDGE, OVER GREAT HUNTING CREEK.
Foote, and Rosier's Bluff; and further down, the expanse of Broad Bay, uniting with the Potomac.
To the right, looking from the railway bridge over Hunting Creek, stretches a scope of country pleasingly diversified by gently sloping hills and vales, and dotted with hamlet and farm-houses. Prominent among the many objects of the landscape is the
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SOME OLD HISTORIC LANDMARKS
tall spire of the Episcopal Theological Seminary, which, if it could speak of the trans- actions of some of the years of the past, could tell startling stories of the presence of mustering armies. Around it in almost every direction, at the beginning of the civil strife, the plains and hill slopes were white with the tents of the gathered regiments, brigades, and divisions of Union soldiers. Everywhere over the suddenly populated region was heard the drum's wild beats, the fife's shrill notes, the bugle's echoing calls. The numerous remains of their entrenchments, earthworks, and other defences still prominent at every turn for miles, attest with melancholy certainty the great prepara- tions which were then made by them for the impending conflict, which ere long broke with such terrific force within our borders. Union forts frowned from every salient point of those now so quiet and peaceful hills, and a hundred flagstaffs unfurled over all, their starry flags to the passing winds. The locality is one naturally possessing a saddening interest to the tourist. Every year it is visited by numbers of the sur- viving veterans who figured in the scenes of the stirring times of forty years ago.
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The grass grows green on every hill Where circling ramparts frown'd. Forgotten all through lapse of time Is every martial sound; The sword is resting on the wall
Of lowly home or princely hall.
The brave corn lifts in regiments, Ten thousand sabers in the sun;
The ricks replace the battle-tents, The bannered tassels toss and run,
The neighing steed, the bugle's blast-
These be the stories of the past.
The earth has healed her wounded breast, The cannon plow the fields no more;
The heroes rest: O let them rest In peace along the peaceful shores;
They fought for peace, for peace they fell: They sleep in peace and all is well.
ONLY A MEMORY.
Just beyond the Seminary, in full sight up the valley, are the picketing grounds which long divided the two armies; and near by is Bailey's Cross Roads, where was man- œuvred. by the Union forces, in November, 1861, in the presence of President Lincoln preparatory to the peninsula campaign, one of the grandest military reviews of any country or time. Through these camping and drilling grounds, and far on beyond, may still be traced the course of the old military road, laid out through the then dense wil- derness a hundred years previous, by which a portion of Braddock's army under Gen- eral Halket marched on their disastrous expedition.
Half way between the Seminary and the railway bridge, is Cameron Ford where Hunting Creek is crossed by the Old King's Highway from Williamsburg, the Ancient Capital of Virginia, to the Shenandoah River. Over this highway General Sherman at the close of the Civil War led his army back to the National Capital on their return from their march from "Atlanta to the Sea." Over this same highway too, Washing- ton always passed when he rode into Alexandria on horseback or in his coach.
A short distance above the Electric Railway is the new iron bridge of the turnpike to Accotink eight miles below. On Seminary Heights are the remains of Fort Worth constructed by Gen. Kearney's first New Jersey brigade in 1861. It had an armament of heavy and long range guns. Grouped around this fort in close proximity so as to command all the approaches to Alexandria were Forts Ellsworth, Farnsworth, Willard, Weed, O'Rourke and Lyons. The last named, was on Mount Eagle and included within its works the home of Bryan, eighth Lord Fairfax whose title was confirmed to
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OF VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND.
him by the English house of Lords in 1800. Hc was the son of William Fairfax of Belvoir, and was for two years a rector of Christ Church. Although he was an ardent royalist, the friendship between him and Washington always continued the same.
Leaving the bridge at Great Hunting Creek the railway enters and passes through the lands of the "New Alexandria Land and River Improvement Company." Their town, projected a few years ago has not yet realized the sanguine hopes of its projectors but the new era of general prosperity, thrift and progress will doubtless bring to its admir- able situation for manufacturing industries all the needcd possibilities for success.
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MOUNT EAGLE, NEAR ALEXANDRIA, VA. Home of Bryan, Eighth Lord Fairfax.
From New Alexandria the road passes over an alluvial level, formerly covered with a dense forest, until it reaches the station which takes its namc from the near by Dykc, constructed just after the Revolution by Dr. Augustus Smith of West Grove plantation of which it was a part, at a great expense, to make a large scope of meadow, by keep-
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SOME OLD HISTORIC LANDMARKS
ing out the waters. The undertaking proved successful but the embankments were cut a few years after by some malicious person, and were never repaired.
