USA > Virginia > Fairfax County > Fairfax County > Industrial and historical sketch of Fairfax County, Virginia > Part 4
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Washington had an inventive, as well as a systematic, turn of mind, and hence was always devising some new and better method for performing the varied work on his large estate. The old and unwieldy implements, such as ploughs, harrows, hoes and axes, then in use, were greatly improved by him.
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His sixteen-sided barn of brick and wood, sixty feet in diameter, and two stories high, was the wonder of Washington's day. The treading-out floor, ten feet wide, was in the second story, running all around center mows, and approached by an inclined plane. This floor was constructed with open slats, so that the grain, without the straw, might fall through the floor below. Later he had constructed a device, worked by horse-power, by which the heads of wheat sheaves, held on a table against rapidly revolving arms, were beaten out. This was probably the first step in the evolution, from the hoof and flail, towards the steam-power thresher of the present day. Washington, in- stead of trusting his farming operations to overseers, gave his personal atten- tion to every detail of this work. He carried into the management of his rural affairs the same systematic method, untiring energy and wise circum- spection that distinguished him in his military life. He made a complete survey of all his lands, divided them into farms of convenient and suitable size, and supervised and regulated the cultivation of them all. The products of his estate became so noted for faithfulness in quality and quantity. that any shipments, bearing the name of "George Washington, Mount Vernon," were exempted from the customary inspection in the ports to which they were sent. With such system and exact method was all his work planned and executed. that ample time for relaxation from his arduous duties was found. Washington ardently loved the chase. Mounted on his favorite horse, with horn and hound, along with his guests and neighbors, when in season, he would spend one or two days in each weck in the fox chase. Duck shooting, in which he was celebrated for his skill, was also a favorite sport. In his canoes, in the early morning, he would repair to his duck blind, and would there spend hours in the delightful sport. These days of sport often ended with a hunting dinner in the mansion. There, around the festal board, with friends and neighbors, Washington is said to have enjoyed himself with unwonted hilarity. In this round of rural work, rural amuse- ments, and social intercourse, Washington spent many happy and tranquil years. His already wide reputation brought many visitors to Mount Vernon. These were always received with cordial hospitality. While his domestic con- cerns at this time were many and varied, yet he never permitted them to in- terfere with his public duties. Whether as Judge of the County Court, Rep- resentative of the county in the House of Burgesses, or Member of the Con- tinental Congress, he performed all his duties with scrupulous exactness.
While a member of the second Continental Congress, the storm of the Revolution, long pending, burst over the Colonies, and Washington was unanimously chosen by that body Commander-in-Chief of the Continental army. This he accepted, and on the 21st day of June. 1775, set out for Bos- ton to enter upon the discharge of this arduous duty. John Adams wrote at this time: "There is something charming to me in the conduct of Wash- ington. A gentleman of one of the first fortunes on the continent, leaving
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his delicious retirement, his family and friends, sacrificing his case, and hazarding all in the cause of his country. His views are noble and disinter- ested." The honors with which Washington was received everywhere, while en route to Boston, only served to show him how much was expected of him, and when he looked around upon the raw and undisciplined "levies" he was to command, "A mixed multitude of people without order or govern- ment," scattered about in rough encampments, besieging a city garrisoned by an army of veteran troops, with ships of war lying in its harbor, he felt the awful responsibility of his situation, and the complicated and stupendous task before him, and wrote: "The cause of my country has called me to active and dangerous duty, but I trust that Divine Providence will enable me to dis- charge it with fidelity and success." With what unswerving and untiring fidelity, and with what complete and splendid ultimate success-despite dis- aster, mutiny, faithlessness, and treachery in those most trusted; privations without parallel, difficulties such as a leader never before encountered, bitter rivalries and the opposition of Congress-Washington, never faltering, dis- charged his trust during the long, weary years that followed, needs no repe- tition here. These are the best-known pages in the whole world's history.
