Historic Alexandria: An Illustrated History

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
HISTORIC
The Story of Raleigh & Wake County
ALEXANDRIA
by K. Todd Johnson
An Illustrated History
by Ted Pulliam
A publication of the
City of Alexandria
Office of Historic Alexandria

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HISTORIC
ALEXANDRIA
An Illustrated History
by Ted Pulliam
Commissioned by City of Alexandria Office of Historic Alexandria
Historical Publishing Network
A division of Lammert Incorporated
San Antonio, Texas

❖
A Finnish ship unloading large rolls of
newsprint (visible in front of the ship’s main
superstructure as they are hoisted above the
deck) in the 1950s at the south dock of the
Robinson Terminal Warehouse Corporation.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, VF-WATERFRONT COLLECTION.
First Edition
Copyright © 2011 Historical Publishing Network
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from
the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (800) 749-9790.
ISBN: 978-1-935377-41-2
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2011924432
Historic Alexandria: An Illustrated History
author: Ted Pulliam
cover artist: John M. Barber
contributing writer for “Sharing the Heritage”: Joe Goodpasture
Historical Publishing Network
president: Ron Lammert
project manager: Barry Black
administration: Donna M. Mata
Melissa G. Quinn
book sales: Dee Steidle
production: Colin Hart
Evelyn Hart
Glenda Tarazon Krouse
Omar Wright
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
2

CONTENTS
4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
5 CHAPTER I the first peoples
11 CHAPTER II a new town, 1749-1764
11 CHAPTER III the American Revolution, 1765-1782
23 CHAPTER IV the golden age, 1783-1799
27 CHAPTER V Alexandria, District of Columbia, 1801-1847
33 CHAPTER VI war approaches, 1848-1861
39 CHAPTER VII Civil War, 1861-1865
45 CHAPTER VIII reconstruction & recovery, 1865-1925
51 CHAPTER IX new direction, 1925-1945
57 CHAPTER X change and preservation, 1946-2010
64 BIBLIOGRAPHY
65 SHARING THE HERITAGE
96 SPONSORS
C O N T E N T S
3

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to many people for helping to pull this book together: My special thanks to Rita Holtz for her extremely skillful work
finding, obtaining, and assembling the photographs, drawings, and other images for the book. Thanks also to Diane Riker and Bob
Madison for reading early versions of the text and for their incisive comments and to Bob for encouraging me to write the book. I also am
grateful to: Wally Owen, Jim Johnston, George Combs, Bunny Jacob, Jim Mackay, and Pam Cressey for reading parts of the text and their
very helpful suggestions; Pam Cressey, Steve Shephard, Fran Bromberg, Barbara Magid, and Ruth Reeder of Alexandria Archaeology for
their help and encouragement; George Combs, Leslie Morales, Mark Zoeter, and Julie Downie of the Local History/Special Collections
Branch of the Alexandria Library for their very capable help with research and images; Marilyn Whiteman, Chrystal Willet, and Frimble
Smith for their research on particular subjects; Jackie Cohan in the Alexandria Archives and Records Center; Lance Malamo and Amy
Bertsch of the Office of Historic Alexandria; and T. Michael Miller and all the men and women who have written on the history of
Alexandria before me. Most of all, my thanks to Molly for whom I have the greatest love.
Ted Pulliam
September 2010
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
4

C H A P T E R
THE FIRST PEOPLES
I
In August 2007, archaeologists working for the City of Alexandria were digging at the site of the
Contrabands and Freedmen’s Cemetery at the intersection of Church and South Washington Streets.
Although their main task was to locate graves of the more than eighteen hundred runaway slaves
and free African Americans buried there during and immediately after the Civil War, they soon
found signs that part of the site was used much earlier.
An archaeologist searching where such signs were found used a trowel to scrape dirt from a
designated square and place it into a bucket. Later someone sifted through the dirt for artifacts,
found several stone points (mainly spear points), and put them aside. One had its tip broken off.
Only later, when Fairfax County Senior Archaeologist Mike Johnson examined the points, was
it discovered by its shape and workmanship that the broken one was the oldest yet found in
Alexandria, a Clovis Point estimated to be thirteen thousand years old, the earliest sign of human
presence in the Alexandria area.
In that extremely remote time, the Indian who made the point would have been one of a small
band of hunter-foragers moving through the Alexandria area grasslands (there were as yet no
forests there) searching for food. The Indian must have sat down, and while forming a bit of
quartzite into a point, broke off its tip. The point now was ruined. He discarded it, got up, and
moved on.
This Indian was a predecessor of the Algonquians who lived in the Alexandria area when the
first Englishmen appeared and a predecessor of the Europeans, Africans, and people from many
parts of the world who eventually came to live in Alexandria.
❖
The photograph on the left shows the spear
point (actual size approximately 1 1/4
inches long, 3/4 inches wide, and 1/4 inch
thick). The drawing on the right shows how
the point would have looked if whole.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ALEXANDRIA ARCHAEOLOGY.
DRAWING BY ANDREW H. FLORA.
C H A P T E R I
5

A L E X A N D R I A ’ S
A L G O N Q U I A N S
❖
Above: Some different Algonquian fishing
techniques: wooden fish trap, spear fishing,
and fishing with poles, plus a canoe filled
with big fish and a fire to cook them.
COURTESY OF JOHN CARTER BROWN LIBRARY, BROWN
UNIVERSITY. DRAWING BY JOHN WHITE.
Below: This portrait of Captain John
Smith appeared in the corner of a map in
Smith’s Description of New England
published in 1616 when Smith was thirtysix
years old, eight years after he passed by
the future Alexandria on a boat trip on the
Potomac River..
COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. ENGRAVING BY
SIMON VAN DE PASSE.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
6
Today it is little noticed that the City of
Alexandria is bordered on three sides by water
—on the east by the Potomac River, on the
south by Great Hunting Creek and Cameron
Run, and on the north by Four Mile Run.
However, this characteristic would not have
gone unnoticed by the Algonquians who had
established homes in the Alexandria area by
the late 1500s. In fact, to them this border
would have been the most important
geographical fact of the Alexandria area.
The Algonquians sought home sites that
offered several advantages. They wanted
fresh-water marshes where women could
gather plants—reeds for making houses and
tuckahoe for food—and shallow fresh-water
creeks where men would catch spawning fish.
They liked level ground along a river for
planting crops. Home sites with forests nearby
were valued for deer, nuts, and firewood. The
Algonquians also sought rounded stones from
creek bottoms that they could use to form a
variety of tools, including arrowheads and
spear points.
Once Algonquians found a suitable site,
they would raise houses by inserting into the
ground the ends of several flexible young
trees, bending them over, and tying the other
ends together in the form of an upside down
bowl or stubby rectangle. Then they would
cover these forms with layers of bark or with
mats made from reeds sewn together. A hole
would be left in the roof for smoke from an
interior fire to exit, and an opening left in a
side for a door that could be covered with
reed mats for warmth. Archaeological traces
of such a house site dating back to a pre-
Algonquian era have been found on Jones
Point in Alexandria. It probably was used
during the spring and summer fishing season.
T H E F I R S T
E U R O P E A N S A R R I V E
In July 1608 the Alexandria area Algonquians
would have seen a strange water craft coming up
the Potomac River. It was a small, open boat
propelled by a sail and oars, called a barge or
shallop, and on board were 28-year-old Captain
John Smith and 14 Englishmen from
Jamestown, the first Europeans to come to the
Alexandria area.
They did not land here but proceeded on
up the river to the falls just above present-day
Georgetown. There they disembarked and
walked the banks of the river searching in
vain for the “glistering metal,” gold.
In proceeding back down river, Smith
noted on a carefully-prepared map the
Algonquian village of Assaomeck (“middle
fishing place”) at what appears to be just south
of Great Hunting Creek. As its name suggests,

Smith did find one commodity on the
Potomac that would benefit future European
occupants of Alexandria. The river teemed
with fish. As he recorded “in divers places that
aboundance of fish, lying so thicke with their
heads above the water, as for want of nets (our
barge driving amongst them) we attempted to
catch them with a frying pan, but we found it
a bad instrument to catch fish with.”
For a number of years after Smith’s visit,
there were few other European visitors to the
upper Potomac other than a handful of
traders who came by ship to trade for the
Indians’ corn and furs.
Then in the late 1640s a wealthy refugee
from religious and personal conflicts in
Maryland, Giles Brent, crossed the river with
his teenaged Piscataway Indian wife and
established his home at Aquia Creek, about 35
miles south of the future Alexandria, and
became the northernmost European on the
Virginia side of the Potomac. Soon joining him
was his formidable sister Margaret. In
Maryland Margaret Brent had been a close
associate of Governor Leonard Calvert and had
appeared so often in the local courts handling
business matters, which was particularly
unusual for a woman, that she was listed in
some court records as “Mistress Margaret
Brent, Gentleman.”
Around the time of the Brents’ arrival, there
was a land rush along the Potomac. A treaty
Virginia signed in 1646 with the remnants of
Powhatan Indians, Algonquians who had long
controlled a vast area of the colony, prohibited
colonists from traveling north of the York River,
but Virginia unilaterally nullified it effective
September 1649, opening the Potomac River
for settlement. The historian Robert Moxham
estimated that between 1651 and 1679, “nearly
a hundred colonial patents [land grants] were
given, conveying rights to many thousands of
acres of the Potomac waterfront from the
Occoquan River to Great Falls.”
One of those many patents went in 1654 to
Margaret Brent, then in her early 50s, for 700
acres on Great Hunting Creek. Hers included
much of present-day Old Town Alexandria
and was the town’s first land grant.
Fifteen years later, in April 1669, a
landowner from Stafford county named John
Alexander sailed upriver to survey land just
south of Great Hunting Creek for John
Washington (George Washington’s greatgrandfather),
land that later became Mount
Vernon. After completing his survey, he
probably directed his boat a little further upriver
past the future Alexandria site and around the
bend to see what was there.
Apparently he liked what he saw but lacked
sufficient headrights, credits given at the rate of
fifty acres for each person transported to
Virginia, that were necessary then to acquire
land belonging to the colony. However, a
neighboring tobacco merchant, Robert
Howson, did have the needed headrights.
On October 21, 1669, Howson used his
headrights to patent the land from the
Governor of Virginia, and within a month,
John Alexander purchased it from him for
6,000 pounds of tobacco. John Alexander’s
new purchase included not only the future site
of Alexandria, but also what would become
Reagan Washington National Airport, the
Pentagon, and Arlington National Cemetery.
It also included the seven hundred acres
Margaret Brent had purchased earlier, although
for a while no one noticed. After her death,
however, her heirs discovered John Alexander’s
purchase and in 1675 forced Alexander to pay
them 10,500 pounds of tobacco for their interest
in the property, more than he earlier had
paid Howson for his whole grant. Finally, how-
❖
Farmers of small holdings who first lived at
the site of the future Alexandria in the late
1600s may have lived in houses that
resembled this one painted by Sidney King
for the 350th anniversary of the founding
of Jamestown.
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, COLONIAL
NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK.
C H A P T E R I
7

❖
Farmers and their slaves harvesting tobacco
in the 1600s.
COURTESY OF JAMESTOWN-YORKTOWN EDUCATIONAL
TRUST. PAINTING BY SIDNEY KING.
ever, John Alexander owned the Alexandria
area and much more.
By this time, many of the Algonquians who
had lived so long in the Alexandria area were
there no longer. Diseases they contracted from
contact with European traders and settlers and
to which they had no immunity took a significant
toll. Also a factor in their disappearance
were attacks by the Iroquoian-speaking
Susquehannoks, fierce warriors whom Captain
John Smith thought in 1608 to be much more
impressive than the Algonquians (“Such great
and well proportioned men are seldom seene,
for they seemed like Giants to the English, yea
and to the neighbors”).
The first clear indication that there was a
European living in the area that is now
Alexandria was when John Alexander wrote
his will on October 25, 1677. He left 200
acres to Elizabeth Holmes (as well as a bed,
but not “the best bed”) and described the
200 acres as being on land “where John
Coggins lives.” Later deeds and maps locate
the 200 acres in an area in present-day
Alexandria bounded on the east by Hooff’s
Run, the north by Duke Street, the south by
the old channel of Great Hunting
Creek/Cameron Run, and the west about half
way to Telegraph Road. (In another hundred
years, this area would be called “West End”
and now is called “Carlyle.”) There Coggins
had a house, possibly made of logs, that stood
near a spring.
Nothing is known about Coggins other than
his name. He probably was a tenant or employee
of John Alexander. However, he did not stay
there permanently but was driven away in the
early 1680s by incursions and alarms of hostile
Indians, mainly Susquehannoks from
Pennsylvania and Maryland and the fierce
Iroquois from upstate New York.
Settlers did not return to the area until the
late 1680s. In 1686, Robert Alexander, a
descendant of John Alexander, conveyed to
Ralph Platt land on a channel (shown on early
maps as “Ralph’s Gut”) that flowed through a
marsh and into what is now Oronoco Bay.
About the same time, on other Alexander land
Robert Alexander established quarters that
probably consisted of a few buildings, slaves,
and an overseer.
Gradually, other settlers joined them. In
some cases, the new households were headed
by women—Judith Ballenger and Sarah Amos
rented land from Robert Alexander below
Four Mile Run in the early 1730s.
How did these early settlers survive? Once
they had cleared fields, some with the help of
slaves, they focused on the time-consuming
process of growing tobacco, the crop that
made them the most money. In fact, tobacco
was used as money through notes from one
planter to another giving the possessor of the
note the right to a certain quantity of tobacco.
Like money, such notes passed from hand to
hand to pay debts. Settlers also raised cattle
and hogs and let them run “wilde in the
woods” that grew between their widely scattered
homes.
T O B A C C O I N S P E C T I O N
S T A T I O N
In 1730 there were enough settlers in the
area that when the Virginia General Assembly
established a system of tobacco inspection
stations throughout the colony that year, it
established an inspection station “upon
Broadwater’s land” on the south bank of Great
Hunting Creek near its mouth. Two years
later, however, the General Assembly found
this site to be “very inconvenient,” and it
established a new inspection station at the
point of land that once belonged to Ralph
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
8

Platt but was then owned by Simon Pearson,
who already had built a warehouse there.
This point, located at the foot of presentday
Oronoco Street, was the northern point of
a shallow bay that to the south curved inward
and back out again to another point at the
foot of present-day Duke Street. Although this
new site was located about a mile from the
first warehouse site, it still was known as
Hunting Creek Warehouse.
Sometime between 1735 and 1739,
Pearson deeded this land and the warehouse
to Hugh West, from Stafford County. Hugh
West took over the public warehouse and
expanded his holdings on the point to include
a ferry to Maryland and an ordinary (tavern).
The point soon became known as West or
West’s Point.
About the same time, a small community
called Cameron began to develop at the head
of Great Hunting Creek (roughly where now
Telegraph Road crosses the beltway) where
the main north-south roads crossed the creek
and met a road heading west. Great Hunting
Creek was then navigable by ships at high tide
some way up toward its head, giving the community
commercial connections by both
ground and water. Soon it could boast of an
ordinary and a few houses, and soon also it
would rival West’s Point as the possible site
for a new town.
S E E K I N G A N E W T O W N
In the 1740s, Fredericksburg was the
northern-most town along the Potomac River
in Virginia. However, the powerful Fairfax
family, young Scottish factors (business
agents), and influential planters living in the
northern part of Virginia thought this situation
should change. They realized that western
Virginia was opening up for settlers, and
these newcomers needed a port on the upper
Potomac where they could sell their crops and
buy the goods they needed and desired.
Thus the Journal for the House of
Burgesses reported that on November 1,
1748, “Inhabitants of Fairfax [County]” petitioned
the General Assembly (composed of an
elected House of Burgesses and an appointed
Governor’s Council acting in its legislative
capacity) to establish a town “at Hunting-
Creek Warehouse, on Patowmack River,” that
is, at West’s Point.
The petition has not survived, but it probably
specified that the new town be built on land
owned by Hugh West, John Alexander, and
Philip Alexander. The petition’s signers very
likely included Thomas, Lord Fairfax, owner of
the vast amount of land between the
Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers all the way
from the Chesapeake Bay to the rivers’ headwaters,
and his relations: his cousin and land agent
William Fairfax; William Fairfax’s son-in-law
Lawrence Washington, a burgess from Fairfax
County; and John Carlyle, an energetic merchant
and William Fairfax’s son-in-law to be.
The Fairfax petition was supported by a
petition from the “Inhabitants of Frederick
County” (Winchester). Lord Fairfax owned
much of the land in Frederick County and
likely was behind this petition also, along
with a burgess from Frederick County,
William Fairfax’s son, George William Fairfax.
Around the same time Lawrence
Washington’s sixteen year old half-brother
George drew a map of the land around the
crescent bay on which the new town was to be
built. He inscribed on the map the type of
❖
Thomas, the sixth Lord Fairfax, baron
of Cameron.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA-WASHINGTON LODGE
NO. 22, A.F. & A.M.
C H A P T E R I
9

❖
George Washington’s map of the future site
of Alexandria in 1748 showing the crescentshaped
bay and the Hunting Creek
Warehouse complex on the point to the
right. Unlike modern maps, which are
oriented so that north is at the top, this map
places west at the top. At that time, much
travel was by boat or ship, thus maps
frequently were oriented to be viewed as if
approaching from water, in this case the
Potomac River.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
10
lines a modern real estate agent would
applaud: “Note that in the Bank fine Cellars
may be cut from thence wharfs may be extended
on the Flats without any difficulty & Ware
Houses built thereon as in Philadelphia.”
As the petitioners learned, however, one of
the owners of the land where the town was to
be built, Philip Alexander, had no desire to
sell his property. He immediately submitted to
the House of Burgesses a petition that
opposed the West’s Point location and favored
instead locating the town at Cameron, the
small community at the head of Great
Hunting Creek.
The three petitions, the ones from Fairfax
and Frederick counties and the one from Philip
Alexander, were referred to a House committee.
When the committee finally reported to
the House on April 5, 1749, it recommended
rejecting all three. Philip Alexander appeared
to have won.
The Fairfax family’s influence, however,
ultimately proved too strong. Burgess
Lawrence Washington probably led the fight
for the Fairfax County petition in the House
of Burgesses, which rejected the committee’s
recommendation and instead ordered a bill to
be prepared creating a town at Hunting Creek
Warehouse. On April 22 the bill passed the
House and, two days later, Lawrence
Washington presented the bill to the
Governor’s Council. After inserting a few
amendments, the Council agreed to the bill,
which undoubtedly had Council member
William Fairfax’s strong support. The House
later agreed to the amended bill, and May 11,
1749, the Governor signed the bill into law.
The West’s Point supporters had a new
town where they wanted it. Possibly as a sop
to Philip Alexander, it was called Alexandria.
Appointed by the Assembly as the new
town’s first trustees and founders were: the
influential nobleman landowner, Thomas
Lord Fairfax; Governor’s Council member
William Fairfax; his son Burgess George
William Fairfax; Lawrence Washington and
Richard Osborn, the two burgesses from
Fairfax County; John Carlyle, factor for an
English shipping firm; Hugh West, proprietor
of the Hunting Creek warehouse and West’s
Point; John Pagan and William Ramsay, young
Scottish factors; Gerrard Alexander, brother of
John Alexander, one of the town’s landowners;
and lastly, Philip Alexander. All but the
last had supported the bill. They now set out
to build a town.