Along the erests of the range of hills to the right of this level, in colonial times, stood the homesteads of the Johnstons, the Wests, and Emersons, prominent Virginia families. Some piles of bricks and stones and wasting springs are all that are left to tell of them now.
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HOLLIN HALL, SPINNING HOUSE, NEAR BELMONT STATION.
The arm of the river which passes near to the Dyke station lends attractions to the surrounding landscape, and its shaded nooks in the sultry days of summer offer pleasant retreats to the dwellers of the neighboring cities. From the Dyke the road rises by a slight deflection to the right through lands once a part of the Hollin Hall plantation of two thousand acres belonging to George Mason of Gunston. The site of the old Mansion as pretentious as that of Gunston, is reached by a road from Belmont Station.
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OF VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND
It is one mile distant. A quaint, long, rambling structure known in the neighborhood as the Spinning House, still stands. In it in generations gone -was done all the spin- ning and weaving for the many occupants of the great plantation. This plantation ad- joined that of Mount Vernon between which was a boundary line of "double ditching." It was a part of a large scope of land of seven thousand acres patented by George Ma- son before the founding of Alexandria. Thomson Mason, a son of George the patriot, and 'author of the Bill of Rights and Constitution of Virginia, built and resided in the . mansion after the close of the revolution. The foundation of the walls may still be traced with exactness, showing the building to have been large and spacious; and the surrounding grounds indicate well arranged lawns, terraces and approaches in keeping with a pretentious manorial dwelling. It was destroyed by fire about 1824.
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The situation had been well chosen for a home. It was high and airy and command- ed a charming landscape of forests and hills and stretches of miles in extent; and copious springs gushed near by, from the hill slopes for thirsting man and beast- springs which still flow as full and perennially as when the bond folks "toted" their crystal measures in the primal days. He named the homestead Hollin Hall after an old country seat of some of the Mason family in England. Gunston Hall where George Mason lived was ten miles down the river.
Ere the lands of this estate had been impoverished by that continuous system of slave culture which demanded of them everything and returned to them nothing, they pro- duced large crops of tobacco, grain, wool and hemp. In the spinning house this wool and hemp was spun and woven into fine and coarse fabrics for the household needs and the hands of the plantation. The spinning wheel and the loom were kept going with little intermission through the whole year, for there was quite an army of the. work people to clothe. Very near to the mansion along the valley on the east side coursed the old colonial road, now obliterated, which branched from the King's High- way heretofore described, near to "Gum Springs" and made then a continuous way for the southern travel even so far down as Savannah, until after the revolution, over the Potomac by Clifton Ferry and on to Philadelphia. The turnpike which now runs by the mansion site on the west side was not laid until after 1850.
Like his father George, of Gunston, Thomson Mason was an earnest patriot and was prominent in the decisive measures which precipitated the opposition to British op- pression. He had signed the Virginia protest against the injustice of the Stamp Act, and when the war resulted he joined the army under his neighbor Washington and testified as a brave soldier, his sincerity in the colonial cause. In June, 1781, his father writing to his brother George says of him, "your brother Thomson has lately returned from a tour of military duty upon the James river. He commanded a force in a close action, with coolness and intrepidity."
Belmont Station is on the highlands. Here the river flows close by, broadened by the confluence of the Broad Creek estuary on the Maryland side. This estuary in 1707 was declared a port of entry for "all ships of commerce" and at its head was then laid out a town which for many years was a busy shipping place for the immense tobacco products of the neighboring plantations. An Episcopal Church was established there in 1694 in which building, service is still held.
Beyond Belmont station a few hundred paces is the line of survey marking the upper boundary of the "Old Mount Vernon Estate" of eight thousand acres, which in Wash- ington's time was divided into five main farms or plantations, and designated respect- ively, River, Dogue Run, Mansion House, Union, and Muddy Hole farms. River farm, which the railway strikes first, and formerly known as Clifton's Neck, was purchased in 1760 for the sum of three dollars per acre. It consisted of two thousand acres, but has been since divided and subdivided like all the other farms into smaller tracts, which are occupied by settlers chiefly from the Northern States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and elsewhere, who have made many improvements upon them by clearing up the grounds, enriching the soil, planting orchards, and constructing fencing and comfortable dwellings. The surface of these highlands is gently undulating, and con- sists of a great diversity of soils, which are remarkably easy of tillage and very suscep-
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SOME OLD HISTORIC LANDMARKS
tible of a high and profitable fertilization, and are particularly adapted to the production of all kinds of farm staples, fruits, and garden vegetables needed by the adjacent cities. The divisions lying immediately along the river afford situations for homes of surpass- ing beauty; and while they are proverbially healthy, and are abundantly supplied with perennial springs of pure soft water, for every domestic requirement; the railway makes them suburban by giving them quick and easy transit to and from the National Capital at all times of the year.