On an April day in 1789, a wearied messenger arrived in haste at the gates of Mount Vernon. He had come from the city of New York, partly in stage coaches and partly on horseback. This messenger was the venerable Charles Thompson, Secretary of the Continental Congress, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Under a commission from the first Con- gress under the new Federal Constitution, he had come to announce to Gen- eral Washington, in his Fairfax home, that he had been unanimously chosen President of the United States. The presence of the distinguished chief was urgently desired at the seat of government. He immedately set about making arrangements preparatory to his departure. In this connection history records this beautiful incident :
After a hasty tour of inspection over his large estate to view the conditions on his various plantations, note their prospects for crops, and give all needed directions to his foremen. Washington's thoughts turned to his aged mother in her home in Fredericksburg, fifty miles away. In the hour of success he did not forget the mother who had ever been to him the kind and affectionate counsellor and abiding friend. Although it had been but a short time since he had looked upon her furrowed face and received her maternal blessing, he felt, under the circumstances, that he must now again behold her. She was old and infirm, and this might be the last opportunity he would have of seeing her among the living. So, when the lengthening shadows of the evening were fast disappearing, Washington mounted his fleetest horse, and accompanied by his faithful servant, started on his mission. Passing the borders of his own pleasant domain and entering upon the "Old King's High- way," the road over which fifty-odd years before, as a boy of four or five
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Barn on the Gen. Dunn Farm.
years, in company with father, mother, sister and brother, he had traveled from his lowly Westmoreland home to the home the father was then pro- jecting at Mount Vernon; and over which, thirty years before, as a young man of twenty-eight, he had ridden in his coach-and-four with his lovely bride. Through the chill and lonely hours of the night did our Washington, with the one great and controlling purpose in view, ride on and on to his destination. Sometimes through plantation clearing or straggling hamlet, and sometimes through stretches of woodland. On and on he pursues his solitary way. He leaves behind him the highlands of romantic Occoquan, and the roaring of its cascades dies away in the distance. He, by ford and ferry, crosses the waters of the Neabsco, Quantico, Choppowamsic, Aquia, and Potomac Creeks, and enter the sandly lowland, of Stafford. As he sped fast through the watches of the night. with no token or sound of life to relieve the stillness. save here and there the glimmering light in the lonely farm house or negro cabin, or the baying of watch-dog, or croaking of frog in the wayside fen, how profound and varied must have been the thoughts that surged through the mind of the great man! For thirty years he had been prominently connected with the history of the Colonies, had been for a num- ber of years a member of the. Virginia Assembly, had been a member of the Continental Congress, was, according to English authority, the first man of the colonies to step forth as the public patron of sedition and revolt and
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The Gen. Lawton House, Falls Church.
subscribe fifty pounds towards the commencement of hostilities, had been Commander-in-Chief of the victorious American armies in the Revolution, and was now to be the first President of the United States.
Before the early dawn, Washington had finished his journey, and damp with the airs of night, was standing at the gate of the maternal home on the borders of the Rappahannock. The notable and touching interview between the honored chief and his aged mother, as given by. Washington's adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, comes down to us as a striking ex- ample of filial love and obedience :
"The President had come all unheralded and unannounced. After the first moment of greeting, he said: 'Mother, the people of our Republic have been pleased with the most flattering unanimity to elect me their chief magistrate, but before I can assume the functions of the office, I have come hastily to bid you an affectionate farewell. and to ask your maternal blessing. So soon as the weight of public business, which must necessarily attend the beginnings of a new government. can be disposed of, I shall hasten back to Virginia'-and here the aged mother interrupted him -- 'And then you will not see me. My great age and the disease which is fast hastening my dissolution warn nie that I shall not remain long in this world; and I trust in God that I may be better prepared for another. But go, George, and fulfill the destiny which heaven
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appears to have intended for you. Go, my son, and may God's and a mother's blessing be with you to the end!' The President was deeply moved. His head rested fondly on the shoulder of his parent, whose aged arm, feebly but affectionately, encircled his neck. Then the brow on which fame had wreathed the fairest laurels ever accorded to man, relaxed from its lofty bearing. That look which could have overawed a Roman Senate, was bent in filial tenderness upon the time-worn features of the faltering matron. He wept !-- a thousand recollections crowded upon his mind as memory, retracing scenes long past, carried him back to the lowly homestead of his youth in Westmoreland, where he beheld that mother whose care, education and dis- cipline had enabled him to reach to the topmost height of laudable ambition. Yet how were his glories forgotten in a moment, his exploits and victories, while he gazed upon her from whom he was so soon to part to meet no more."