C H A P T E R
A NEW TOWN, 1749-1764
I I
T H E F I R S T A U C T I O N
On July 13, 1749, a group of men, and likely some women, gathered at the site of the future
Alexandria for an auction of the new town’s eighty-four lots.
The site was some 60 acres of worn out tobacco fields bordered on the east primarily by 15- to
20-foot bluffs that dropped sharply down to the shores of a shallow bay of the Potomac River. The
bay itself curved gradually inward from its southern point (Point Lumley) and then curved
gradually back out again to a northern point (called West’s Point after its owner Hugh West). Only
at West’s Point did the land slope down from the bluffs to water level. On that point stood the
official Hunting Creek tobacco warehouse, Hugh West’s house, a ferry landing, a tavern, and a few
other bare wooden buildings.
The site had been surveyed earlier by John West, Jr., Hugh West’s son and deputy surveyor of
Fairfax County. West also staked the lots and drew a map of the future town. (Young George
Washington later copied West’s map, probably for his half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine.)
West’s and Washington’s maps showed the town lots and grid with seven streets running west,
away from the Potomac, and three streets running north and south, parallel to the river. The street
names honored royalty, nobility, and the influential Fairfax family, except for Water Street, the
street closest to the river (now Lee Street), and Oronoco, named after a type of tobacco.
On that July day, auctioneer John West, Jr., struck off the first lot, lot 36, to John Dalton, a 26-
year-old merchant originally from Gloucester County, Virginia. The lot was well located on the
edge of the bluffs overlooking the river and on the north side of Cameron Street. Dalton later also
bought adjoining lot 37 on the corner of Cameron and Fairfax Streets.
Another young merchant, 29-year-old John Carlyle from a Dumfrieshire family, bought two lots
on the same side of Fairfax Street as Dalton and just across Cameron Street from him. Thirty-three-
❖
General Braddock shown as he is shot in his
battle with the French and Indians. George
Washington is depicted grasping the bridle
of Braddock’s horse as Braddock falls
mortally wounded.
COURTESY OF WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
PAINTING BY EDWIN WILLARD DEMING.
C H A P T E R I I
1 1

❖
The remodeled John Dalton House, 207
North Fairfax Street.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, GRIGG/LAMOND COLLECTION.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
12
year-old William Ramsay, originally from the
Galloway district of Kircudbrightshire,
bought lots adjoining John Carlyle, Fairfax
Street, King Street, and the waterfront. These
three men, who lived in a line along
Fairfax Street, soon would become the new
town’s leaders.
Before the auction, these three, along with
Lawrence Washington and Nathaniel
Chapman, secretly bought the part of the new
town site that belonged to Philip Alexander.
Alexander had never wanted the town on his
land and feared he would receive little for it at
auction, so he made his deal with the five men
earlier. Then at the auction, each of the five
bought lots, and afterward they divided
among themselves the profits from the sale of
Alexander’s land after discounting the price of
the lots each purchased.
The auction lasted two days. The two
points at each end of town, West’s Point and
Point Lumley, plus a market square on half
the block bordered by King, Royal, Cameron,
and Fairfax Streets purposely were not sold
but were reserved for public use. Although
not all the lots were sold then, the new town
was off to a good start.
A T O W N G R O W S
The trustees required a lot owner to build
a house on his lot within two years of purchase
or lose it (a requirement loosely
enforced). Most lot owners met the requirement
by erecting small, wooden structures on
their lots. Around 1751, John Dalton built a
clapboard house on his Fairfax Street lot. (It
may still exist behind the facade of the house
at 207 North Fairfax Street.) Soon after the
auction, William Ramsay likely used boards
and other material from older buildings to
construct a new home at 221 King Street. (A
1956 reconstruction is now the Alexandria
Visitors Center)
John Carlyle, however, built between
Dalton’s and Ramsay’s a different home, a
Palladian-style, two-story house with unusual
sandstone outer walls that stood back on his
lot on Fairfax Street. When he moved into it
in August 1753, it was the grandest in town.
(It still stands today).
Carlyle, a town trustee, a justice of the
Fairfax County Court, and the son-in-law of
the influential William Fairfax, was a man on
the move. Possibly as early as 1753, he and
Dalton went into business together, mainly
exporting tobacco and selling goods from
incoming ships’ cargo. It would be a long-lasting
and successful partnership. Similarly,
Ramsay teamed up with John Dixon to export
tobacco and sell imported goods.
Carlyle and the other town leaders began
to use their influence. In February 1752 the
Virginia General Assembly allowed Alexandria
to have two fairs a year, in May and October,
“for the sale and vending of all manner of cattle,
victuals, provisions, goods, wares, and
merchandizes.” Only two months later, the
Assembly ordered the Fairfax County courthouse
and jail moved from near present-day
Tysons Corner to Alexandria, where the Court
met for the first time in May.
Market Square became the site of the county
courthouse, jail, stocks, and pillory, and an
open market where farmers sold horses,
chickens, vegetables, meat, and fruit. It also
may have been the place where in 1750
Dalton sold 25 slaves that he imported, probably
from Barbados. If so, it was the first sale
of slaves in Alexandria.
For spiritual matters, Alexandrians gathered
every third Sunday to hear a parson
preach an Anglican service at a chapel probably
located at Pitt and Princess Streets.

T R A I N I N G G R O U N D
F O R W A R
In 1753, Britain’s long-time enemy France
began building a chain of forts south from
Canada down the Allegheny River in order to
block British colonists in Pennsylvania and
Virginia from expanding westward into the
Ohio Country. Robert Dinwiddie, acting governor
of Virginia, responded by sending 21-
year-old George Washington to the French to
inform them that Virginia claimed the Ohio
and to persuade them to halt. Young
Washington, however, spoke no French and
had no diplomatic experience. The French
were unimpressed and continued building.
In January 1754 Washington reported the
dismissive French response to Governor
Dinwiddie. The affronted governor ordered
Washington immediately to gather militia units
at Alexandria and there to “train & discipline
them in the best Manner You can” in preparation
for a return to the Ohio to build British
forts to block the French.
Governor Dinwiddie also commissioned
John Carlyle as commissary in charge of providing
Washington’s forces with supplies (“a
sufficient Quantity of Flower, Bread, Beef and
Pork for 500 Men for six or eight months”).
Carlyle made his headquarters in Alexandria.
Washington, however, had little time to drill
his new troops on Alexandria’s Market Square.
The French were moving south faster than
anticipated, and on March 15, Governor
Dinwiddie ordered Washington to leave
Alexandria for the Ohio Country as quickly as
possible with “what Soldiers You have enlisted.”
On April 2, Washington marched out of
Alexandria with only about 120 soldiers, several
officers, and “one Swedish Gentleman, who
was a Volunteer.” One of the officers was John
West, Jr., the deputy surveyor of Fairfax County
who laid out the Alexandria lots. Also accompanying
Washington was Dr. James Craik, later
an Alexandria resident and Washington’s lifelong
friend, and a sergeant named Thomas
Longdon, an ancestor of Samuel Snowden, later
editor of the Alexandria Gazette.
On May 28, Washington, now in
Pennsylvania and reinforced by a few additional
soldiers, attacked and defeated a small party of
Frenchmen. Although he did not know it, he had
fired the first shots of the French and Indian War.
Soon after this initial success, Washington
and his men were themselves attacked at a hastily
erected fort at Great Meadows, which the
inexperienced Washington called “a charming
field for an Encounter.” There they were soundly
defeated and surrendered. On July 4, 1754,
the French, not officially at war with Great
Britain, allowed them to return to Virginia.
Meanwhile, Carlyle had trouble supplying
Washington’s soldiers. His trouble only
increased after Washington and his men
returned and Virginia began to recruit troops
to fight the French again. Governor Dinwiddie
wrote to Carlyle in June, August, September,
and December 1754 to pass on from the
Governor’s Council and several officers,
including Washington, complaints of his “not
having discharged your duty…with the
Exactness and Dispatch expected.”
Carlyle realized he had taken on a huge
task. He wrote to his family in England that it
was “the most Troublesome one I ever had.”
Then in January 1755, Carlyle received word
that his task was to become even more troublesome—an
entire British army under General
Edward Braddock was coming to Alexandria.
G E N E R A L
A R M Y
B R A D D O C K ’ S
A R R I V E S
In March 1755, the first of 17 ships loaded
with British soldiers and their supplies and
❖
The William Ramsay House, 221 King
Street, c. the 1920s.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, MORRIS LOEB COLLECTION.
C H A P T E R I I
1 3

❖
Above: A sketch of John Carlyle’s House,
121 North Fairfax Street, as it would have
appeared when General Edward Braddock
made it his headquarters.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY,
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
Below: “A Charming Field for an
Encounter.” George Washington’s soldiers
aligned in front of Fort Necessity at Great
Meadows in western Pennsylvania before
their defeat there by the French and
Indians. The red uniforms look the same as
those worn later by General Braddock’s
British troops, except that the wide lapels
and turned-back cuffs of Braddock’s men
were different colors to denote their
different regiments.
COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PRESS, INC. PAINTING BY
ROBERT GRIFFING.
weapons docked at the landing at West’s Point
at the foot of Oronoco Street. Immediately the
48th Regiment of Foot began to disembark
and form into ranks.
They must have made a striking scene with
each man wearing his long, bright red coat
with its dull yellow lapels and wide, dull
yellow cuffs and his bright red breeches whose
legs were tucked into white leggings that
buttoned over his knees, half-way up his thigh.
On his head a private wore a flat, black tricorn
hat edged in white, and a special grenadier
wore his distinctive tall, narrow hat shaped like
a tombstone with a thin metal plate in front.
Once they had formed up, they began to
march up Oronoco and down Fairfax Streets.
Townsmen, housewives, children, and
servants stood in front of log or wood-frame
houses to watch and cheer as the redcoats,
their fifes squealing, drums beating,
regimental flag flapping, passed up the
dusty streets scattering hogs, geese, and dogs
from their path.
Before arrival of the army, the town’s
population was a little over five hundred. The
British soldiers tripled that number, and with
the arrival of new recruits for the British and
Virginia forces, the population increased
further, vastly overcrowding the town’s few
available rooms. Mrs. Charlotte Brown, a
nurse traveling with Braddock’s army, wrote in
her diary that she went to every house in
Alexandria in search of lodging and “at last
was Obliged to take a Room but little larger
than to hold my Bed, and not so much as a
Chair in it.”
One of Braddock’s soldiers walking
Alexandria’s streets was Lt. Col. Thomas Gage.
Twenty years later, in April 1775, Gage would
be royal governor of Massachusetts and send
British troops to Lexington and Concord,
causing Paul Revere to ride and the minutemen
to rally and helping to precipitate the
American Revolution.
General Braddock himself did not reach
Alexandria until March 26, arriving with
Governor Dinwiddie in the governor’s handsome
coach. The general quickly obtained for
himself the best house in Alexandria, John
Carlyle’s stone mansion. It was here on April
14 that he assembled what John Carlyle
labeled “the Grandest Congress…ever known
on This Continent.” The colonial governors of
Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and
Maryland, along with Dinwiddie of Virginia,
met there with Braddock to discuss military
and financial strategy.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
14

The principal action they agreed on over the
three-day conference was to attack the French at
four points: Fort Duquesne at the confluence of
the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers (the
site of present-day Pittsburgh and Braddock’s
initial objective) and forts in New York (at
Niagara and Crown Point) and in Nova Scotia.
Yet who would pay for these operations?
Not the colonies, at least not voluntarily, the
governors reported. Their legislatures would
refuse to provide the funds. Instead, the ministers
in London should find a way to compel
them to do so. As a result, in his letter to
London about the conference, Braddock
reported that London must levy “a Tax” directly
upon the colonies for the needed funds.
Some historians have wondered whether
this report could have led to the British Stamp
Act of 1765. As historian Lawrence Henry
Gipson noted, however, a stamp tax for the
colonies had been suggested as early as 1722,
and suggested again in 1754, the year before
the Alexandria conference. The Alexandria
conference’s recommendation may have added
to the cumulative effect of earlier and later
similar suggestions, but its influence likely was
not great.
Yet Alexandrians were justly proud of the
conference. It was the largest assembly of royal
governors ever held in the colonies, and it
would not be until 1774, when the Continental
Congress met in Philadelphia, that another
broad assembly of such influential colony
representatives gathered to discuss their future.
Braddock’s mission, however, proved to be
a disaster. By April 27, Braddock and his army
had left Alexandria, and on July 9, 1755, after
a long and difficult march and only ten miles
short of their objective, Fort Duquesne, they
were routed by a smaller number of French
and Indians. Over 65% of the British engaged
were killed or wounded, and General
Braddock himself was killed. The Virginia
troops were hit particularly hard. Of three
companies of Virginians, not more than 30
men still lived. One of those killed was
Sergeant Thomas Longdon of Alexandria.
Young George Washington, who earlier
had resigned his commission in the Virginia
forces, accompanied Braddock as a volunteer
aide. He survived unharmed, but during the
battle, two horses were shot out from under
him and four bullets tore holes in his coat.
Braddock and his men had made a poor
impression on Alexandrians. John Carlyle wrote
that “they used us Like an Enemy Country &
Took everything they wanted & paid Nothing
or Very little for it.” (This was not to be the only
time in its history that Alexandria was treated
harshly by an unfriendly army.)
Alexandrians were ahead of other colonists
in experiencing the arrogance of British soldiers.
But they and others throughout the
colonies had learned that the British could be
defeated—knowledge that would have its
effect in the future.
T H E T O W N E X P A N D S
A N D E N T E R T A I N S
In October 1759, Andrew Burnaby, Vicar of
Greenwich, England, stopped in Alexandria during
his tour of the middle colonies and described
the town as “a small trading place in one of the
finest situations imaginable…. The town is built
upon an arc of this [large circular] bay; at one
extremity of which is a wharf; at the other a dock
for building ships; with water sufficiently deep to
launch a vessel of any rate or magnitude.”
The wharf he mentioned was built by
Fairfax County at the public area at West’s
Point just before General Braddock’s forces
arrived. The shipbuilding operation was that
❖
The April 2010 re-enactment of General
Braddock welcoming royal governors to a
conference he hosted at John Carlyle’s house
255 years earlier to plan the first major
campaign of the French and Indian War.
PHOTOGRAPH BY TED PULLIAM.
C H A P T E R I I
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❖
Above: The Alexandria waterfront as it
probably appeared c. 1760-1775.
COURTESY OF ALEXANDRIA ARCHAEOLOGY. DRAWING
BY ELIZABETH LUALLEN
Below: A section of the Carlyle-Dalton
wharf excavated in 1982 by Alexandria
Archaeology. It was re-buried and now is
underneath the south side of the 100 block
of Cameron Street.
COURTESY OF ALEXANDRIA ARCHAEOLOGY.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
16
of Thomas Fleming at Point Lumley at the
foot of Duke Street, the first of many
Alexandria shipbuilding enterprises.
The public wharf soon was joined by the
first private wharf in the town, that of Carlyle
& Dalton extending out from John Carlyle’s
property in late 1759 or early 1760. Carlyle &
Dalton continued to prosper. Each man also,
like many other Alexandrians, from time to
time formed partnerships with other businessmen,
pooling their capital for a particular venture,
such as importing slaves, rum, or sugar.
(There was as yet no bank in all of Virginia.)
Alexandria had its share of smaller businesses
also, like that of dyer Paul Irmill, who took
in “great quantities of woolen, Cloths,
Stockings, yarn in hanks, and also all Kind of
Linnens, Silks, and Brocades for Ladies velvets,”
according to court documents and who
posted a black spaniel hunting dog at the door
of his shop to “defend the said Cloths from
Thieves and Robbers.”
Alexandria was not all business and civic
affairs. On February 15, 1760, George
Washington, age twenty-seven, recorded in
his diary attending a ball in Alexandria where
there was music, dancing, and “in a convenient
Room detached for the purpose abounded
great plenty of Bread and Butter, some
Biscuets with Tea, & Coffee,” and he named
this entertainment “the Bread & Butter Ball.”
In 1761 Alexandrians selected the gregarious
William Ramsay its honorary Lord Mayor,
decorating him with a golden chain and persuading
him to lead a “grand procession” composed
of “Sword and Mace bearers” and “many
gentlemen of the town and country, wearing
blue sashes.” Bands played, and ships in the
harbor flew banners. After the procession,
according to the Maryland Gazette, came a
brilliant ball, a “sumptuous repast,” and “fireworks,
bonfires, and other demonstrations.”
Alexandrians continued to improve their
“finest situation imaginable.” In 1759, a one
and a half story brick town hall was built on
Market Square not far from the courthouse,
and in 1760, room was found on its lower
floor for a school. In November 1762 the
General Assembly authorized the expansion
of Alexandria by a street to the south (Wolfe),
a street to the west (Pitt), and 58 new lots.
The trustees auctioned the new lots on May 9,
1763, to many willing bidders.
In the 1760s, Alexandrians began exporting
quantities of flour and wheat, and by
1775 they exported more flour and wheat
than tobacco, diversifying their trade and
foreshadowing real prosperity. But before
Alexandria prospered, it needed to survive the
cataclysm of the American Revolution.