A short distance from Wellington Station to the left and in full view, stands on the river-bank the old Wellington House built by William Clifton previous to 1760. It was occupied by Col. Tobias Lear, who for nearly fourteen years was private and mili- tary secretary to the general, and private tutor to his adopted children, George W. Park Custis, and his sister Nelly, and who was in 1805 United States Commissioner to treat
WELLINGTON HOUSE,
Home of Washington's Private Secretary.
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OF VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND.
with the hostile powers of the Barbary States at the time of the memorable expedition of General Eaton. By a provision of Washington's will he was to be tenant of the house and premises rent frec until his death. This was in consideration of his great services to him, especially during his presidency. He dicd in 1816. Afterwards, the farm was occupied by two generations of the Washington family, Charles A., a grand- nephew, being the last, until 1859. Charles was a genial, jolly fellow, but not so well up in the arts of practical farming as his illustrious uncle. On one occasion, he went into town to have some ploughshares sharpened which were urgently needed to make ready his grounds for wheat sowing, but falling in with some old cronies he was in- duced to make a month's visit to the "Springs;" but it was all the same to Uncle Toby and the rest of the waiting "hands," for they had a long holiday, though the wheat crop went by default. In farming he was an experimentalist, though always disastrously. He read in the Country Gentleman of the great profits of barley growing, and so re- solved to try his hand also. One morning in spring, when the robin and blue bird were piping their jubilant songs, he had his "gang" ploughing a ten acre field. The barley was sown, and the harvest time came, and the grain was flailed out and loaded on a two-horse team for the Alexandria market. The hopeful proprietor mounted his saddle horse and went up, in advance, to dispose of his crop. But barley was an unknown quantity he found, on arriving at the store of his merchants; but later, however he suc- ceeded in bartering his grains to a brewer for a barrel of beer, which he sent home to his cellar. The tidings of the transaction soon spread among his many jolly town companions, and, slipping down the river by boat after nightfall to the Wellington House, they succeeded before morning in drinking up the entire crop of barley.
From Arcturus, the next station beyond, a smooth, winding avenue leads down a few hundred paces to Andalusia, one of the many desirable places on the old Estate which the railway has made readily accessible to those who are in quest of situations for charming suburban homes. This point in our journey is best described in the subjoined story of A Summer Outing.
THE STORY OF AN OUTING AT ANDALUSIA VA.
Twelve miles from the National Capital, down the Potomac, on the Virginia shore, is a spot whose memories will be like holy benedictions to me through all the coming years of my life. I was needing rest, and there I found it in a sweet and quiet seclu- sion such as I never enjoyed before -a rest which had no circumstances to disturb nor shadow to mar.
This place Elysian is reached by the Washington-Virginia Railway. From Arcturus Station, midway between Alexandria and the home of Washington, you wind by a hard, smooth avenue along green fields, and through orchards laden with ripe and ripening fruitage, till you are in the shadows of a hundred stately oaks and walnuts, many of them of a century's growth. Here in the midst of these leafy sentinels is a home which in all its surroundings and influences, more nearly than any other, fills up the measure of my ideal dreamings.
Andalusia is distant from the travelled highways, and before the coming of the elec- tric car was a terra incognito, with rarely a visitor, save of the surrounding neighborhood to invade its quiet borders. The passengers from the deck of the passing steamer de- scried it in the distance, showing like a gem in its setting of river and cool embower- ing trees, but it was only a glimpse of hidden beauties to be remembered and cherished or forgotten. Now, by rapid and easy transit many pilgrims find their way thither, although it is but a private home. Little picnic parties from the cities adjacent, through the courtesy of the proprietor, hie there through the summer days to spread their repasts under the shadowing boughs, and make merry on the inviting green sward. Artists come to sketch the delightful and varied views of its environs, the cycler to wheel over the smooth avenues, the angler to throw his line into the still river nooks, and the wcaried, like myself, to seek the balm of rest.
In this ideal home by the Potomac I found a welcome and a hospitality which re-
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SOME OLD 11ISTORIC LANDMARKS
called the many stories 1 had read, of entertainments in Virginia homes of the olden time. For tired nature there was no lack of sweet restorers. There were libraries, inviting to every range and department of knowledge. There was music to soothe and harmonize, pictures, and cabinets of curios to amuse, and a wilderness of flowers to please the eye.
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