George Washington, whether as a private citizen, mingling with his neigh- bors and friends in a social or business way. is one of the very few men worthy of a place in history, who have successfully and triumphantly with- stood the test and scrutiny of the world's adverse criticism. He stands out
The Old Falls Church. From photograph made in 1862.
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Street Scene in Historic Centerville.
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on the shifting scenes of the world's annals as a grandly imposing and unique personage, meriting and commanding as well, the veneration of every thought- ful observer, no matter of what country or nationality. Not only the citizens of the country which Washington loved and defended, but good citizens every- where, love to contemplate him as a personage divinely ordained and ap- pointed to open up the way for civil and religious liberty everywhere among the oppressed of every land.
On December 14, 1799, there came to Mount Vernon, a bleak, forbidding winter day. Washington was engaged in superintending some improvements on his estate which required his presence until late in the evening. On re- turning to the mansion he complained of a cold and sore throat, having been wet through during the day by mists and chilling rain. He passed the night with feverish excitement, and his ailment increased in intensity during the next day and until midnight, when, surrounded by the sorrowing household and the medical attendant, he passed gently and serenely from the scenes of earth to the realities of the great unknown. His faculties were strong and unimpaired to the last, and he was conscious from the beginning of his malady, that his end was near, and he waited for the issue with great com- posure and self-possession. "I am going," he observed to those about him, "But I have no fears." His mission had been well accomplished. His great life-work, whose influence will reach to the remotest periods of time, had been nobly finished.
Washington's Tomb, Mount Vernon.
"How sleep the brave who sink to rest With all their country's honors blest."
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Gen. Pope's Headquarters at Centerville.
George Mason.
George Mason, fifth in line from George Mason who fied from the English realm to the province of Virginia after the battle of Worcester, which sealed the fate of Charles I, was born in Fairfax County in 1725, seven years before Washington. He was one of the best and purest men of his time, and pos- sessed the confidence and esteem of those younger civilians-Jefferson, Madi- son and Monroe-whose opinions he did much to mould and shape along lines which led to American Independence. He was a neighbor of Washington and the Fairfaxes, and was on most intimate terms with them. While Washing- ton and Mason were in full accord as to the necessity for resisting the en- croachments of the mother country upon the rights of the Colonies, yet they disagreed on many other questions of a political nature. Washington was a Federalist of the Hamiltonian school, while Mason warmly espoused the tenets of Jefferson and Henry, and took a leading part in advocacy of a truly Democratic form of government.
In 1769 George Mason drafted the "Articles of Association" against im- porting British goods, which the Burgesses signed in a body on the disso- lution of the House by Lord Botetout; and in 1774 he drew up the celebrated Fairfax County Resolutions, setting out the attitude to be assumed by Virginia.
In 1776 Mason was elected to represent his county in the convention of
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that year, and prepared and had passed the celebrated "Virginia Bill of Rights." Thomas Jefferson, then in Philadelphia, had prepared "A Preamble and Sketch," to be offered in the Convention, but Mason's paper had been reported, and the final vote was about to be taken when Jefferson arrived. Mason's Bill was adopted, and Jefferson's Preamble was attached to the Vir- ginia Constitution.