C H A P T E R
I I I
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1765-1782
R E V O L U T I O N
A P P R O A C H E S
On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament and George III enacted the Stamp Act requiring
revenue stamps costing from a few pence to several pounds to be affixed to almost all printed
documents in the colonies—law pleadings, bills of lading, newspapers, deeds, even playing cards.
The act’s purpose was to raise funds to defray the expenses of defending the colonies. Instead, it
became the first giant step leading to the American Revolution.
When a session of the General Assembly began in Williamsburg on May 1, the old leaders of the
House of Burgesses were uncertain what to do about the act’s threat to the colonies. As a result, they
dealt with other matters. By late May the session was almost over, and some burgesses, probably
including George Washington, then a burgess for Frederick County (Winchester), had gone home.
Those staying included George Johnston, a burgess from Fairfax County, an Alexandrian (his home
was at 224 South Lee Street), and a first class lawyer. At 65 he was somewhat old to be a revolutionary,
but on May 29, with only about a third of the Assembly still present, Johnston moved that the House
of Burgesses begin consideration of resolutions opposing the Stamp Act, resolutions that he, young
Patrick Henry, and two other Burgesses had drafted. Patrick Henry seconded the motion.
During the next two days’ impassioned debate on the resolutions, Patrick Henry is reported to
have said: “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First had his Cromwell, and George the Third….”
“Treason,” shouted the Speaker. “…may profit by their example.”
Henry then concluded, “If this be treason, make the most of it.”
The House of Burgesses passed four anti-Stamp Act resolutions, although the three most
incendiary resolutions of the seven drafted were defeated or not offered. Alexandrian George
Johnston’s contribution to the debate was key. Thomas Jefferson, then a law student, stood at the
❖
Row galleys, like the one shown here on the
Ohio River during the Revolutionary War,
were built in Alexandria by John Dalton
and George Mason to defend the Potomac
River against the British.
COURTESY OF THE WATERHOUSE HISTORY MUSEUM, INC.
PAINTING BY COLONEL CHARLES H. WATERHOUSE.
C H A P T E R I I I
1 7

❖
George Johnston.
COURTESY OF THE FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
18
door of the Assembly listening to the debate.
About George Johnston’s role he later wrote:
“by him the learning and the logic of the case
were chiefly maintained.”
Later, however, all seven of the Virginia
Resolutions were printed in northern colonial
newspapers as though all had been adopted,
including one resolution not even offered that
read: “Resolved, That any person who
shall…assert or maintain that any person or
persons other than the General Assembly of this
Colony have any right or authority to lay or
impose any tax whatever on the inhabitants
thereof, shall be deemed an enemy to this His
Majesty’s colony.”
People in other colonies read of Virginia’s
apparent boldness and were inspired to their
own bold actions in opposition to the Stamp
Act. As a result, in March 1766, Parliament
repealed it. After the repeal, John Carlyle
wrote his brother “nothing Appears but that
our Mother Country intends well for us which
we are Obliged to her for.”
Carlyle’s optimism was short lived. Still
needing money and now wanting to stress its
authority, Parliament in 1767 passed the
Townshend Act duties on importing into the
colonies items such as tea, wine, glass, lead, and
quality paper. Although all the Townshend
duties but that on tea were eventually repealed,
that remaining duty led in December 1773 to
colonists in Boston dressed as Indians boarding
ships loaded with tea and dumping it into the
harbor. In response, Britain angrily closed
Boston Harbor, which in turn set in motion a
chain of events in Virginia and Alexandria that
had severe consequences.
V I R G I N I A A N D
A L E X A N D R I A R E S P O N D
The General Assembly was meeting in
Williamsburg in May 1774 when it learned of
Boston port’s closing. The House of Burgesses,
deeply impressed with “the great Dangers to be
derived to British America” from the example
of the closure, passed a resolution setting aside
June 1 “as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and
Prayer.” The royal governor, John Murray,
fourth earl of Dunmore, promptly and
unexpectedly dismissed the House.
Immediately most House members, including
George Washington (elected a burgess from
Fairfax County when the out-spoken George
Johnston became terminally ill), walked down
the street to the Raleigh Tavern to plan their
next steps. Among other actions, they decided
to call a special convention in Virginia to be
held on August 1. Washington later wrote “god
only knows what is to become of us.”
Meanwhile on May 29, 1774, a group of
Alexandria citizens, probably as yet unaware
of the happenings in Williamsburg but “deeply
interested as we are, in the fate of Boston,”
formed a committee of correspondence to
communicate with neighboring towns “in the
most speedy manner” about the present
“Alarming situation.” The first three names on
the list of members of the Alexandria
committee were the three Fairfax Street
neighbors, Carlyle, Dalton, and Ramsay.
Alexandria then had no newspaper.
Alexandrians obtained information about the fate
of Boston and the larger world generally through
newspapers printed in Annapolis and
Williamsburg, letters from friends, incoming
ships’ captains, stagecoach travelers, and now,
semi-official correspondence with other towns.
They discussed this information energetically,
then and during the Revolution, on street
corners, in churches (the new Christ Church had
just been completed in 1773 and the Old
Presbyterian Meeting House would be in 1775—
almost as if Alexandrians built stable houses of
worship to sustain their faith and themselves
through the turmoil they sensed coming), and
over a pipe of tobacco, a tankard of ale, or bowl
of rum punch in taverns like Arell’s on Market
Square or the widow Hawkins’ on Royal Street
(near where Gadsby’s Tavern stands today).
T H E F A I R F A X R E S O L V E S
On July 14, 1774, Fairfax County elected
George Washington and Charles Broadwater
as its delegates to the Virginia Convention,
chose Washington to head a committee to
draft instructions for the delegates, and set
July 18 as the date for the county to meet in
Alexandria to discuss the instructions.
The night before the instructions were to be
presented at Alexandria, Fairfax County

esident George Mason stayed at Mount Vernon
with Washington. It is generally agreed that
Mason was the lead drafter of what next day
became the Fairfax Resolves. Mason, then 50
years old, and Washington, then 42, had
known each other for years and had consulted
frequently about farming techniques, served
together as Alexandria trustees, and, in 1769,
worked together on Virginia’s first nonimportation
agreement.
The following morning the county met in
Alexandria, probably in the courthouse on
Market Square (which likely was packed with
people). Washington, as chairman of the
drafting committee, probably proposed the
resolutions with comments in support that were
short and to the point. (Thomas Jefferson wrote
that he never heard Washington speak more
than ten minutes at a time and then always “to
the main point that was to decide the question.”)
After some discussion, his and Mason’s
resolutions, slightly amended, were adopted.
The adopted resolutions proposed that the
colonies refuse to import most goods from Great
Britain or to export certain American goods to
Great Britain, and most importantly, that all
colonies attend a congress to prepare “for the
Defense and preservation of our Common
rights.” The resolutions also beseeched the king
“not to reduce his faithful Subjects of America to
a State of desperation, and to reflect, that from
our Sovereign [the king], there can be but one
Appeal.” Although not stated explicitly, the only
appeal remaining was war.
Of the several Virginia counties that proposed
resolutions, Fairfax County’s were “the
most detailed, the most influential, and the most
radical” according to historian Jeff Broadwater.
The meeting also appointed a county committee
of 25, including Washington, Mason,
Ramsay, Carlyle, and Dalton as well as John
West, uncle of Hugh West of the Hunting
Creek Warehouse, and two Alexanders, Philip
and Charles, to address “any emergency.”
Washington and Broadwater carried the
Fairfax resolves to the Virginia Convention. As
the resolves proposed, the Convention banned
importing British goods and exporting goods
to Great Britain, although the export ban
would not become effective for a year. It also
elected delegates, including George
Washington, to the First Continental Congress
meeting in Philadelphia in September.
A P L O T R E V E A L E D
Events quickly escalated. At a second Virginia
Convention in March 1775, Patrick Henry gave
his “give me liberty or give me death” speech; on
April 19, Massachusetts minutemen and British
regulars exchanged gunfire at Lexington and
Concord; on June 8, royal governor Dunmore
fled Williamsburg to a British warship off
Yorktown; on June 16, at the Second
Continental Congress, George Washington
accepted the position of commander-in-chief of
the Continental forces; and in the fall of 1775,
Dunmore took control of Norfolk and offered
freedom to any slave who joined him.
Following these momentous events, there
appeared in the Virginia Gazette of December 22,
1775, a transcript of some very disturbing papers
found on a loyalist, Major John Connolly, captured
at a tavern near Hagerstown, Maryland.
According to those papers, Connolly planned to
gather a force of Ohio and Detroit Indians, backwoods
loyalists, “serviceable French,” and British
soldiers and artillery, transport them from Detroit
to Fort Pitt (earlier Fort Duquesne and now
Pittsburgh), and march them down Braddock’s
Road to Alexandria (a Braddock’s march in
reverse). In Alexandria he would rendezvous
with Governor Dunmore’s ships and soldiers,
and then, as one of his confederates wrote,
“sweep all the Country before him.”
❖
A watercolor of a molded German
stoneware tankard, c. 1760-1775, and a
late eighteenth century clay pipe that were
uncovered at the site of Arell’s Tavern on
Market Square and now are part of the
Alexandria Archaeology collection
COURTESY OF TED PULLIAM. WATERCOLOR BY
ERIK HOTTENSTEIN.
C H A P T E R I I I
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❖
Patrick Henry delivering his speech before
the House of Burgesses in May 1765 in
which he said: “If this be treason, make
the most of it.”
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. PAINTING BY
PETER FREDERICK ROTHERMEL.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
20
Earlier, with Dunmore’s approval, Connolly
had sailed to Boston to obtain the approval of
General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief of
the British land forces. Gage was familiar with
part of the route, having been with General
Braddock in Alexandria and on the road to Fort
Pitt (then Fort Duquesne), and he approved.
Major Connolly was on his way to the backcountry
in disguise to execute his plan when he
was captured. It was a long-shot scheme at best,
and Connolly was an unlikely man to execute it
successfully (one modern historian referred to
him as “a local blowhard”), but its discovery
unnerved Alexandrians.
Their uneasiness increased when a month
later Dunmore, driven out of Norfolk to his
ships, shelled the city, starting a fire that burned
much of Norfolk to the ground. Alexandrians
found themselves with nothing between them
and the enemy but an open river and a company
of militia armed mainly with clubs. As the
Alexandrians wrote in December 1775: “The
Sword is drawn, the Bayonet is already at our
Breasts, therefore some immediate Effort is necessary
to ward off the meditated Blow.”
Lund Washington, George Washington’s
cousin who managed Mount Vernon in
Washington’s absence, on January 17, 1776,
wrote Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts:
“The Alexandrians expect to have their Town
burnt by the Enemy soon.”
L O Y A L I S T S
In such an atmosphere, Alexandrians were
forced to choose sides. Were they with the
mother country or with their home?
In December 1775, Alexandrian Enoch
Hawksworth, not wanting to renounce his loyalty
to king and country, “sold his goods, settled
his debts, closed his store that stood on North
Fairfax Street adjoining Col. John Carlyle’s
house,” and sailed away from Alexandria “to
become ‘a wandering and forlorn Refugee,’”
wrote author Marian Van Landingham.
He was not alone. In late 1776, Harry
Piper, a tobacco agent in Alexandria for the
firm of Dixon and Littledale of Whitehaven,
England, left for his mother country. He had
been an outstanding Alexandria citizen—
bought a lot in the first auction in 1749,
served as a town trustee, and even signed an
early non-importation agreement—and his
letters make it clear that he had no real desire
to leave. He knew, however, as he wrote his
employer, once the Continental Congress’s
ban on exports to Great Britain, including
tobacco, took effect (as it soon would), “my
stay here can neither be of advantage to you
or agreeable to me.” So he sailed away.
Members of the Fairfax family each made
his or her own decision. Old Lord Fairfax, 82
in 1775, continued to live unmolested west of
Winchester, “a silent, inactive bystander” as a
biographer recorded, until his death in
December 1781. His old land agent, William
Fairfax, had died in 1757. William’s son, and
George Washington’s great friend, George
William Fairfax, and his wife Sarah had gone
to England in 1773 to deal with the family
estate and see doctors. They never returned.
T H E D E F E N S E
O F A L E X A N D R I A
The defense of Alexandria and the Potomac
River was such a concern that George
Washington wrote in November 1775 from
Massachusetts to William Ramsay (Ramsay and
Washington were close—Washington even
helped support Ramsay’s son William at “the
Jersey College,” now Princeton) asking Ramsay
to investigate places along the Potomac where
derelict ships could be sunk and shore batter-

ies erected to block the passage of British warships.
Ramsay investigated, but unfortunately
found that the channel was too deep and the
river too wide for that to be practical.
At the urging of Alexandrians Carlyle,
Dalton, Ramsay, and others, however,
Virginia’s revolutionary government furnished
them funds to buy three armed ships, build
two row galleys (fairly small sailing vessels
with oars, thick gunwales, and several cannons),
and equip them for use on the Potomac
against “Lord Dunmore’s Pirates.”
The government placed George Mason and
John Dalton in charge of the vessels’ acquisition.
Mason was ill and rarely left Gunston
Hall, so it fell to Dalton to do most of the work.
Mason wrote of Dalton: “He is a steady diligent
Man, & without such Assistance I could not
have undertaken it [procuring and building the
vessels].” Ships, including one called the
American Congress, were bought but finding
gunpowder, cannon, even sail cloth for them
and for the galleys proved difficult. By May
1776, however, a spy for Dunmore reported
the vessels were mostly ready and were “fully
Manned with desperadoes.”
In an effort to remedy the shortage of gunpowder,
muskets, and ammunition,
Alexandrian Robert Townshend Hooe, his business
partner from Maryland, Daniel of St.
Thomas Jennifer, and a young future
Alexandrian, Richard Harrison, developed contacts
with the French in Martinique and opened
up a channel of supply, trading Alexandrian
flour and bread for French arms. Dodging
British ships was dangerous, but ships chartered
by Jennifer and Hooe, like the sloop Molly, were
successful enough to help the patriot cause.
In late July 1776, Alexandrians had a scare
when Dunmore’s ships came up the Potomac
searching for fresh water. Just below Dumfries
the British burned several buildings and routed
a militia unit but sailed no further upriver.
Many Alexandrians did not wait for the
British to come to them. Men from Alexandria
with names like Arell, West, Conway, and
Lynn fought from Massachusetts to South
Carolina in Virginia regiments. Alexandrian
Robert Hanson Harrison served for five years
as an aide to Washington. John Fitzgerald of
Alexandria was another Washington aide.
Doctor James Craik, who had been with
General Braddock, was Chief Physician and
Surgeon of the Continental Army. Alexandrian
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Simms succeeded
Colonel James Hendricks, also of Alexandria,
as second-in-command of the 6th Virginia
Infantry regiment when Hendricks became
commander of the 1st. Moreover, fifteen-yearold
George William Carlyle, John Carlyle’s
only son, was killed in South Carolina only
three weeks before the Battle of Yorktown.
Finally, in early August 1776, Dunmore sailed
away from the Chesapeake for New York. His
leaving did not mean Alexandria was free to
resume its usual shipping. At unpredictable
times British warships appeared at the mouth of
the bay and seized vessels leaving and coming,
much to Alexandria’s and all Virginia’s detriment.
E S C A P E A N D A T T A C K
On May 1, 1777, a notice appeared in the
Maryland Gazette offering a reward of $100
for apprehending nine Loyalist prisoners who
had escaped from the Alexandria jail. Aiding
their escape was Nicholas Cresswell, a young
Englishman who had come to Alexandria to
seek his fortune. Seven of the escapees
made their way to a British warship in the
Delaware Bay, but two, discouraged earlier,
returned to Alexandria. There the two hoped
to help their cause by accusing six townsmen
of planning to burn the town and murder
its inhabitants.
❖
A scene in the yard of Christ Church after
Sunday services, c. 1775.
THE CENTURY MAGAZINE, NOVEMBER 1887
C H A P T E R I I I
2 1

❖
Above: John Murray, fourth earl of
Dunmore, the last royal governor of
Virginia, copied from the original by
Joshua Reynolds.
COURTESY OF THE VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Below: The home of successful Alexandria
merchant Robert Townshend Hooe, who
helped Alexandria obtain powder and
muskets during the Revolution, was the first
mayor of Alexandria, and was one of the
justices of the peace whose appointment led
to the famous Supreme Court case of
Marbury v. Madison. This house at 200
Prince Street and 201 South Lee Street was
built c. 1780. Its second floor parlor was
sold during the Great Depression to a St.
Louis museum, but a replica of the parlor is
on display at the Lyceum in Alexandria.
PHOTOGRAPH BY TED PULLIAM.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
22
The six accused Alexandrians, including
Andrew Wales and William Hepburn, were
sent to Williamsburg for trial, where Wales,
Hepburn, and two others were acquitted and
freed. Wales owned a brewery, and present-day
Wales Alley was named after him. Hepburn
later became a successful export-importer, and
as the owner of a mill, distillery, and extensive
property, one of Alexandria’s wealthiest men
Alexandrians’ last and closest brush with
combat came in the spring of 1781 when a
British sloop of war, the Savage, came to Mount
Vernon and seized a boat and 17 slaves. Martha
Washington was not present then, and it is not
clear whether the British knew to whom Mount
Vernon belonged.
Lund Washington, General Washington’s
cousin and estate manager, went on board the
Savage with refreshments in an effort to regain
the Washington property. The only thing his
visit accomplished, however, was to infuriate
the General when he heard about it.
Washington wrote Lund that rather than giving
those “plundering scoundrels” refreshments,
“it would have been less painful” to
him if “they had burnt my House, and laid my
Plantation in ruins.”
In the dark early morning only days later, a
British vessel, probably the Savage, sailed into
Alexandria harbor. There its men boarded a vessel
from Baltimore loaded with tobacco, confined
the vessel’s seamen, and prepared to sail
her down river. At this point, men on a nearby
vessel discovered them and gave the alarm. The
British immediately abandoned the Baltimore
ship, climbed into a boat alongside, rowed back
to their own ship, and sailed hurriedly back
down river. However, an armed schooner pursued
and captured them at Boyd’s Hole off King
George County. Alexandria’s defenses finally
had been tested and had proven effective.
T H E B R I T I S H V A N Q U I S H E D
At Yorktown in October 1781, Washington’s
Continentals, Count Rochambeau’s French
army, and Count de Grasse’s French navy eliminated
the British from Virginia for good. The
following July, Rochambeau’s soldiers marching
back north camped just outside Alexandria.
There, as an observer reported, “the most
elegant and handsome young ladies of the
neighborhood” danced with the French
officers “in the middle of the camp, to the
sound of military music; and…the circle was
in a great measure composed of soldiers, who,
from the heat of the weather, had disengaged
themselves from their clothes, retaining not
an article of dress except their shirts, which in
general were neither extremely long, nor in
the best condition; nor did this occasion the
least embarrassment to the ladies, many of
whom were of highly polished manners, and
the most exquisite delicacy; or to their friends
or parents.”
Perhaps through their dancing, these
young Alexandrians celebrated the freedom
and release they now felt after the stifling
British threat had ended.