George Mason was afterwards a member of the General Assembly from Fairfax County. and warmly supported Jefferson in all his great reform legislative measures. His support of the laws cutting off "Entails," abolish- ing "Primogeniture" and the "Church Establishments," when by birth and education he belonged to the dominant class and the Church of England, showed clearly the disinterested public spirit of the man. Mason also advo- cated, in 1778, the bill forbidding the further importation of African slaves. In the Virginia Convention he said, on the subject of slavery: "Slavery dis- courages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when it is per- formed by slaves. They prevent the migration of whites who really enrich and strengthen a country. They produce the most pernicious effect upon manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a country. As nations can not be rewarded nor pun- ished in the next world. they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities. I regret that some of our Eastern brethren have, from a love of gain, em-
Old Tavern and War-Time Hospital at Centerville.
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barked in this nefarious traffic. I hold it essential in every point of view that the general government should have the power to prevent the increase of slavery."
Mason, like Washington, was neither a bigot, zealot, nor sectarian in re- ligion. His creed appeared in his life, rather than in his professions. Some idea of his views on religious toleration may be gotten from the last article of his celebrated Bill of Rights: "Religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction-not by force nor violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love and charity towards each other."
George Mason, with all his force of intellect; with his correct judgment of the purposes and actions of men, and with his eminent fitness for any position of public trust and confidence, was remarkably modest and unas- suming. He was domestic in his attachments and inclinations, and cared more for the enjoyments of his home life than the envied circumstances. often vexatious and forbidding, which surround the politician and the legislator. By his own fireside, in the midst of his family circle, in his own manorial halls, was the place of all others most dear to him. He was elected to the United States Senate from Virginia, but declined to serve on account of pressing home duties. But, withal, he was no recluse. He went often out from his fireside and circle, and mingled freely with his friends and neigh- bors at church, at elections, at barbecues, and other social occasions, and he loved to have them come and share. under the roof of "Gunston Hall." his large and cordial hospitality. His library, for the time in which he lived. was a varied and extensive one, and in it he found perpetual delight. He was not a learned man, according to the common acceptation of the term, but his knowledge of the world, in so far as he had prosecuted his investigations as a student, was very correct and practical. He was not an orator, and never indulged in lofty flights of language to carry conviction, but he was endowed with a large store of common sense, which he put forcibly into all the phrases of his public addresses and documents. He had a deep and abiding interest in the affairs of his country and county, and co-operated most earnestly in everything which would be likely to promote their progress and welfare.« He- was one of the founders of the towns of. Alexandria and Col- chester, the first stones of which he saw laid in the primitive wilderness.
The letters of George Mason to his children were replete with good advice and parental solicitude. One sentence will serve as a sample of them all. To his son John, a merchant in Bordeaux, France, to whom he consigned large cargoes of his plantation products, he wrote : "Diligence, frugality and in- tegrity will infallibly insure your business. and your fortune; and if you content yourself with moderate things at first, you will rise, perhaps by slow
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degrees, but upon a solid foundation." In his last will and testament Mason charged his sons: "I recommend to you, from my own experience in life, to prefer the happiness of independence and a private station, to the struggles and vexations of public business; but if either your own inclinations, or the necessities of the times, should engage you in public affairs, I charge you, on a father's blessing, never to let the motives of private interest, nor ambition, induce you to betray, nor terrors of poverty or disgrace, nor fear of danger or of death, deter you from asserting the liberty of your country; and always endeavor to transmit to your posterity those sacred rights to which you were born."