C H A P T E R
I V
THE GOLDEN AGE
1783-1799
The Revolutionary War formally ended with the Peace of Paris signed in 1783. Alexandria then
grew rapidly in almost every way—in population, geographical expanse, variety of businesses, new
institutions, number of brick buildings, and sophistication of its governmental structure.
By the end of the century Alexandria was no longer “a small trading place” as the good Vicar Burnaby
described it in 1759. It was not even the same as General Washington found it in December 1783 when
he returned to Alexandria from the war (welcomed by a huge feast and the firing of thirteen cannons).
The most obvious change was on the waterfront. The effort to push the town out into the Potomac
begun by the Carlyle-Dalton wharf had been greatly expanded. Alexandrians built additional wharves
and used dirt obtained from leveling the bluffs to fill in the bay’s shallow tidal flats, a process called
“banking out,” to reach the river channel that ran between the two points, West’s Point and Point
Lumley. By the mid 1780s the two ends of Water Street had been joined in the middle and Union Street
had been added along the waterfront. By the beginning of the new century, the waterfront was a curve
no longer but a rough straight line, as it is today.
Not only had the width of the waterfront increased but also its business. New warehouses sprang up,
like the four-story granite and brick warehouse built around 1796 by John Fitzgerald at the southeast
corner of King and Union Streets. From these warehouses, wharves stretched out into the river, and
beside the wharves bobbing up and down were tall-masted schooners, sloops, brigs, snows, and larger
vessels—a few built in Alexandria at John Hunter’s boatyard. Lund Washington wrote in 1790: “[T]he
port of Alexandria has seldom less than 20 Square Rigged Sale of Vessels in it and often many more.”
❖
Gadsby’s Tavern, later known as City Hotel,
c. the early 1920s, looking south from the
intersection of Cameron and Royal Streets.
The tavern consists of the two buildings on
the southwest corner of the intersection. The
older building is the smaller one on the left.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, MORRIS LOEB COLLECTION.
C H A P T E R I V
2 3

❖
Above: The Fitzgerald Warehouse, c. 1937.
The warehouse was built by John Fitzgerald
at the southeast corner of King and Union
Streets. At the far left is King Street and at
the right is Wales Alley.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Below: A shipping ad placed in the
Alexandria Gazette in 1785 by the firm of
Hooe and Harrison advertising merchandise
imported into the port of Alexandria. The
firm’s store was at the corner of Duke Street
and The Strand where the Robinson
Terminal Warehouse Corporation’s office is
now. Osnaburgs, duck, cambricks, and
lawns were types of cloth.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY,
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
Ships sailed from Alexandria to Europe, the
West Indies, and coastal America. They still
carried tobacco, but more and more often their
holds were filled with Indian corn, wheat, and
flour, particularly flour. Alexandria was an official
Virginia flour inspection station, and flour
merchants maintained offices in town and partnerships
with mills further west. Wagon after
wagon traveled the dirt roads from Fauquier,
Loudon, and Prince William Counties to
Alexandria’s waterfront. There they off-loaded
cargoes of flour, wheat, rye, and corn to be carried
by slaves on board ships and sent abroad.
Ships returning to Alexandria brought wine,
raisins, olive oil, nuts, and straw mats from
Spain; dessert wines from Portugal; pins, frocks,
cloth, and an array of manufactured goods from
England; quills, artificial flowers, and tiles from
Holland; and rum, oranges, brown and white
sugar, turtles, and coffee from the West Indies,
according to historian Betty Harrington
Macdonald. Some of these goods were carried
by smaller boats to local ports along the coast,
but much was sold out of waterfront stores.
Merchant and shipping firms bore Alexandria
names like Hooe & Harrison, Herbert, Harper,
Ramsay, Conway, Hartshorne, Muir, and Adam.
Although economic prosperity was uneven
during this period, by 1795, according to
historian T. Michael Miller, Alexandria ranked
as the seventh largest seaport in the United
States and the third largest exporter of flour.
The increase in shipping was due partly to
the General Assembly’s appointing Alexandria
an international port of entry in 1779. In the
early 1780s, Charles Lee, brother of General
Light Horse Harry Lee and future uncle of
Robert E. Lee, was the town’s first customs officer
and maintained a customs office at 305
Cameron Street.
and scheduled a meeting for Alexandria in March
1785. Thus began a series of meetings that step
by step led to the convention in Philadelphia that
wrote the U.S. Constitution.
The Maryland commissioners arrived in
Alexandria on time, but there had been a mixup
in notifying the Virginia commissioners of their
appointment. No Virginian was there to meet
them. Again at a key time, George Washington
acted. Learning of the situation, he sent his carriage
to one of the Virginia commissioners,
George Mason, and conveyed him to
Alexandria. There Mason rounded up another
Virginia commissioner, Alexander Henderson,
an Alexandria and Dumfries merchant, and they
promptly met with the Marylanders (possibly in
Gadsby’s Tavern). It was cold, however, and
snowing, and Washington soon invited them all
to the more comfortable Mount Vernon. There
the two states’ commissioners signed a compact
guaranteeing free navigation of the Potomac.
The meeting was so successful that Maryland
and Virginia agreed to meet again in Annapolis
in early September 1786 and invited all the
former colonies to join them to discuss
regulating interstate trade.
Only five states attended the Annapolis
meeting, but the delegates from those states
were acutely aware of the weakness of Congress
under the Articles of Confederation, the interstate
agreement under which the country was
governed. The meeting ended with the delegates
noting “the embarrassments which characterize
the present state of our national affairs”
and issuing a ringing call for a convention of all
T H E N E W S T A T E S M E E T
After the Revolution, however, this prosperity
was threatened by a conflict between Virginia
and Maryland concerning who regulated trade
on the Potomac. Maryland claimed jurisdiction
over the entire width of the Potomac River, from
bank to bank, under its 1632 charter from King
Charles I, a claim Virginia contested. Both states
appointed commissioners to resolve the issue
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
24

states in Philadelphia in May 1787 to address
concerns about the national government. That
convention produced the Constitution.
A L E X A N D R I A ’ S
D I F F E R E N T L O O K
In the meantime, in October 1785, the
General Assembly authorized Alexandria to
extend its town limits to Great Hunting Creek
in the south, Four Mile Run to the north, and
one mile from Market Square to the west. By
1798, as shown on George Gilpin’s map of
that year, the town had established or planned
new streets westward across Washington
Street to both sides of West Street, northward
to Montgomery Street, and south all the way
to Great Hunting Creek.
The appearance of the town itself also had
changed. By the mid-1790s many of the dirt
streets were paved with cobblestones. There
were new brick buildings, such as a new Market
House on Market Square built in 1785 and the
Gadsby’s Tavern buildings (the smaller, Georgian
building to the south built around 1785, and the
larger Federal-style north building built in
1792). New churches were constructed—the
first Methodist church was built in Chapel Alley
in 1791 and St. Mary’s Catholic Chapel
completed near the present Washington Street
entrance to St. Mary’s Cemetery around 1796.
New houses were constructed, like the Lee-
Fendall House in 1785. A visitor to Alexandria in
1795 was struck by “the vast number of houses
which I saw building as we passed through the
street. The number of people employed as
carpenters and masons. The hammer and trowel
were at work everywhere….”
New institutions were started, such as
Alexandria’s first newspaper, The Virginia Journal
& Alexandria Advertiser in 1784 (later known by
various names but referred to below as the
Alexandria Gazette). The cornerstone was laid in
1785 for the Alexandria Academy, a “Seminary
of learning” for the children of Alexandria. The
Alexandria Masonic Lodge was chartered by the
Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1788. The Stabler-
Leadbeater Apothecary Shop first opened its
doors in 1792. The Alexandria Library
Company was founded as a subscription library
(annual fee $4) in 1794. The first fire company,
the Friendship Volunteer Fire Company, had
been started in 1774, and by 1799, there were
four fire companies in Alexandria. But perhaps
most important for Alexandria traders and
merchants—the Bank of Alexandria, the first
bank in Virginia, was chartered in 1792.
Alexandria could boast of a variety of businesses,
like a ropewalk owned by Samuel
Harper near Washington and King Streets,
which consisted of a low building some twelve
hundred feet long inside which a man walked
backward spinning fibers into rope and paying
the rope out as he walked. Also in Alexandria
were coopers, such as George Hill, who rented a
space off Water Street to make barrels, nail kegs,
buckets, etc.; potters like Henry Piercy at the
northeast corner of Duke and Washington
Streets; and silversmiths like Adam Lynn, Jr., on
King Street, who in 1796 advertised “all kinds of
gold and silver work, such as coffee pots, tea
pots, cream pots, sugar dishes, salts, spoons,
etc.” Commercial bakers like James Adam provided
seamen with ship bread, and John
Fitzgerald, Andrew Wales, and James Kerr operated
breweries.
With all of this activity, the population of
Alexandria in 1790 was 2,748, including 543
slaves and 52 free black men and women. By
1800 it had risen to 4,971. Some of the slaves
and free blacks were trained artisans who,
along with others, did the “hammer and trowel”
work on the new buildings. The population
also included Quakers, who had been persecuted
in the northern colonies for their pacifism
and began arriving during the Revolution
after the passage of the Virginia Declaration of
Rights in 1776.
N E W G O V E R N M E N T S ,
N E W L E A D E R S
On October 4, 1779, Virginia replaced the
Alexandria trustees with a new form of city
government, a mayor-council system. Twelve
members of a board of aldermen and common
council were elected by voters, and they
selected the mayor from among themselves.
The town also had new leaders. John Dalton
and John Carlyle had died before the end of the
Revolution, and William Ramsay died in 1785.
The new mayors were men like Robert
❖
This house at 220 South Lee Street is called
a “flounder house” because, like the fish, it
has a flat side on the property line that has
no “eyes” (windows). Built mainly in the
late 1700s and early 1800s, flounders were
ideal for Alexandria’s deep but narrow lots,
and sometimes were built back from the
front property line as a temporary home
until the owner could acquire enough money
to build a nicer house in front, at which
time the flounder became the typical service
ell for the main house. Occasionally, that
main house was never built.
PHOTOGRAPH BY TED PULLIAM
C H A P T E R I V
2 5

❖
Above: A large slip-decorated earthenware
dish (actual diameter 13 inches) found in a
privy behind Henry Piercy’s retail shop in
the 400 block of King Street. The “slip,” a
mixture of clay and water, was applied to
the dish using a cup and hollow quills,
somewhat like applying decorative icing
to a cake.
COURTESY OF CERAMICS IN AMERICAN AND ALEXANDRIA
ARCHAEOLOGY. PHOTOGRAPH BY GAVIN ASHWORTH.
Below: Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, OUR TOWN COLLECTION. PAINTING
ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM WILLIAMS
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
26
Townshend Hooe, Colonel James Hendricks,
Richard Conway, John Fitzgerald, and Dennis
Ramsay, son of William Ramsay, many of whom
had served in the Revolution or aided the patriot
cause as civilians.
April 15, 1791, was the symbolic beginning
of perhaps an even greater change in the
governmental structure of Alexandria. At Jones
Point on that date was laid the first cornerstone
of the new District of Columbia in which
Alexandria was to be included, effective in
1801. (The work of surveying the district had
begun earlier, in February, also at Jones Point,
with the assistance of Benjamin Banneker, the
sixty-year-old son of a white woman and a
black slave. Largely self-taught, he had become
an excellent astronomer and surveyor.)
Officiating at the cornerstone ceremony
were two of the three commissioners who were
to supervise construction of the federal city,
accompanied by Alexandria’s mayor, aldermen,
and councilmen. Offerings of corn, wine, and
oil were laid atop the stone in a Masonic ritual
symbolizing nourishment, refreshment, and joy.
Earlier at Wise’s Tavern in Alexandria, the company
had raised a glass of wine and offered an
optimistic toast: “May the Stone which we are
about to place in the ground remain an
immoveable monument of the wisdom and
unanimity of North America.”
T H E F U N S I D E O F
A L E X A N D R I A
Not everything about Alexandria was serious,
however. Alexandria’s first theater was built in
1799 at 406 Cameron Street. (Only the year
before a company of players from Philadelphia
were forced to act in a nearby barn.)
Native Alexandrians knew how to entertain
agreeably. The young Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick,
who was skillful on several musical instrument
and sang “with great power and sweetness,”
once sent a dinner invitation that began:
If you can eat a good fat duck,
Come with us and take pot luck.
Of white ducks we have a pair
So plump, so round, so fat, so fair,
A London Alderman would fight
Through pies and tarts to get a bite.
At least one visitor thought Alexandria had
gone too far in its modes of entertainment. A
strait-laced carpenter passing through town,
wrote: “Alexandria is one of the most wicked
places I ever beheld in my life; cockfighting,
horse racing, with every species of gambling
and cheating, being apparently the principal
business going forward. As a proof of this, you
may judge of the extent of this dissipation when
I inform you, this little place contains no less
than between forty and fifty billiard tables….”
G E O R G E
W A S H I N G T O N
When George Washington returned to
Mount Vernon in 1783, he planned to stay
there. Yet in 1789, without campaigning, he
was elected President of the United States. An
overflow crowd of Alexandrians at Wise’s
Tavern at the northeast corner of Cameron and
North Fairfax Streets sent him off with heart-felt
speeches. Washington, to his embarrassment,
needed more than speeches. He had to borrow
money from a former mayor of Alexandria,
Richard Conway, to pay his debts in Virginia
before leaving for New York, then the U.S.
capital, in order to assume the presidency.
Eight years later George Washington
returned to Mount Vernon, and, on December
14, 1799, he died there. In this last illness, he
was attended by three doctors, two of whom
were Alexandrians: Dr. James Craik, his old
friend from French and Indian War days, and
Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick. A month before his
death, on November 17, Washington attended
church in Alexandria, his last visit to the town.
He was buried at Mount Vernon on
December 18, with Alexandria town officers
and many Alexandrians attending. In the
funeral oration delivered to the U.S. Congress
and other mourners in Philadelphia,
Washington’s dashing and controversial
Revolutionary War general Light Horse Harry
Lee, future Alexandria resident and future
father of Robert E. Lee, said of Washington:
“First in war, first in peace, and first in the
hearts of his countrymen.”
The new nineteenth century began for
Alexandria without George Washington but
with the hope of increased prosperity as part
of the new District of Columbia.

C H A P T E R
ALEXANDRIA, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
1801-1847
V
T H E S U P R E M E C O U R T , A L E X A N D R I A N S , A N D
T H E L E E S O F V I R G I N I A
Officially Alexandria became part of the new District of Columbia on February 27, 1801, much
to the joy of Alexandrians, who believed that their inclusion in the new capital area would expand
their success of the previous decade.
Time would tell, but almost immediately inclusion in the new District led to the involvement of
Alexandrians, including a member of the distinguished Lee family, in one of the most famous court
cases in U.S. history.
In March 1801, during the last hours of John Adams’s presidency, Adams signed and sealed
commissions naming three prominent Alexandrians: Robert Townshend Hooe, William Harper,
and Dennis Ramsay, and one Georgetowner, William Marbury, justices of the peace in the newly
created District of Columbia. The commissions, however, were undelivered when Thomas Jefferson
took office. President Jefferson then refused to deliver the commissions, and the four almost-justices-of-the-peace
filed suit to compel him to deliver them..
The case, Marbury v. Madison, came before the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice John Marshall
delivered the court’s opinion. In that opinion for the first time the court invalidated a law passed
by Congress and signed by the President as being contrary to the Constitution. As Marshall wrote:
“It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department [and by implication, not that
of the Congress or the President] to say what the law is.”
Arguing the case on behalf of the plaintiffs was Charles Lee, a member of the prominent Lee clan.
He had settled in Alexandria late in the last century and had served as a Potomac River customs officer
then as Attorney General of the United States under both Washington and Adams.
❖
The tide lock of the Alexandria Canal at the
foot of First Street during the Civil War.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, WILLIAM F. SMITH COLLECTION.
C H A P T E R V
2 7

❖
Above: Charles Lee.
COURTESY OF ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, OUR TOWN COLLECTION. PAINTING
POSSIBLY BY CEPHAS THOMPSON.
Below: Robert E. Lee’s boyhood home, 607
Oronoco Street, c. the 1870s or 1880s.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, WILLIAM F. SMITH COLLECTION.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
28
With his wife, Anne Lee, who was also his
cousin, Charles was the first of what would
become a community of Lees living in
Alexandria. (Charles Lee briefly rented the Lloyd
House then moved to 407 North Washington
Street.) Following him to Alexandria were three
brothers, a sister, and several cousins. They
established a small enclave on the 400 block of
North Washington Street and 600 block of
Oronoco. Charles’ sister, Mary Lee Fendall, lived
in the Lee-Fendall house, at 614 Oronoco, with
husband Richard Fendall, also a Lee descendant.
The fifth generation of a family that had prospered
in Virginia since the mid-1600s, the Lees
brought to Alexandria a new touch of elegance.
One of Charles’s brothers was General Henry
“Light Horse Harry” Lee, who moved to
Alexandria in 1810 with his second wife Ann
Carter Lee and their four children, including
three-year-old Robert Edward Lee. (The family
lived first at what is now 611 Cameron Street,
then moved to 607 Oronoco Street.)
Unfortunately, few firsthand accounts of
Robert Lee’s childhood in Alexandria exist.
However, his older brother Carter had “vivid
recollections of [his own] boyhood spent trapping
squirrels and rabbits, stealing the neighbors’
apples, playing ‘marbles, hopscotch….’”
activities that Robert likely shared, as Robert’s
biographer Elizabeth Brown Pryor wrote. Also,
Robert undoubtedly felt at home among the
warm community of Alexandria Lees.
His childhood, however, also had its darker
side. His father General Harry Lee had been a
soldier and a hero in the Revolution who fought
with George Washington. Afterward, however,
he was constantly and heavily in debt. In 1813,
to escape his numerous creditors and ease his
spirits, Harry Lee sailed to the West Indies, leaving
Robert without a father and his family virtually
without funds. Five years later, the general
died on his way home to Alexandria.
In a letter home, the elder Lee had written
about his youngest son: “Robert was always
good, and will be confirmed in his happy turn
of mind by his ever-watchful and affectionate
mother.” That turned out to be true.
Robert Lee was educated at the Alexandria
Academy and at Quaker Benjamin Hallowell’s
fine school at 609 Oronoco Street. In July
1825, he left Alexandria to enter West Point.
W A R C O M E S T O T O W N
The evening of August 27, 1814, men and
women standing silently on wharves on the
Alexandria waterfront could look north and
see the smoke rising from the remains of the
Capitol burned by the now-departed British
soldiers and at the same time hear from the
south the even more disturbing sounds of cannon
fire. Although the British Army that
caused so much suffering in Washington had
neglected them, they realized they might not
be so lucky with the British Navy sailing up
the Potomac River from the south.
The sound of cannons came from Fort
Warburton (now Fort Washington), six miles
down river from Alexandria on the Maryland
side, as it was being attacked by a squadron of
British ships under Captain James Gordon that
included two frigates, a rocket ship, and three
bomb vessels. The fort was the last obstacle to
the British on the Potomac. Soon their way
would be clear to sail on to Alexandria.
In Alexandria no one remained to defend the
citizens but about one hundred overaged, sick,
or unreliable men left after authorities in
Washington had ordered the town’s militia elsewhere.
Even the Washington authorities themselves—military
commanders, heads of governmental
departments, and the president himself—were
now scattered about the countryside.

Two days later, August 29, Alexandrians
awoke to find the squadron with its 128 guns
anchored in the harbor “but a few hundred
yards from the wharves, and the houses so situated
that they might have been laid in ashes in a
few minutes,” the Common Council later wrote.
Captain Gordon promised he would not
destroy the town nor molest its inhabitants, if
the Americans would not commence hostilities.
Further, the Alexandrians must surrender all
military stores, all shipping in the harbor, and
all merchandise in town intended for export.
Having no option, the Council agreed to his
terms, and the British promptly began removing
ships and merchandise while dejected
Alexandria merchants stood by “viewing with
melancholy countenance the British sailors gutting
their warehouses of their contents,” one
observer wrote.
On September 1, Gordon’s well-loaded
ships began to leave Alexandria and sail back
down the Potomac. Their journey down river,
however, was contested, finally, by American
forces under naval Captain David Porter,
including the Alexandria militia. Porter placed
his men and cannons on the hastily fortified
heights four miles below Mount Vernon at
Belvoir, the old William Fairfax estate. From
there for five days they battled the British ships
headed down river. Even though they sunk no
ships, the Alexandrians and other Americans
fought well. Eleven Americans were killed and
19 wounded, while Americans killed seven
British and wounded 35.
Alexandria was free then from further harm,
but its decision to surrender rather than fight
made it for a while an object of national scorn.
Napoleon in Portugal and Spain. In fact, in 1817
Alexandria reached its high point in quantity of
flour exported—more than 217,000 barrels.
In 1817 the town contained, according to
historian Harold Hurst, “512 brick and 383
frame three-story and two-story residences
and warehouses; 429 one-story and one-half
story houses” plus churches, schools, bake
houses, shipyards, ropewalks, and sheds for
blacksmiths, cabinetmakers, tanners, and
other artisans. Two sugar refineries, one in the
100 block of North Alfred Street and the second
in the 200 block of North Washington
Street, were probably Alexandria’s most valuable
manufacturing plants during the early
1800’s. From 1800 to 1820, Alexandria’s population
almost doubled, from 4,971 to 8,218.
Construction of the Little River Turnpike
from 1803 to 1819 provided Alexandria for the
first time with a well-built link to Western
Virginia, the primary source of Alexandria’s
wheat and flour. The waterfront continued to be
Alexandria’s main center of economic activity,
yet opening the turnpike led also to the development
of a second such center, the vibrant
community called West End, located west of
Hooff’s Run and south of Shuter’s Hill just outside
Alexandria’s then boundaries. The community
took its name from John West, who subdivided
his property there in 1796. It served
teamsters who drove wagon loads of wheat and
❖
Above: General Henry “Light Horse
Harry” Lee.
COURTESY OF ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, OUR TOWN COLLECTION. PAINTING
POSSIBLY BY GILBERT STUART.
Below: On August 24, 1814, five days
before the British navy reached Alexandria,
the British army entered Washington and
over the next several hours put to the torch
the White House, the Capitol, the Treasury
building, the Navy Yard, and other public
and a few private buildings. This engraving
depicting the British taking Washington
appeared in a London publication.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ENGRAVING BY
G. THOMPSON.
N E W M E R C H A N T G E N T R Y
In plundering Alexandria, the British took,
according to Alexandrians, “three ships, three
brigs, several bay and river craft” plus about
1,000 hogsheads of tobacco, 150 bales of cotton,
some $5,000 worth of wine, sugar, and
other articles, and around 16,000 barrels of
flour—substantial losses. Gradually, however,
resilient Alexandrians recovered.
Helping to overcome these setbacks was the
heavy demand for flour in the West Indies, in
England, and for British troops fighting
C H A P T E R V
2 9

❖
Above: This house at 711 Prince Street in
this mid-twentieth century photograph was
the home of William Fowle, who enlarged
and restyled an earlier two-story flounder
house that had been built before 1808.
Fowle, a successful businessman from
Massachusetts, was president of the
Alexandria Canal Company. The house has
been enlarged and renovated several times
since Fowle’s death.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Below: The two large brick buildings in the
center of this Civil War era photograph
constituted the Jacob Hoffman sugar
refinery complex on the west side of the 200
block of North Washington Street. The
building partially visible to the far right
is the Lloyd House at 220 North
Washington Street..
COURTESY OF OFFICE OF HISTORIC ALEXANDRIA.
flour to the mills, bakeries, and docks of
Alexandria and drovers who brought cattle to
market. Located there were a blacksmith, coach
maker, wheelwright, shoemaker, and tailor plus
butchers (Hooff’s Run was named for Lawrence
Hooff, a butcher operating along its banks), tavern
keepers, millers, and tanners.
Alexandria, D.C.’s first prosperity, and this
latest resurgence, were led by a new merchant
gentry similar to Carlyle, Dalton, and Ramsay,
the earlier Scottish-connected gentry. This new
group included the Daingerfield family from
Spotsylvania County (shippers); the orphaned
Smoot brothers from Maryland (coal, lumber,
grocery importers, tanners); the Massachusetts
Fowle family (flour exporters); Englishman
James Green (furniture maker); the Swiss-
Frenchman Anthony Charles Cazenove
(importer, merchant); and the Quakers:
Phineas Janney (commission merchant),
Pennsylvanian William Hartshorne (dry goods
merchant, wharf and warehouse owner), and
Robert Hartshorne Miller (importer of glass,
china, and other goods).
As an example of its prosperity, Alexandria
could boast of Monsieur Generes, a French
dancing master, who, dressed in a black dress
coat, black breeches, black silk stockings, and
pumps with gold buckles, taught his pupils
on Prince Street, and held “practicing balls”
bimonthly on King Street. Guy Atkinson rented
well-lighted “Portrait and Miniature
Painting Rooms” on 115 and 113 North
Fairfax Street where itinerant artists painted
the portraits of Alexandria notables.
Then on the morning of January 18, 1827,
another catastrophe hit the town when shortly
before nine a.m. a fire broke out that rapidly
destroyed the back buildings (kitchens, stables,
outhouses) in the block formed by King, South
Royal, Prince, and South Fairfax Streets. The
fire also consumed 53 homes and warehouses
on Fairfax, Union, Water (now Lee), and Prince
Streets. Lasting five full hours, it did between
$107,000 to $150,000 in damage.
The damage could have been worse if a
performer from a circus that was in town had
not, as the Alexandria Gazette reported,
“mounted the highest and steepest roof in
town…and sustaining himself by a shallow
gutter within a few inches of the eaves”
applied water for hours, saving the building
and preventing the fire from spreading.
As Alexandria began again to recover, its
economy received a boost from a new enterprise.
F R A N K L I N
& A R M F I E L D
In 1808 importing slaves into the United
States became illegal. Afterwards, anyone who
wanted to purchase a slave legally had to purchase
a slave already in the U.S.
In the area around Alexandria, growing
labor-intensive tobacco had been largely
replaced by growing less labor-intensive wheat.
As a result, former tobacco planters had a
surplus of slaves. At the same time, newly developing
areas along the Mississippi River needed
slaves to work labor-intensive cotton fields.
To take advantage of this imbalance, in
1828 the firm of Franklin & Armfield set up
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
30

operations at 1315 Duke Street to deal in
African-American slaves. With John Armfield
in Alexandria buying and transporting slaves
and Isaac Franklin in New Orleans and
Natchez selling them, the firm catered to the
needs of both regions. During the following
almost nine years the firm became the largest
slave dealer in the United States.
In Alexandria, Armfield kept his slaves on
Duke Street behind high-walled yards, one for
men and one for women, or chained in the
basement of the main building or in outbuildings.
Between September and May, sometimes
as frequently as once a month, Armfield’s men
chained slaves together in groups called coffles
and led them, frequently at night, down Duke
Street to the waterfront to be shipped to New
Orleans. There Franklin sold them to the highest
bidder. Also, once a year, usually in late
summer, Armfield sent a coffle of as many as
300 slaves walking the more than 900 miles to
Franklin in Natchez.
One of Franklin and Armfield’s coffles was
described by an African-American schooner
captain named George Henry. He and a friend
were walking down a street when they heard
“such screaming and crying, we couldn’t tell
what it meant, so we kept on till we met about
two hundred men and women chained together,
two and two…. [T]he scene was enough to
bring tears into any man’s eyes if he had a heart.”
The firm prospered—a researcher estimated
its gross receipts for 1835 exceeded $24 million
in 1970 dollars. Yet its success did not affect the
inherent cruelty of selling women, men, and
children nor did it make the slave sellers
respectable. Historian Henry Wise pointed out
a paradox: in the South “slave-owning was honorable
but slave-dealing was not.”
In 1836 Franklin and Armfield decided
they had profited enough, began winding up
their partnership, and soon Armfield moved
elsewhere to assume a different occupation
and identity.
F R E E
A F R I C A N - A M E R I C A N S
Slaves were not the only African-Americans
in Alexandria. In 1830, over half of the black
population of Alexandria was free, and many
free men and women had once been slaves. The
Alfred Street Baptist Church, established in
1803, was the home of the first black congregation
in Alexandria. In the early part of the 19th
Century, the area around the church, between
Duke and Wolfe Streets (later known as “The
Bottoms” and “The Dip”) became one of the
town’s first two free black neighborhoods. The
east side of the 400 block of South Royal Street
was the nucleus of another early neighborhood
of homes rented by free blacks called “Hayti.”
Many free African-Americans had skilled
occupations and were successful businessmen.
Peter Logan was a ship carpenter, ran a boot and
shoe blacking business, and became the Town
Crier. Dominick Bearcroft operated a popular
tavern at 315 Cameron Street across from
Market Square (in a building now gone) famed
for its crabs: “[H]e knew when they were fat and
fresh—knew how to ‘devil’ them—to ‘boil’
them—how to prepare crab soup and crab pie!”
Freedom, however, was precarious. After
the Nat Turner Rebellion in 1831, during
which rebelling slaves killed more than 50
white people in southern Virginia, free blacks
in Alexandria felt compelled to issue a notice
stating their “abhorrence of the recent outrage”
and asserting that they “would promptly
give public information of any plot, design,
or conspiracy” they learned about that might
harm the community.”
T H E
C A N A L
By the mid-1820s, Baltimore and Richmond
were beginning to take away Alexandria’s valuable
trade with the Shenandoah Valley grain
fields. In a bid to regain that trade, Alexandrians
subscribed $250,000 toward building the
❖
A coffle of slaves marching in front of the
Franklin and Armfield slave prison at 1315
Duke Street as depicted in an anti-slavery
broadside printed in 1836 by the American
Anti-Slavery Society of New York.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY,
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
C H A P T E R V
3 1

❖
Left: A part of the Alexandria waterfront
from which a small boat containing slaves is
being rowed out to a ship that will take
them to New Orleans to be sold. From an
anti-slavery broadside printed in 1836 by
the American Anti-Slavery Society of
New York.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY,
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
Right: An image of the African-American
neighborhood Hayti, circa 1830-1860,
based upon archaeological research.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA ARCHAEOLOGY. SCRATCH
BOARD IMAGE BY KAREN MURLEY.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
32
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which was to parallel
the Potomac River west from Georgetown
to the Valley. It would be the first of Alexandria’s
monetary pledges to the wrong business—
canals. On the same day in 1828 that the canal
held its groundbreaking ceremonies, the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad held its own
groundbreaking in Baltimore. The race to the
Shenandoah was on.
Alexandrians had to build another canal to
connect to the C&O. In 1830, the Alexandria
Canal Company was chartered by Congress,
and on December 2, 1843, the Pioneer, at the
speed of one and three quarters to two miles
per hour, crossed the Potomac at Georgetown
by a new aqueduct and wove seven miles
through the old John Alexandria property to
Washington and Montgomery Streets. It was
the first canal boat to reach Alexandria,
although locks were not completed to take the
canal all the way to the river until 1850.
By then the new canal had cost over $1.2
million. The Alexandria town government had
borrowed much of that amount, and over the
following years it borrowed additional funds
to maintain both the Alexandria and C&O
canals. Meanwhile, the B&O Railroad reached
Cumberland, Maryland, near the Shenandoah
Valley, eight years before the C&O-Alexandria
Canal did.
To help compensate for the loss of trade to
Baltimore, Alexandrians expanded their fishing
business. Operating out of a shambling collection
of smelly shacks called Fishtown (which
materialized from March through June along
the waterfront between Oronoco and Princess
Streets), free black women and slaves headed
and gutted shad and herring brought in from
Potomac fisheries, washed them, and then salted
and packed them in wooden casks for sale
by fish brokers. In 1835, the Potomac River’s
total catch was 750,000,000 herring and
22,500,000 shad (demonstrating that fishing
techniques had improved in the 200 years
since Captain John Smith used his frying pan),
much of which was processed by Alexandrians.
Despite this new trade, during most of the
1830s and 1840s, Alexandrians operated in what
historian Thomas Duffy described as “generally
declining prosperity.” Still, in 1839, enlightened
Alexandrians erected the Greek-Revival-Style
Lyceum on Washington Street to provide space
for literary and scientific lectures and for the
Alexandria Library Company.
R E T R O C E S S I O N
The great expectations Alexandrians held at
the District of Columbia’s beginning had been
doomed from the start. Federal legislation creating
the District provided (probably to gain
Maryland’s support) that federal buildings could
be located only on the Maryland side of the
Potomac. Thus, the federal complex developed
on that side of the river, and Congress, although
governing the entire District, concentrated on its
side of the river and neglected the federally barren
Alexandria side, except for taxing it.
Alexandrians, with Virginia’s support, petitioned
to return to Virginia, and on March 13,
1847, the town again became part of the
Commonwealth. Alexandrians, more elated to
leave the District than they were to join it, suspended
business for a day, crowded the streets,
and celebrated by firing salutes and staging a
grand parade.
Along with concerns about taxes and neglect,
some Alexandrians probably wanted to
leave the District because they feared Congress
would abolish slavery there and thus in
Alexandria. Events soon after retrocession
demonstrated that this fear was justified.

C H A P T E R
V I
WAR APPROACHES
1848-1861
T H E T R O U B L E I ’ V E S E E N
At 11 o’clock Saturday night, April 15, 1848, a 65-foot, two-masted schooner named the Pearl
sailed quietly away from a secluded landing on the Washington waterfront loaded with 76 African-
American slaves. Her charterers were not slave traders, but abolitionists determined to publicize
District of Columbia slavery, and she was bound for freedom.
Two of the slaves on board were Emily Edmondson, aged 13, and Mary Edmondson, aged 15,
the cherished daughters of Paul Edmondson, a free black man, and his wife Amelia. Amelia was a
slave, and thus under the applicable law, her children also were slaves. The sisters’ owner had hired
them out to prosperous families in Washington as house servants. Now, however, they were on
board the Pearl sailing, they hoped, to freedom.
The Pearl made good time down the winding Potomac until arriving late Sunday evening at its
mouth. There a storm was blowing from the north making it treacherous to sail up the Chesapeake
to the ship’s planned destination, Frenchtown, Maryland. The Pearl’s captain then made a risky
decision, the schooner would anchor for the night until the storm blew away.
Earlier that Sunday morning back in Washington, word had spread quickly among the
white population attending church services that many of their valuable slaves were missing.
❖
Selling “fancy girls” in New Orleans.
COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART,
PITTSBURGH. GIFT OF MRS. W. FITCH INGERSOLL.
C H A P T E R V I
3 3

❖
Above: The Edmondson sisters. Mary is on
the left and Emily on the right.
COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA.
Below: Trade card from around 1857
showing Green & Brother Steam Furniture
Works at the southeast corner of Prince and
Fairfax Streets. By then James Green had
turned over the works to his sons. The
building now is a condominium.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY,
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
They soon discovered that the slaves had
escaped down the Potomac, and a fast steamboat
loaded with armed men set out in pursuit.
Early the following Monday morning, the
steamboat found the Pearl still anchored in a
cove near the Potomac’s mouth. The frightened
slaves and ship’s crew offered no resistance.
Soon they found themselves steaming
wretchedly back to Washington.
There a few of their owners took them
back, but most were sold. Emily and Mary
Edmondson were sold to Joseph Bruin, slave
trader of Alexandria (a model for slave owners
in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin),
and transported to his holding pen at 1707
Duke Street, four blocks west on Duke from
the former Franklin & Armfield facility.
Their parents, other free blacks, and area
abolitionists immediately sought to raise
money to buy the sisters’ freedom, but Bruin
had seen the sisters’ good manners and pleasing
appearance and decided they would bring
a good price if sold in New Orleans as “fancy
girls,” attractive slaves bought for sexual purposes.
He was asking the exceptional price of
$2,250 for the two girls together.
This amount was too much for the local
community to raise, and Bruin soon sent the
sisters by boat to New Orleans. There they
were exhibited on a balcony along the
Esplanade and offered for sale in auction
showrooms. The first time Emily was displayed
in the showroom, her face was streaked
with tears. Her angry seller said those tears lost
a sale, promptly slapped her, and threatened
worse if next time she did not smile.
Before either was sold, however, threat of a
yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans and a
promise by the sisters’ sympathizers to purchase
them caused Bruin to ship the sisters back
to Alexandria. He gave their family and friends
twenty-five days to raise the money. If they did
not, the sisters would return to New Orleans.
The due date passed. Bruin had received
no money.
A few days later, as historian Mary Kay
Ricks describes in her book Escape on the
Pearl, Emily watched out a small window in
the slave quarters on Duke Street as in the
yard overseers shackled slaves together in a
coffle headed south to New Orleans. She and
Mary waited for the order to join it.
She heard a banjo and fiddle begin playing
to set the pace for the walk. She saw the
prison gates slowly open, and she watched as
the coffle walked out and away. Only then did
she realize that it had left without them.
Their supporters had managed to raise a
satisfactory down payment, and later with the
support of churches and abolitionists in New
York, they raised the entire amount to free the
Edmondson sisters.
When the day came for the sisters finally to
leave 1707 Duke Street, Bruin, in an odd gesture,
placed a $5 gold piece in each girl’s
hand. To Emily and Mary, this gesture mattered
little—they now were free.
After the extensive publicity their cause
received, Congress began seriously to consider
anti-slavery laws for the District of
Columbia. Two years after the Pearl sailed,
slave trading in the District was abolished.
The complete abolition of slavery there had
moved a step closer.
T H E C O M I N G O F S T E A M
A N D P R O S P E R I T Y
The newly opened Alexandria Canal brought
to Alexandria not only civic debt but also
goods, especially grain, lumber, and flour and
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
34

later, from Western Maryland, coal. The first
coal-carrying canal barges arrived in Alexandria
from the west on October 17, 1850, and were
met by a hundred-gun salute. By 1860 at least
four coal yards operated at spots along the
waterfront from First Street to Wolfe Street. In
the late 1850s, Alexandria exported over
37,000 tons of coal a month. At times in the
1850s there was so much coal waiting at the
city wharves that there were not enough ships
to handle it. Rates for shipping coal dropped
quickly, from about 20 cents per ton in 1817 to
1/4 cents per ton in 1850, with resulting reduction
in the price of coal to consumers.
Before coal came to Alexandria, there had
been little industrialization, primarily because
the town lacked sites where water could be
used to generate power. Manufacturing operations
like early biscuit making and sugar
refining involved little machinery and ropewalks
required only manpower. Cheap coal,
however, helped propel Alexandria’s industrialization—coal
powered steam engines, more
flexible than water-powered mills, made large
factories feasible. Alexandria began to change.
The change actually had begun earlier on a
small scale. In 1831 at its factory on Union
and Wolfe Streets, Thomas W. Smith &
Company produced its first steam engine, a
ten horsepower model used in its own factory.
In 1836 the firm built a 15 horse-power
engine that James Green installed in his new
cabinet factory at the corner of Prince and
Fairfax Streets to run power sawing and turning
machines. Green’s works grew to employ
140-150 people at its height and produce furniture
said to be “as beautiful as the hand of
man can produce.”
Green’s was only one of the new steampowered
factories that opened in Alexandria
in the 1840s and 50s. In 1847, Henry
Daingerfield, William Fowle, Robert Miller,
and others incorporated the Mount Vernon
Manufacturing Company, which constructed
a cotton factory on Washington Street that
manufactured brown cottons, blankets, heavy
sheeting, and similar products. By 1850 it
employed 150 men and women. Its machinery
also was powered by a steam engine built
by the Smith firm. Then in 1854, William H.
and George Fowle and New York investors
built at the foot of Duke Street a steam-driven
flour plant called Pioneer Mill. At six stories
high, it was one of the largest in the U.S. and
used its 250 horsepower steam engine to
make flour at the rate of 800 barrels a day.
The Smith steam engine firm added a partner,
and as Smith and Perkins helped railroads
come to Alexandria.
R A I L R O A D S
On May 29, 1851, seven months after the
first canal boat load of coal reached the
Alexandria waterfront, the Alexandria Gazette
reported that the first train loaded with flour
“with an extraordinary scream of the steam
whistle” rolled triumphantly down the tracks
of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad on
Union Street with an echoing shout of welcome
from the gathered people of Alexandria.
That first steam-powered locomotive, named
the Pioneer, was built by Smith and Perkins.
Finally Alexandria had a railroad.
Once Alexandrians became interested in
railroads, they moved quickly. By 1861, four
railroads had some connection with
Alexandria—two to the west, one to the
north, and one to the south.
In 1847 the first to be chartered was the
Alexandria and Harper’s Ferry Railroad. It was
to stretch from Alexandria to Harper’s Ferry
and bring coal to Alexandria’s docks. Not
❖
The old Mount Vernon Cotton Factory
building at 515 North Washington Street,
c. 1930. It was used as a prison during the
Civil War, a bottling house for the Robert
Portner Brewery until Prohibition, and a
spark plug factory from about 1918-1930.
It now is occupied by the International
Association of Chiefs of Police.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, WILLIAM F. SMITH COLLECTION.
C H A P T E R V I
3 5