George Mason is said to have been rather above medium height, with a full form and courtly figure. He is represented in the group surrounding the Washington statue in the Capitol Square in Richmond, and his portrait hangs in the courthouse of Fairfax County. He left five sons and four daughters. His fourth son, John Mason, was the father of James Murray Mason, who was United States Senator from Virginia from 1847 to 1861. During the Civil War he was made Confederate Commissioner to England, and his arrest, with Mr. Slidell. on the British steamer Trent, by the Federal authorities, came very near bringing about a war between this country and Great Britain. The eldest daughter of Senator Mason married General Samuel Cooper, who ". was Adjutant-General of the Confederate .States Army; and another daughter married Sidney Smith Ice. a brother of General Robert E. Lee :~ This daugh- ter was the mother of General Fitzhugh Lee.
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Fairfax County Jail
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George Mason died in 1792, seven years before Washington, and was buried in the family burying ground on the Gunston plantation. A simple shaft marks his last resting place, and bears this inscription: "George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights and the first Constitution of Virginia- 1725-1792."
General Daniel Morgan.
It is not generally known that the "hero of five wars," the "wagon boy of the Occoquan," General Daniel Morgan, spent a good part of his youth in Fairfax County. When Dinwiddie, Braddock, and Commodore Keppel, with their gaudy retinues, passed through the town of Colchester, this hero, not yet twenty years of age, was filling the humble roll of teamster in the employ of John Ballantine, hauling iron ore to his furnace for a shilling a day. His adventurous spirit caught the military enthusiasm of the times. He left ore and furnace and turned his horses' heads up the "King's Highway," in the direction of Alexandria, where all was activity and busy preparation for the disastrous expedition over the mountains. Henceforth, for many years, his hitherto prosaic life was to be one of strange adventures. more like the mar- vels of romance than the actual realities of history. In the inevitable course of his destiny, he was to be a most conspicuous actor and directing spirit in the momentous events and circumstances which called into being and shaped the grand conditions of our American republic.
But space will not permit further notice here in detail of the varying for- tunes of the gallant Morgan. The story of his meteor-like course through the stirring events of the Colonial days fills many of the brightest pages of our national history. His career from the day he threw off his last load of iron ore at the Colchester iron furnace on the banks of the Occoquan, in Fairfax County, to the time when, forty years after a Major-General, with a military renown world-wide, he sat, a worthy and dignified representative from the State of Virginia in the Congress of the Republic, he had been so eminently instrumental in establishing, is one which, to his posterity, has more of the glamor of marvelous romance than the certainty of historic fact. The waters of the Occoquan still hurry on in their journey to the sea as they did when Braddock and Dinwiddie and Keppel crossed that April morning more than a hundred and fifty years ago. As then, the birds still carol their spring- time and summer lays; as then, the skies still bend lovingly, and boughs and fields are green with nature's life, but Colchester, with its busy streets, its warehouses, its landing, and coming and going ships, has disappeared, save only here and there a lonely house, standing ghost-like in the solitude. These, with the remnants of the "old furnace and forge" of Ballintine, and the grass-grown heaps of ore and slag, and the almost obliterated wagon roads of the olden time, are all eloquent and impressive reminders of our gallant Morgan.
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General William Henry Fitzhugh Lee.
General W. H. F. Lee, known in war times as "Rooney" Lee, was born at Arlington, May 31, 1837. While completing his education at Harvard, on the special request of General Winfield Scott, he was appointed a lieutenant in the regular army, and inaugurated his military career by taking a detach- ment of troops by sea and land to San Antonio, Texas. In 1358, under the command of the brilliant Albert Sidney Johnston, he served in the Utah Expedition against the Mormons. Soon after this he resigned his commis- sion in the army, returned to his native State, was married, and settled down as a farmer on his large estate on the Pamunkey River. This was the "White House." the beautiful home in which, years before, Washington had wooed and won the charming widow Custis, and which had been left General Lee by his maternal grandfather. G. W. Parke Custis.
When the conflict of 1861 broke upon our fair land, and Virginia called upon her sons to defend her soil, sharing the faith of his distinguished father, General Lee quickly raised a company of cavalry, and joined the Army of Northern Virginia, in which he served in every grade from captain to major-general.
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