❖
Above: The building in the background of
this Civil War era photograph is the Pioneer
Mill. The photograph was taken from near
Union Street looking northeast, and the
Potomac River is just on the other side of
the mill. The site now is occupied by
Robinson Terminal Warehouse
Corporation, South.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, VF-CIVIL WAR COLLECTION
Below: A locomotive built in the 1850s.
This is the type of wood-burning train
engine with a ballon-shaped smokestack
that ran on the early Alexandria railroads.
COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA.
Opposite: The ticket (ballot) for the
Democratic Party’s candidates for president
and vice president in the 1860 election. This
ballot was used in Richmond, Virginia, and
the ballot used in Alexandria would have
appeared much the same. It has the voter’s
name handwritten on the back and a small
hole in its center where a voting official
placed it on a spindle at the voting place.
COURTESY OF TED PULLIAM.
until 1859, however, did it, then renamed the
Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire
Railroad, place a train onto tracks. By 1861 its
trains left the terminal near the intersection of
Princess and Fairfax streets and proceeded
out beside Four Mile Run only as far as
Leesburg and transported to and from
Leesburg primarily only passengers and mail.
The second western railroad was the most
successful. By 1861 the Orange and Alexandria
Railroad, under the capable leadership of
George Smoot, had laid tracks from its terminal
in Alexandria at Duke and Henry Streets southwest
through Manassas Junction, Culpeper,
and Orange to Lynchburg, where it connected
to Richmond and Petersburg rail lines. Near
Manassas, it connected with the Manassas Gap
Railroad (also formed in part by Alexandrians),
which linked Alexandria with the Shenandoah
Valley by extending west from Manassas,
roughly parallel to today’s I-66, to Strasburg,
then down the Valley, paralleling today’s I-81,
to Mount Jackson. In Alexandria itself, Orange
and Alexandria tracks extended from its Duke
Street terminal east through the Wilkes Street
tunnel and then north along Union Street.
The Orange and Alexandria transported
passengers and guano (fertilizer shipped to
Alexandria from South America) to western
Virginia and its nutrient-starved fields and
then transported passengers and farm products
back to ships docked along the
Alexandria waterfront. Wheat was particularly
in demand. In the 1850s, while tobacco
exports were minimal (only four hogsheads in
1857) and flour exports increased but did not
reach the heights of the 1820s, wheat exports
soared. At the peak in 1857, Alexandria
shipped 231,572 bushels of wheat.
The two lines commissioned freight and
passenger cars built by each line’s own facilities
or by Smith and Perkins, John Summers,
or T. S. Jamieson—all located in Alexandria.
The shortest of the four lines was the
northern one, the Alexandria and Washington
Railroad. It extended only from a turntable
near the intersection of St. Asaph and Princess
Streets to the Virginia end of the Long Bridge,
which led across the Potomac to Washington
(located roughly where the 14th Street Bridge
is now). There the line stopped, and passengers
had to disembark and board wagons to
cross the bridge into Washington.
The last, southern line, actually did not
reach Alexandria. It was the Richmond,
Fredericksburg, and Potomac, which ran from
Richmond to a terminus at Aquia Creek, on
the Potomac just northeast of Fredericksburg.
There passengers and freight boarded steamboats
that regularly left to and arrived from
Washington and Alexandria.
The steam engine was transforming
Alexandria. In 1853 a writer for the Rockingham
County Register wrote of the city: “the animation
and occupation which enlivens her railroad
depots, her wharves, and canal basin, as well as
the bustle and hum of her streets, prove that
this worthy daughter of the Old Dominion is in
a fair way to rank, ere long, among the most
prosperous cities of the land.”
This new commercial vitality revived the
Alexandria economy. Alexandria’s population
increased by 45 percent, from 8,734 in 1850 to
12,652 ten years later in 1860. Some of these
new people were immigrants looking for jobs
and business opportunities, like Irish workers
and Jewish small businessmen from Germany.
In 1860, Alexandria’s orthodox Jews joined the
Beth El Hebrew Congregation, established by
reformed Jews the year before.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
36

But other issues perhaps more emotional
than industrial expansion occupied the minds
of Alexandrians of all backgrounds as 1860
drew to a close.
U N I O N O R D I S U N I O N ?
On November 6, 1860, Republican
Abraham Lincoln won the election for
president with forty percent of the popular
vote nationwide. In Alexandria, however, his
percentage was much smaller. Alexandrians
gave Constitutional Union candidate John
Bell, who opposed secession, 911 votes;
Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge,
who favored extension of slavery to the
territories, 619; Northern Democrat Stephen
A. Douglas, who favored allowing territories
to vote whether to be slave or free, 138; and
Abraham Lincoln 2. Many Alexandrians had
Northern business connections and were
unsympathetic to dissolving those ties, yet
they also were leery of “Black Republicans”
like Lincoln.
Out of a population of 12,652, 1,670
Alexandrians, about 13 percent, voted. This
seems a small number in a heated election,
but the only people permitted to vote in
Virginia then were white males over the age of
21—women, slaves, and free blacks could not
vote. Moreover, voting was not by secret ballot.
On or before election day a voter got a
ballot for the candidate he supported, brought
it with him to the polls, signed it on the back,
and handed it to a voting official.
One of the two Alexandrians who voted for
Lincoln, Judge Andrew Wylie, later wrote that
the election officials almost refused to allow
his ballot to be cast and that later he was
threatened by a mob. Citizens in Fairfax
County, which had voted heavily for
Breckenridge, seized a Lincoln voter and thoroughly
blackened that “Black Republican’s”
face with printer’s ink.
By February 13, 1861, seven states, led by
South Carolina, had seceded from the Union,
and Virginians were convening in Richmond
to decide whether they also should secede.
The Alexandria delegates were two lawyers,
pro-Union George W. Brent and pro-secession
David Funsten.
Brent had beaten Funsten by almost three
to one, and statewide, pro-union convention
delegates outnumbered secessionists two to
one. At the convention, Brent made a wellreasoned
speech favoring Virginia’s staying in
the Union. He rejected the argument that
there existed “an irrepressible conflict of
opposing and enduring forces” between
C H A P T E R V I
3 7

❖
Above: George W. Brent, Alexandria’s pro-
Union delegate to the Virginia convention
on secession in 1861, in his Confederate
officer’s uniform.
COURTESY OF THE VALENTINE RICHMOND
HISTORY CENTER.
Below: James Jackson, proprietor of the
Marshall House hotel.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, AMES WILLIAMS COLLECTION.
northern and southern states and called on
Virginia to unite with other “Border States” to
arrange a settlement that would preserve the
Union, which in its beginning, after all, “was
pre-eminently a Virginia conception.” On
April 4, secession was voted down 45-88,
with Brent voting against it.
However, after April 12, views changed.
On that date, Southern troops fired on the
United States army at Fort Sumter in South
Carolina, and three days later, President
Lincoln called on the states to furnish 75,000
men to confront the seceded states. This was
too much for Virginia and Alexandria.
On April 17, the Virginia convention voted
88 to 55 to secede. (George Brent voted
against secession but later wore the
Confederate uniform and served with
distinction.) The same day, an enthusiastic
crowd in Alexandria watched James Jackson,
a tall, tempestuous man (his biographer wrote
that he indulged freely “the rude bent of his
inclinations”), raise a huge Confederate
flag atop the roof of the Marshall House
hotel at the corner of King and Pitt Streets
that Jackson recently had rented and
begun operating.
On April 19, Edgar Snowden, editor of the
Alexandria Gazette, who had strongly supported
the Union earlier (and whose ancestor was
killed in Braddock’s defeat), castigated “the
madmen at the Federal Capital” in an editorial
and proclaimed that now “[Virginia’s] sons
will rally to her defense, without distinction
of party.”
On the same day as Snowden’s editorial,
Colonel Robert E. Lee was said to have been
in Alexandria and read in the Gazette that
Virginia was to secede. When he stopped by
the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary to pay a
bill, he commented to the druggist, “I must
say that I am one of those dull creatures that
cannot see the good of secession.”
The next day, however, he wrote a formal
letter resigning his commission in the United
States Army. The following day was Sunday,
and as Lee was leaving Christ Church, he
was met on the grounds by men from
Richmond who indicated Virginia needed his
services. He soon became the commander of
Virginia’s forces.
Before secession was official, a statewide
vote was taken on May 23 to ratify the convention’s
decision. Alexandrians voted for
secession 958 to 48.
In the Gazette’s edition the next day, May
24, one column over from the report of the
secession tally, the first paragraph under the
heading “Washington Items” began: “The fact
that five or six regiments—from New Jersey,
Michigan, the New York Twelfth, and
Ellsworth’s Pet Lambs—and perhaps others,
were ordered to be ready to march at five a.m.
this morning, created a great sensation
throughout Washington…. [T]he nature of
service on which it was proposed to send
them is not yet known to the public.”
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
38

C H A P T E R
V I I
CIVIL WAR
1861-1865
T H E F I R S T D A Y
In the darkness at 2:00 a.m. May 24, 1861, Union soldiers began crossing into Virginia over the
Long Bridge (located approximately where the 14th Street Bridge is now). Among them was the First
Michigan Infantry Regiment under Colonel Orlando B. Willcox. Its mission was to occupy Alexandria.
Also that pre-dawn morning, the Eleventh New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, composed of members
of the New York City Fire Department and commanded by 24-year-old Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, a
personal friend of President Lincoln, boarded steamboats at the mouth of the Anacostia River and headed
for Alexandria. The Eleventh was a regiment of Zouaves, distinguished by their uniforms of baggy gray
pants and gray, waist-length jackets (both trimmed in red) topped by red forage hats.
In Alexandria, at 5:30 a.m. a Union navy officer from the steamer Pawnee, which was stationed
outside the Alexandria harbor, came ashore and found Colonel George H. Terrett, commander of the
southern troops in Alexandria. The officer informed Terrett that an “overwhelming force” was about
to enter the city and that he had until 9:00 a.m. to evacuate or surrender.
Colonel Terrett’s command included five Alexandria militia infantry companies: the Alexandria
Riflemen, Mount Vernon Guards, Old Dominion Rifles, Emmet Guards, and O’Connell Guards (the
latter two companies composed primarily of Irish-Americans).
Ten days earlier, Terrett had received from General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Virginia forces,
a letter indicating Lee did not believe it possible for Terrett “to resist successfully an attempt to
❖
Union soldiers and sympathizers in front of
the Old Dominion Bank building at the
northwest corner of Prince and Lee Streets.
During the Civil War it was headquarters of
the Alexandria branch of the Commissary
Department, and now it is the Athenaeum,
headquarters and gallery of the Northern
Virginia Fine Arts Association.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, WILLIAM F. SMITH COLLECTION.
C H A P T E R V I I
3 9

❖
Above: The Union locomotive Lion on the
east side of the U.S.M.R.R. roundhouse at
the Orange and Alexandria Railroad yard
near the intersection of Duke and South
Henry Streets. The railroad administrative
offices are on the left, and a discarded
locomotive cab and cowcatcher on the
right foreground.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Below: Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth,
commander of the Eleventh New York
Infantry Regiment, the “New York
Fire Zouaves.”
COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
40
occupy Alexandria.” With that in mind, Colonel
Terrett ordered the Alexandria militia to assemble
as quickly as possible at the intersection of
Washington and Prince Streets.
As Terrett’s troops were assembling, and
before the 9:00 a.m. deadline, Ellsworth’s
Zouaves landed at the dock at the foot of
Cameron Street and marched quickly up the
street to the intersection of Cameron and
Fairfax. There Ellsworth detailed a squad of
Sergeant Brownell and six to eight men to follow
him to James Jackson’s Marshall House hotel on
King Street where Jackson’s Confederate flag
flew from the roof. While still in Washington,
reportedly Ellsworth had seen the flag and
promised Mrs. Lincoln to take it down.
On the way they passed Joseph Padgett,
Alexandria’s night watchman, who followed
them into the Marshall House and upstairs
until he reached the second floor. Down the
second floor hall, Padgett saw Jackson emerge
from his room wearing his nightshirt. Jackson
sleepily asked Padgett what all the noise was
about. Padgett responded that the Yankees
were on the roof hauling down his flag.
Jackson quickly returned to his room where
his wife was asleep, grabbed a double barrel
shotgun, and ran with it up the stairs. Looking
up, he saw descending the stairs a Union officer
carrying his flag. Quickly he leveled his
shotgun and fired, killing the officer, Colonel
Ellsworth. Immediately, Sergeant Brownell of
the Zouaves, descending behind Ellsworth,
shot and killed Jackson. Reportedly, the
Zouaves then stabbed Jackson’s body repeatedly
with their bayonets.
Each side, North and South, now had its
first martyr.
At Washington and Prince Streets, the
Alexandria militia had formed up. By then Col.
Terrett knew that the Pawnee had its twentyfour-pound
guns trained on the city, the
Zouaves had landed, and Willcox’s Union
troops were advancing into town. He ordered
his men immediately to march out Duke Street.
Isabel Emerson, a lively, attractive twentyyear-old
Alexandrian, looked out a window in
her house on Duke Street just in time to see
“our southern boys rushing by with their knapsacks
on their backs and their bayonets glistening
in the bright early sunshine.” Just outside
town, they boarded railroad cars on the Orange
and Alexandria line that took them to Manassas
Junction and the Battle of First Manassas.
By the end of the day, Col. Willcox’s Michigan
soldiers and the New York Zouaves had taken
control of the city and began to cover its surrounding
fields with horses, wagons, and soldiers.
Willcox proclaimed martial law, which
required Alexandrians to be indoors by 9:00
p.m. and prohibited them from buying alcoholic
beverages. Soon enforced from the Provost
Marshall’s Office on King Street between St.
Asaph and Pitt Streets, it also required passes, as
historian William B. Hurd recorded, “to enter or
leave the city, to visit the camps, or to be on the
streets after curfew.” In order to secure a pass,
hold office, engage in business, or even fish in
the Potomac, an Alexandrian must swear an
oath of allegiance to the United States.
Within a few weeks, a fort named after
Colonel Ellsworth was constructed on
Shuter’s Hill. Its main mission was to guard
the city from a possible Confederate advance
down Little River Turnpike and King Street,
but two of its cannons faced, not west toward
the Confederate soldiers, but east toward
Alexandria and its citizens. For Alexandrians,
the Civil War truly had begun.
T H E U N I O N A R M Y
S E T T L E S I N
After the chaotic battle of First Manassas,
July 21, 1861, General George B. McClellan
assumed command of the Union Army in the
vicinity of Washington and ordered troops
into Alexandria in force to make it a Union
supply and transportation base.

For the previous 112 years, the people of
Alexandria had governed themselves; conducted
their own businesses from their own
offices, warehouses, and wharves; and moved
about as they pleased. Now, and for the next
four years, they found themselves in an occupied
city, their lives controlled by the Union
Army. That army had minimal interest in their
welfare; its interest was in defeating the South.
The United States Commissary of
Subsistence Department, with its Alexandria
headquarters at the Old Dominion Bank
Building (corner of Prince and Lee Streets, now
the Athenaeum), was in charge of providing
food for all Union soldiers. The Quartermasters
Department, from its Alexandria headquarters at
the Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire railroad
depot on Fairfax Street, supplied the army
with everything else except ordnance, such
things as horses, mules, wagons, pants, tents,
knapsacks, flags, shovels, bandages, blankets,
and bugles. Quartermasters were responsible
also for transporting all Union men, food, and
supplies, whether by wagon, ship, or railroad.
Before the end of the war, the two departments
had taken over the waterfront. They also
operated in Alexandria at least one large bakery,
a slaughter house near Jones Point, a mill, cattle
yard, and horse corral, plus supply depots
and facilities scattered throughout the city.
In March and April 1862, the Alexandria
Quartermaster Department helped transport
General McClellan’s army and supplies (a total
of approximately 121,000 men, 16,000 animals,
1,150 wagons, 44 artillery batteries, plus
baggage, ammunition, and other supplies) to
the peninsula between the James and York
rivers without serious incident. In Alexandria a
British journalist observed “a schooner laden to
the water-line with locomotive engines…a brig
shipping artillery horses by a steam derrick,
that lifted them bodily from the shore and
deposited them in the hold of the vessel.
Steamers…black with clusters of rollicking [soldiers].”
During part of that time, McClellan
himself established his headquarters near the
Virginia Theological Seminary.
Alexandria’s excellent railroad connections
south and west into Virginia were quickly
seized by the Union army. In order to ease the
movement of troops and supplies, the Union
government soon constructed a line (supervised
by 25-year-old Andrew Carnegie, headquartered
in Alexandria) from Washington
across the Long Bridge to connect with the railroads
in Alexandria, all of which soon were
united into one continuous railroad called the
U.S. Military Rail Road. Its headquarters in
Alexandria was at the Orange and Alexandria
depot on Duke Street (whose roundhouse and
general facilities the U.S.M.R.R. gradually
improved over the course of the war).
As the war progressed, wounded from First
Manassas, the Peninsula, Second Manassas,
Fredericksburg, and other battles near and far
poured into Alexandria by wagon, ship, or rail
car. To receive and treat them, the Union army
constructed hospitals and commandeered over
twenty of Alexandria’s large buildings, including
private residences, and turned them into
hospitals. Before the end of the war these hospital
conversions included the Lyceum, Virginia
Theological Seminary, St. Paul’s Church,
Methodist Episcopal Church, Lee-Fendall
House, Baptist Church, Washington Street
United Methodist Church, homes on Wolfe and
Prince Streets, and the largest hospital in town,
James Green’s Mansion House Hotel on Fairfax
Street. As one resident said, “The whole air was
infected by hospitals.” For those soldiers who
died in Alexandria, the army also established
the Alexandria National Cemetery, one of the
first official U.S. Civil War cemeteries.
The Union army soon realized that Fort
Ellsworth by itself was insufficient to protect
Alexandria’s valuable supply and transportation
facilities. From 1861 to 1863, it built near
Alexandria Forts Ward (which has been preserved
and restored on West Braddock Road),
Worth, Williams, Lyon, and Blenker, plus connecting
rifle trenches, batteries, and log blockhouses.
The army also added a battery of cannons,
Battery Rodgers, to protect the waterfront.
One other Union organization set up headquarters
in Alexandria. The summer of 1863,
the “Restored Government of Virginia,”
Francis H. Pierpont Governor, established its
capital in the city. The Restored Government
governed only the parts of Virginia under
Union control, not including the westernmost
counties of Virginia that had become the
new state of West Virginia.
❖
Above: Private Andrew F. Skidmore of the
Mount Vernon Guards, age thirty-one.
Before the war, Skidmore had been a
carpenter and laborer living in Alexandria.
In May 1862 he was in a Confederate
trench at Yorktown when a sniper’s bullet
went through the neck of a soldier beside
him and into his stomach, killing him.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Below: The Virginia Theological Seminary
in the Civil War era. During the war, it was
used as a Union hospital.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
C H A P T E R V I I
4 1

❖
Above: A rosette made by the Knights of the
Golden Circle. The group’s initials are
visible in the rosette’s center.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY,
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
Below: A scene at a railroad station in
Alexandria in early 1862. Soldiers of a
brigade of New York Volunteers wait for
transportation to their camp at Upton Hills,
Virginia, wearing some of the different styles
of uniforms worn by Union soldiers in
Alexandria during the war.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. DRAWING BY
ARTHUR LUMLEY.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
42
U N I O N
S O L D I E R S
On Shuter’s Hill and at various places around
Alexandria, encampments of Union soldiers
appeared. One witness described “grain fields
that so short a time ago were looking so beautiful
and flourishing, now covered over with
tents, and trampled over with horses, and wagons,
and soldiers and every thing pertaining to
an army.” In Alexandria itself one Alexandrian
observed, “Many of the invaders have found
quarters in the various untenanted houses in the
city [those of Alexandrian’s who had fled]….”
During the war soldiers from Michigan,
Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, and
most northern states camped around
Alexandria, some to stay only a short time
before moving on and some to serve in
Alexandria guarding supplies, railroad yards,
the waterfront, and headquarters buildings,
manning forts, drilling, and enforcing curfews.
Like many garrison towns, Alexandria had its
rough side. People eager to sell liquor to soldiers
were everywhere, and some seventy brothels
flourished with names such as “The Hole in the
Wall” on Prince Street near Pitt and “The First
Rhode Island Battery” at 33 Henry Street.
General John P. Slough became the military
governor of Alexandria on August 25, 1862.
(Alexandria maintained its own mayor and
municipal government, controlled by Union
sympathizers led by Lewis McKenzie, but it had
comparatively little power.) He found “a reign
of terror…. The streets were crowded with
intoxicated soldiery…. The sidewalks and
docks were covered with drunken men, women
and children.” Slough, “an eccentric and bellicose
man,” as historian William Francis Smith
wrote, managed to quiet the mob.
R E S I S T A N C E
Many residents, particularly
fighting-age men but
also women and children,
left town before the Union
soldiers arrived. One witness
described the scene
near the Orange and
Alexandria Railroad depot
in early May: “Such a dense
crowd thronged the streets, carriages filled
with people, wagons, carts, drays, wheelbarrows
all packed mountain high with baggage
of every sort, men, women, and children
streaming along to the [railway] cars, most of
the women crying…all looking as forlorn and
wretched as if going to execution.”
Many of those who remained were women
passionately attached to the Confederate
cause—their husbands, sons, brothers, and
special friends were suffering and dying to
oppose the Union occupiers—and they too
wanted to resist them.
Their resistance took different forms. When
Union soldiers hung a Union flag over the front
door of Isabel Emerson’s home, her stepmother,
an ardent Secessionist, insisted that the family
use only the back door. A group of girls aged ten
to twenty formed a secret club they called the
Knights of the Golden Circle. Its members swore
to aid the Confederate government, not to help
the Union, and never to marry anyone who
helped the North or opposed the South. They
crocheted items, such as rosettes, to sell to
Union officers’ wives and happily smuggled
south the funds they received. Rougher women,
according to an English journalist, “used to take
pleasure in insulting the private soldiers with
epithets which will not bear repetition.”
Some remaining men also resisted. One
Sunday during the litany at St. Paul’s Episcopal
Church, the Rev. Kensey J. Stewart omitted the
prayer for the President of the United States.
When a Union officer requested him to say the
prayer, Rev. Stewart ignored him and continued
the service. The irate officer quickly had Stewart
arrested and marched out of the church. Stewart
later was released, but the next day, Edgar
Snowden’s The Local News (Snowden’s newspaper
after his Alexandria Gazette was suspended
because he refused to print the martial law
proclamation) called the incident outrageous.
The following night, soldiers set the paper’s
office on fire, destroying the print shop and two
adjacent buildings.
Both men and women helped provide the
Confederacy with information. Confederate spy
Frank Stringfellow, a frequent visitor to relatives
in Alexandria before the war and a graduate of
Episcopal High School, spent over six months
in Alexandria early in the war posing as an

assistant to a local dentist, a Confederate
sympathizer. Stringfellow sent through Union
lines to J. E. B. Stuart reports on Union troop
movements obtained by poring over Northern
newspapers. On a later assignment in
Alexandria, he reportedly was saved from a
pursuer by hiding under the voluminous
hoopskirts of a friend of his mother.
Still, even Alexandria women who supported
the South did show concern for suffering
Union soldiers. At daybreak on July 22,
1861, as Union solders streamed into
Alexandria after being routed in the Battle of
First Manassas, young Isabel Emerson at her
house on Duke Street was surprised to find:
“all along the sidewalk the poor fellows were
sitting or lying, worn out completely.” Despite
her family’s strong Confederate sympathy:
“We had great pots of coffee made, and bread,
and we went out and served them ourselves.
They seemed so grateful and refreshed.”
U N I O N
S E R V I C E
Just as many Alexandrians abhorred the
presence of Union soldiers in their city, many
Union soldiers had little desire to be there.
Still, most did their duty, and some even
enjoyed it. Private Lyons Wakeman wrote
home from Alexandria to New York: “I have to
go on guard every other day and drill the day
that I am not on guard. I like to drill first
rate.” (Private Wakeman actually was Sarah
Rosetta Wakeman, a twenty-year-old woman
who had enlisted to help support her family.)
Sometimes they did more than just their
duty. As the Second Manassas campaign began
in August 1862, some thirty thousand troops
of General McClellan’s army arrived at the
Alexandria docks from the ill-fated Peninsula
venture. They and their supplies were needed
immediately near Manassas Junction.
Brigadier General Herman Haupt, the
dynamic, 45-year-old head of the U.S. Military
Rail Road, took a rowboat out among the fleet of
transport ships in the Alexandria harbor to find
General McClellan and request help with the
transfer. Haupt found him, but McClellan
refused him assistance. Haupt still managed to
transport most of the troops and supplies over
the old Orange and Alexandria line to Manassas.
Haupt also greatly aided the Union cause
before the Battle of Fredericksburg in
December 1862 when the lack of a rail line
between Alexandria and Fredericksburg
severely hampered supplying the Union army.
He conceived the idea of loading onto barges
entire railroad cars filled with supplies,
instead of just the loose supplies themselves;
towing the barges down the Potomac to a
landing near Fredericksburg; and then simply
rolling off the cars to trains waiting to take
supplies to the soldiers.
Nurses were Union supporters who came to
Alexandria voluntarily to lend their needed services
to the wounded. Early in the war, Dorothea
Dix, superintendent of nurses, selected only
women who were over thirty and “matronly.”
Poet Walt Whitman, who on his own visited the
wounded in hospitals in Washington and
Alexandria, wrote: “The presence of a good middle-aged
or elderly woman, the magnetic touch
of hands, the expressive features of the mother,
the silent soothing of her presence, her words,
her knowledge and privileges arrived at only
through having had children, are precious and
final qualifications.” One nurse observed, however:
“Society just now presents the unprecedented
spectacle of many women trying to make
believe that they are over thirty!”
Nurses worked long hours and provided a
variety of services depending on their skills:
changed soldiers’ bandages, washed and
dressed their wounds, brought them meals,
wrote letters for them, and generally tried to
raise their spirits. Several nurses left sobering
records of their service in Alexandria, including
Jane Woolsey from New York, who
worked at the Virginia Theological Seminary
hospital, and Englishwoman Anne Reading at
Mansion House.
C O N T R A B A N D S
F R E E D M E N
&
Besides Union soldiers, there was another
group of people who came to Alexandria in great
numbers during the war—runaway slaves. At
first they were primarily young men. Soon,
however, young women and whole families
came through Union lines to Alexandria
searching for freedom.
❖
A portrait of Brigadier General Herman
Haupt, commander of the United States
Military Rail Road.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
C H A P T E R V I I
4 3

❖
Above: Contraband and freedmen dock
workers on the Alexandria waterfront.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS,. VF-WATERFRONT COLLECTION.
Below: Harriet Jacobs, author and former
slave, who helped contrabands and
freedmen in Alexandria during the
Civil War.
COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
44
Their presence at first created a
legal problem for the Union. In 1861,
the federal Fugitive Slave Act was still
in force. It punished anyone who harbored
a fugitive slave and thus
deprived the slave’s owner of what at
that time was considered his property. The problem
was solved using the legal concept of contraband,
which allowed one side during a war to
confiscate its enemy’s property. Thus the Union
declared fugitive slaves owned by a Southerner
“contraband” and “confiscated” them.
Many contrabands were employed as stevedores,
wood cutters, laundresses, cooks, teamsters,
bakers, and particularly as workmen laying
track, constructing bridges, and building stockades
for the U.S. Military Rail Road Construction
Corps. General Herman Haupt, commander of
the U.S.M.R.R. wrote: “These Africans worked
with enthusiasm, and each gang with a laudable
emulation to excel others in the progress made in
a given time….” In the summer of 1864 a company
of contrabands and freemen was raised in
Alexandria to serve in the Union army.
After the Emancipation Proclamation went
into effect on January 1, 1863, the number of
contrabands increased. (At the end of the war, an
estimated seven thousand freedmen lived in
Alexandria.) To house some of them, the army
erected wood-frame barracks at the west end of
Prince Street. Others lived in houses abandoned
by Southern sympathizers. Still others squatted
in crowded shelters built in any available space
from pieces of tent, blankets, barrels, boards, or
whatever else was at hand. Shanty towns sprang
up with names like Petersburg, Richmond,
Contraband Valley, and Grantville.
To help pay for the upkeep of these new
arrivals, the Union army charged both contrabands
and free blacks working in Washington
and Alexandria $5 a month. Some “free people
of Alexandria” who had been employed by the
commissary department since the beginning of
the war protested in a letter to the secretary of
war that they had their own families to support
and that the $5 a month to support contrabands
was unfair. Apparently, however, their letter
changed nothing.
Julia Wilbur, a Quaker teacher from New
York, and Harriet Jacobs, a former slave from
North Carolina, worked together tirelessly to
provide clothing, food, shelter, and education for
poor contrabands and freedmen, often fighting
against “the rapacity & cruelty of Contractors,
sutlers, disloyal citizens…” and unsympathetic
Union administrators. (As an example, one hospital
administrator advocated housing contraband
orphans with people suffering from small
pox.) Harriet Jacobs particularly was responsible
for establishing the Jacobs School, a free school
for African-American children staffed and managed
by African-American teachers.
To take care of the medical needs of sick and
wounded black soldiers of the United States
Colored Troops, in February 1864, L’Ouverture
Hospital began operating off Duke Street behind
the former Franklin and Armfield slave pen.
Earlier a hospital for contrabands had been
established on Washington Street between Duke
and Wolfe Streets.
For those soldiers and contrabands who
did not survive, a cemetery was established on
South Washington Street, although the soldiers
later were moved to the Alexandria
National Cemetery.
T H E W A R E N D S
General Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, to
great celebration among the soldiers and Union
sympathizers in Alexandria. Loyal Confederates,
like Isabel Emerson, were both saddened and
relieved. “Thank God the war is over,” she wrote.
Then not a week later, Lincoln was shot and
died. Alexandrians, even Confederate supporters,
shared in the grief and outrage. As Isabel
Emerson wrote, “Whoever committed the
wicked deed should be dealt with unmercifully.”
A railroad car built in Alexandria, probably
for the president’s use, conveyed Lincoln’s body
home to Springfield, Illinois.
On May 23 and 24 the Union victory was
celebrated with a two-day Grand Review in
Washington of General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army
of the Potomac and General William T.
Sherman’s western army. The latter group of
soldiers, who had marched through Tennessee,
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and
Virginia, fighting most of the way, camped in
the hills and fields around Alexandria.
Then, after the Grand Review and after four
long years of occupation, the Union army left.

C H A P T E R
V I I I
RECONSTRUCTION & RECOVERY
1865-1925
Confederate soldiers gradually began returning home to Alexandria, some with an empty sleeve
where an arm should have been, “many others wounded and scarred,” as Isabel Emerson observed.
Some came from far away, like Dr. William Gregory, who rode a “sorry old horse…all the way from
Georgia.” Some, such as Private Edgar Warfield of the 17th Virginia Infantry Regiment, into which
the militia units that left Alexandria four years earlier had been incorporated, had fought from First
Manassas to the surrender at Appomattox. Some never returned. All who returned found their
home greatly changed.
The city’s wharves and warehouses were empty of goods and ships. The railroads were in disarray—engines
and rolling stock exhausted, ownership questioned, and connecting rails, bridges,
and depots in much of Virginia damaged or destroyed.
Many city buildings, like the returning soldiers, were wounded and scarred. At the Methodist
Episcopal Church on Washington Street, used as a Union hospital, “the pews in the basement, and
main part of the church have all been destroyed, the altars pulled down and damaged, and the one
in the main part of the church (a marble altar) has been broken beyond repair” according to a
Union army report.
Moreover, there was little financing available to make repairs and help get businesses started
again. Confederate money was worthless. The city banks had little money, and the city itself, its
revenue base eroded and burdened by earlier canal and railroad debt, was broke. In March 1866,
the Alexandria Gazette reported that when checks written by the city were presented to the First
National Bank, “the teller politely hands them back to the presenter, with the remark that the city
has no money deposited in that bank.”
Another immense change was the presence in Alexandria of over 7,000 free African-American
men, women, and children. Alexandria’s population in 1865 was nearly fifty percent black, as compared
with twenty percent in 1860. After the Union army left, many African Americans stayed in
neighborhoods that recently had sprung up in the city or moved onto land, such as Fort Ward,
abandoned by the Union army. Many had recently been slaves and were unprepared for freedom.
Finally, most Alexandrians themselves were demoralized over their lost cause and lost sons,
fathers, businesses, and homes.
Still, Alexandrians quickly realized they faced two major tasks: bringing new life to the city’s
economy and determining how white and black people in Alexandria would live.
❖
A view of part of the Virginia Shipbuilding
Corporation yard located on Jones Point,
c. 1919. The shipways are on the left where
ships’ hulls are being worked on. The
small white building on the river’s edge near
the center of the photograph is Jones Point
Lighthouse.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, DRAWER 10.
C H A P T E R V I I I
4 5

W H O C O N T R O L S
A L E X A N D R I A ?
❖
Above: A railroad bridge over Cedar Run
between Manassas Junction and Culpeper
on the Orange and Alexandria line wrecked
during the Civil War.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Below: “The First Vote.” African-American
men in line waiting to cast their votes
wearing clothes indicating their different
occupations.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. DRAWING BY
ALFRED R. WAUD.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
46
How whites and blacks would live in
Alexandria depended on who controlled the
city and the state, and that depended on
whether African Americans and former
Confederates would be allowed to vote.
The recalcitrance of Virginia and other
southern states in granting African Americans
the vote led Republicans in Congress, over
vetoes by President Johnson, to enact
Reconstruction laws in March 1867. These
laws placed southern states under military
government and required them, before being
readmitted to the Union, to adopt new state
constitutions and ratify the 14th amendment,
which provided “equal protection of the laws”
to all U.S. citizens, including African
Americans. Importantly, the Reconstruction
laws also enfranchised African Americans in
southern states and disenfranchised southerners
who had participated in the rebellion.
Alexandria held city elections on March 5,
just after enactment of the first
Reconstruction Act on March 2 that enfranchised
African Americans, but before there
had been time to register newly eligible voters.
Still, the day before the election, 200 to
300 black and a number of white Unionists
met at the Lyceum to demand that African-
Americans be allowed to vote in the election.
At the election itself, conducted in “a very
orderly manner,” according to the Alexandria
Gazette, 1,365 ballots were cast by black voters
but not included in the final tally. Hugh
Latham, candidate of the Conservatives (former
Democrats), was re-elected mayor.
The following year, however, under the new
Reconstruction laws then fully in effect, General
John M. Schofield, commander of Virginia’s military
government, dismissed the old and
appointed a new Alexandria government with
Republican William N. Berkley as mayor.
In October 1867, Virginia’s voter registration
lists compiled under the military government
included for the first time almost
106,000 male African Americans (just 14,000
fewer than white registrants) and excluded
probably 20,000 former Confederates. Voters
on those lists elected delegates to a convention
to rewrite Virginia’s constitution and gave
Radical Republicans control of the convention.
Alexandria’s representative to the convention
was white Radical Republican John Hawxhurst.
While African Americans experienced “the
emotional release of being free” and avidly pursued
education and jobs, striving to take part
in the universally hoped for economic recovery,
former Confederates were greatly disturbed by
blacks “casting votes when many whites could
not, sitting beside them in legislative bodies,
strolling the streets without stepping out of the
way, bringing their own crops to market,” as
modern historians wrote in Old Dominion, New
Commonwealth. White conservatives thus
began planning to take back control.
The constitutional convention, under the
close supervision of General Schofield, adopted
a new Virginia constitution. Among other
things, it provided all adult male African
Americans the right to vote, Virginia’s first
public school system, and independent status
for all cities whose population exceeded ten
thousand (which included Alexandria).
Before the state-wide vote to ratify the new
constitution, however, a delegation of conservative
and moderate Virginians negotiated a
deal with federal officials and President Grant
to allow two of its key provisions to be voted
on separately, one requiring state and local
office holders to take an oath that they never
supported the Confederacy and the other disenfranchising
anyone who held civilian or
military office under the Confederacy. In
exchange the conservatives pledged support
for the rest of the new constitution, including

the African-American franchise. On July 6,
1869, voters defeated the two anti-
Confederate provisions and ratified the rest of
the new constitution.
Held the same day was the crucial first election
for state officials and legislators under the
new constitution. A skillful combination of
Conservatives and moderate Republicans won
the governorship and controlled the state legislature,
giving old Confederates once again
control of Virginia. As a Lynchburg newspaper
proclaimed: “Shout the glad tidings, Virginia is
free! …Virginians will rule Virginia.”
Still, twenty-seven of the new Virginia
House of Delegates were African Americans,
including Alexandria Delegate George Lewis
Seaton, 47 years old, a landowner and builder
who had been born free.
In its session later that year, the newly elected
Virginia General Assembly ratified the 14th
amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As a result,
on January 26, 1870, President Grant signed
legislation abolishing military rule and readmitting
Virginia into the Union. Reconstruction in
Virginia and Alexandria was over. Now conservatives
within the commonwealth could proceed
to obtain long-lasting control without the
interference of a military ruler.
The first election in Alexandria under the
new constitution was held in May 1870 and
pitted the Conservative former mayor, Hugh
Latham, against Republican Mayor William
Berkley. Latham won by 67 of 2,877 votes
cast. Reverend George Parker, pastor of the
Third Baptist Church, became the first African
American elected to the City Council.
Then in 1872 it was the Republican Berkley
who won in another close election. In 1873,
however, Latham won election again, making
Berkley, up to now, Alexandria’s last Republican
mayor. In the 1873 election, John A. Seaton,
brother of George Seaton, became Alexandria’s
first black alderman, but the Conservatives controlled
the Council and Board of Aldermen and
would continue to do so for years to come.
It took Conservatives a little longer on the
state level. Control of the state went back and
forth until in 1883, Conservatives, reorganized
as Democrats, won final control of the Virginia
government and ended two party rule in
Virginia until well into the next century.
In 1902, another constitutional convention
adopted another new constitution and put it
into effect automatically, without submitting it to
the public for ratification. As prerequisites for
voting, it required paying a poll tax (Alexandria
had adopted such a measure in 1877) and passing
a literacy and comprehension test that
required voters to explain constitutional provisions.
This constitution’s main purpose, as state
senator Carter Glass stated, was to “cut from the
existing electorate four-fifths of the Negro
voters.” Predictably, local elections boards controlled
by the Democrats enforced these requirements
harshly on prospective black voters.
Earlier, in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court in
Plessy v. Ferguson sanctioned “separate but
equal” state legislation throughout the South.
The Virginia legislature in 1900 passed its first
segregation law, requiring separate railroad cars
for blacks and whites. Eventually, Virginia and
Alexandria separated the races for most public
facilities: restaurants, movie theaters, swimming
pools, libraries, and even drinking fountains.
The question of how blacks and whites
would live together had been decided for
many years to come.
❖
Above: Signs like this one appeared
outside bus terminals and railroad stations
in Alexandria and throughout the
segregated South.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Below: The Alexandria Marine Railway &
Ship Building Company at the foot of
Franklin Street where the Ford’s Landing
townhouses are now. In 1880 the company
operated three marine railways extending
into the river.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, WILLIAM F. SMITH COLLECTION.
C H A P T E R V I I I
4 7

❖
Above: The Smoot Tannery seen at the
southeast corner of Wilkes and Washington
Streets looking east, c. 1900. The main
railroad track runs down Wilkes Street
toward the Wilkes Street tunnel. The site
is now partially occupied by a branch of
Capital One Bank.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, MORRIS LOEB COLLECTION
Below: Robert Ellis “Rob” Kidd, 12 or 13
years old, working as a carrying-in boy at
the Alexandria Glass Company factory in
1911. A “carrying-in boy” carried molded
glass bottles from the blowing room to an
oven where they would be heated and then
cooled to make them stronger. Glass
workers usually alternated their working
hours weekly, working a night shift one
week and a day shift the next.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, RICHARD E.
CANNON, AND JOYCE HACKMAN.
T H E N E W S O U T H
Alexandria’s economy recovered very slowly.
For the first decade after the war,
“Alexandria simply withered,” wrote historian
G. Terry Sharrer. There were even attempts by
some Alexandrians, principally Union loyalists
and African Americans, to persuade
Congress to re-annex Alexandria into the
District of Columbia, attempts that were
opposed by most Alexandrians and failed.
In the spirit of the “New South” movement
developed in Atlanta and Richmond,
Alexandrians sought recovery through industrial
development. They sought both to increase
production of existing manufacturers and to
attract new, large manufacturing concerns
(frequently financed by Northern capital) that
produced goods for extensive markets.
Despite its overall debilitated condition at
the end of the war, Alexandria’s infrastructure
still could support industrial development. Its
waterfront wharves and warehouses, while
roughly used, were intact. The central city
was encircled by railroad tracks that ran along
Union Street to serve the waterfront, ran west
up Wilkes Street, north up Henry and soon
Fayette Streets, and back southeast to the
waterfront. From this rough circle, connecting
lines ran south, west, and north into
Washington and the rest of Virginia.
Money from Maine shipbuilders soon
expanded the Alexandria Marine Railroad and
Ship Building Company, which repaired and
built wooden boats and ships on the waterfront
at the foot of Franklin Street. Josiah H.
D. Smoot and Smoot & Perry operated extensive
lumber yards between King and Queen
Street, cutting up wood to make moldings,
shingles, and other building materials.
Yet these were comparatively small-scale
industrial undertakings. The most important
industries in Alexandria into the twentieth
century were the large producers of fertilizer,
leather, bottles, and beer.
The Charles Calvert Smoot family had
operated a highly successful tannery in
Alexandria since 1820. After the Civil War,
their tannery operations were located at a corner
of Wilkes and Washington Streets conveniently
next to the railroad track. At the tannery
fresh animal hides were soaked in solutions
made from lime, tree bark, and dung,
then let dry in large sheds to produce high
quality leather. Smoot & Sons was the only
Alexandria firm to exhibit its products at the
World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago
in 1893.
Fertilizer was manufactured by the Herbert
Bryant Company, located at the foot of Duke
Street, and the extensive Alexandria Fertilizer
and Chemical Company located on the west
side of North Union Street between Queen
and Oronoco Streets and at the present-day
site of Robinson Terminal North. The latter
company used crude phosphate from South
Carolina and Florida, dried blood and raw animal
bone from western states, potash from
Germany, and nitrate of soda from Sicily to
make the fertilizer. It also produced sulfuric
acid using sulphur from the Isle of Sicily and
pyrites from Virginia mines. By rail cars loaded
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
48

eside its plant and by ships docked at its
wharves, the company sent products to New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
West Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.
The earliest glass bottling plant was the
Virginia Glass Factory, started in 1893 by a
group of Pennsylvania Germans, and located
in the 1800 block of Duke Street. It was
joined in the early 1900s by three other
plants: the Old Dominion Glass Factory in
the 800 and 900 blocks of North Fairfax
Street, the Belle Pre glass factory on North
Henry Street between Madison and
Montgomery, and the Alexandria Glass factory
at the northwest corner of North Henry
and Montgomery Streets.
These factories melted glass ingredients in
their furnaces 24 hours a day, except for July
and August when it was too hot for their
employees, black, white, male, female, and
children, to work near them. A large percentage
of the Virginia Glass Factory’s production
was beer bottles for the Robert Portner
Brewing Company, and the Belle Pre manufactured
unique milk bottles using its own
patent. The four produced glass products
such as green and sometimes amber beer,
soda, and medicine bottles, preservative jars;
olive jars, and flasks.
The most successful of all these manufacturing
companies was the Robert Portner Brewing
Company, started during the Civil War by
Robert Portner, a German immigrant from New
York in his late twenties, and others. Under
Portner’s sole ownership, it grew to become the
largest beer producer in the South during the
mid-1890s and the largest employer in
Alexandria. At its brewery complex (with its
nucleus on North St. Asaph Street between
Pendleton and Wythe), the company produced
100,000 barrels (about 3.1 million gallons) a
year by 1895. Its beer, called “Tivoli” (spelled
backwards “I lov[e] it”) and “Vienna Cabinet,”
was shipped in insulated railroad cars, painted a
vibrant blue and packed with ice from the brewery’s
own ice plant, to North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, and the rest of Virginia.
Between 1899 and 1909, manufacturing in
Alexandria increased by the largest percentage
of any city in Virginia, producing $4,420,000
worth of goods in 1909.
Yet, after the Civil War,
Alexandria never seriously
challenged its neighboring
rivals, Baltimore and
Richmond. For example,
in the thirty years
between 1870 and
1900, Alexandria’s population
went from 13,570
to 14,528, an increase
of only seven percent.
In contrast, during the
same period, Richmond’s
population increased by
forty percent.
U R B A N
L I F E
Life for city residents gradually improved.
In 1881 the first telephone was installed in
the city, and electricity came to Alexandria in
1889. Alexandrians even witnessed an early
flight of the new Wright Brothers airplane. In
1909, Orville Wright and an Army Signal
Corps lieutenant flew a test flight from Fort
Myer to Shuter’s Hill and back, passing over
Shuter’s Hill about 60 to 100 feet above
ground and at nearly 42 miles per hour.
While along Alexandria’s borders fire from
glass factories lit the night sky and strange
smells from fertilizer and tanning operations
penetrated city air, much of Alexandria’s
commercial life centered on King Street. Here
shops sold hardware, shoes, jewelry,
❖
Above: The Robert Portner Brewing
Company complex in the late 1800s. A
train runs through the middle of the
complex on a branch line down
St. Asaph Street.
COURTESY OF TIM DINNEE
Below: A group of men, boys, and a dog
posing outside the premises of Terrence
McGowan, Tailor, 300 block of King Street,
in the 1890s.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, SAMPSON COLLECTION.
C H A P T E R V I I I
4 9

❖
Above: Kate Waller Barret is seated on the
right in this photograph of the Women’s
Party booth at the Panama Pacific
International Exposition held in San
Francisco in 1915.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Below: The Confederate memorial statute
(known as “Appomatox”) at the intersection
of Prince and Washington Streets with its
back to the north, circa 1932. Standing in
front of the statue is Edgar Warfield, former
member of the Old Dominion Rifles,
Company H, 17th Virginia Infantry, who
first proposed erection of the memorial. He
died in 1934 at the age of ninety-two
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION. SCULPTED
BY M. CASPER BUBERL.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
50
furniture, bakery goods, and dry goods.
Generally, businesses were on the ground
floors with their owners living above.
Shopping and strolling on King Street “and
observing the shoppers and strollers” became
“the main entertainment for young and old,
men and women, black and white” wrote
Marian Van Landingham.
From the foot of King and Prince Streets,
ferries carried passengers to and from
Washington and Maryland, excursion boats
took sightseers to and from Mount Vernon,
and steamboats carried passengers and freight
to Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston,
and New York.
Alexandria women played an increasingly
significant role in Alexandria and national life.
When she was only 15, Mary Hunter and her
mother opened a small grocery store on South
Lee Street in 1871 that operated for 59 years,
according to the Alexandria Gazette, without
being “one cent in debt.” Alexandria’s Kate
Waller Barrett was the co-founder of the
international Florence Crittenton Mission that
assisted unwed mothers. In 1919 she was
appointed by President Wilson as an observer
at the Paris Peace Conference that formalized
the end of World War I.
Alexandria still was a proud southern
town. On May 24, 1889, the city
memorialized the service of its Confederate
soldiers with a statue erected at the
intersection of Washington and Prince Streets,
the spot where the soldiers from Alexandria
had assembled twenty-eight years earlier on
the day the city was invaded by Union troops
at the beginning of the Civil War.
Of grimmer note, the city, with the legal
sanction of the Supreme Court and the
Virginia constitution, began more formally to
separate blacks and whites in public facilities
and public life. In the 1890s, two lynchings of
black men took place in the city.
&
W O R L D W A R I
P R O H I B I T I O N
In 1916, the city’s large industries began to
disappear. Prohibition became effective in
Virginia that year, and Portner’s Brewery
closed its doors. Prohibition and numerous
fires caused by continuous operation of their
furnaces, also finished Alexandria’s glass
bottle factories, only one of which lasted into
the 1920s.
When the United States entered World War
I in April 1917, Alexandria, for a time,
received new life. The federal government
contracted with the Virginia Shipbuilding
Corporation to produce 12 cargo vessels for
$1,504,000 on a 47-acres site on Jones
Point. On May 30, 1918, President
Woodrow Wilson visited the plant and
drove the first rivet in the first keel of the
first ship, the Gunston Hall, built on one
of the four shipways in the yard (parts of
which still exist). The yard, whose motto
was “More Tons—Less Huns,” built nine
ships, but in 1921, after the war’s end, it filed
for bankruptcy and went out of business
shortly afterward.
A plant to produce torpedoes for the
government was built on the waterfront at
Cameron and King Streets at a cost of
$1,216,655. No torpedoes were produced by
the plant, however, until November 1920,
two years after the war ended, and the plant
ceased production in June 1923.
The fertilizer business and many small
industrial concerns struggled and frequently
overcame fires, floods, national financial
panic, and other business challenges to
survive well into the twentieth century, but by
the mid-1920s, although unclear at the time,
Alexandria’s period of large industrialization
was largely over. Alexandria would need to
look elsewhere for its economic prosperity.

C H A P T E R
I X
NEW DIRECTION
1925-1945
W H I C H W A Y A L E X A N D R I A ?
On January 1, 1930, W. B. McGroarty, industrial agent for the Southern Railway and Alexandria
booster, posed a question in the Alexandria Gazette about Alexandria’s future. It was the beginning
of a new decade, and he wondered what would be “the exact line of progress to which the city and
community is destined. Will it be along the industrial lines for which it is so well adapted, or will
it slip naturally, because the more easily, into the purely suburban class which its contiguity to a
large and growing city [Washington] renders possible?” (By 1930, Washington’s population was
486,869; Alexandria’s, 24,764, only 5 percent of Washington’s.)
Not surprisingly, McGroarty favored “an industrial Alexandria.” This position was completely in
tune with that of the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce, which for the past several years had been
seeking new industries for the city. Using the slogan “Key To Dixie,” referring to Alexandria’s location
as the northernmost southern city, the Chamber sought “manufacturing plants of all kinds.” Its
advertisements listed 13 particular types of industries sought, from shoe factories to iron foundries.
Several small industries had located in Alexandria in the late 1920s, but McGroarty himself had
written earlier that Alexandria “has not as yet secured any specific industries of the A-1 type.”
In fact, Alexandria was slowly proceeding in the other, the suburban direction. On the same day
McGroarty’s article appeared in the Gazette, annexation of the largest territory thus far in
❖
An aerial view up King Street from the
Potomac River to the new George
Washington Masonic Memorial, c. the
1930s. The large gray building in the right
foreground is the Torpedo Factory.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, WILLIAM F. SMITH COLLECTION.
C H A P T E R I X
5 1

❖
Above: The town hall and firehouse of the
town of Potomac built in 1926 and still
standing on East Windsor Avenue.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, SAMPSON COLLECTION.
Below: An aerial view of Potomac Yard
looking south toward Old Town Alexandria
and Great Hunting Creek, c. the 1920s.
COURTESY OF TED PULLIAM.
Alexandria’s history became effective. By this
annexation Alexandria acquired over 3.5
square miles and a population of 5,473,
including the suburban town of Potomac and
the great railway switching facility Potomac
Yard. The annexed property, which was
acquired from Arlington County, extended
north along the Potomac River from the earlier
northern Alexandria border at Second
Street to Four Mile Run and west from the
earlier western city border, located slightly
west of today’s Russell Road, to Quaker Lane.
This annexation was a strong indicator that
Alexandria might look in a new direction for
its economic future. By it Alexandria acquired
not only the residents of Potomac (which had
been formed in 1908 from two housing developments
just north of the city, St. Elmo and
Del Ray), but also land along both a streetcar
line (running along what today is
Commonwealth Avenue) and the Washington-
Alexandria Turnpike (today’s Highway 1) that
provided commuter transportation links
between Washington and Alexandria. To
Alexandrians, incorporating new rate payers
plus additional land with good transportation
and fine growth prospects made sense.
Acquiring Potomac Yard also made sense.
It was built by a combination of six railroad
companies as a central spot to transfer freight
between the northern and southern railroads—mainly
manufactured goods coming
south and agricultural goods going north. As
the yard superintendent reported in the
Alexandria Gazette in 1929, “practically every
article manufactured, grown or mined passes
through Potomac Yard.” When it opened in
1906, it had 68 tracks and was designed to
handle 2,200 railroad cars a day. It soon
became the largest railroad freight transfer
yard on the east coast. By 1929 it had 122
tracks and could handle 6,800 cars a day and
employed 1,350 employees, many of whom
lived in the new part of Alexandria.
Alexandria also was beginning to place
more emphasis on tourism as a possible source
of economic prosperity. Some of its first
tourists came during the Civil War from
Washington to see a real southern town, the
place where Colonel Ellsworth had been shot,
and Christ Church where George Washington
had worshiped. Washington and colonial history
became particularly good draws.
According to historian William Seale, in the
1880s Alexandria and its colonial history
began appearing in popular periodicals like
The Century Magazine. The first part of the
Washington, Alexandria & Mount Vernon
electric railway completed in 1892 ran from
Alexandria, not to Washington, but to Mount
Vernon to carry visitors to Washington’s home.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
52

By 1930, new facilities had been completed
or planned that were expected to bring additional
tourists to Alexandria. In 1923, President
Coolidge helped lay the cornerstone on Shuter’s
Hill for what would become the dramatic
George Washington Masonic Memorial, a new
and expanded home for mementos of George
Washington’s career. The tallest building in
town was the six-story George Mason Hotel.
Constructed in 1926 at the northeast corner of
Washington and Prince Streets, it cost over
$500,000 and contained 112 rooms. Then later
in 1930, work commenced on the George
Washington Memorial Parkway, which would
pass through Alexandria along Washington
Street on its way from Washington to Mount
Vernon and would allow tourists to travel more
easily to Alexandria.
T H E D E P R E S S I O N S L O W L Y
H I T S H O M E
Although the New York stock market crash
had occurred in October of the old year, in
1930, Alexandria remained comparatively
unaffected. Even at the beginning of 1931, the
Gazette reported that unemployment had hit
the city the previous year “but not seriously.”
At the beginning of 1932, the economic situation
had worsened, but the paper still reported
that Alexandria “probably has suffered less
in comparison than most places” due primarily
“to the fact that it is so close to the National
Capital” and (in something of a turnaround
for the Gazette) “that there are no large manufacturing
concerns here.”
On February 22, 1932, the local economy
was bolstered by an estimated 100,000 people
who attended a parade with thirty bands
reviewed by President Hoover marking the
bicentennial of George Washington’s birth. That
night a capacity crowd of over five hundred costumed
guests attended a brilliant celebration of
Washington’s Birthnight Ball at Gadsby’s Tavern.
In May the Masonic Memorial was dedicated
with another large parade and ceremony, again
with President Hoover in attendance. Then in
the fall, the Ford Motor Company opened at the
foot of Franklin Street a plant for assembling
and distributing cars that employed 225 persons.
Despite these encouraging developments,
for the year, as historian Martha Feldkamp
reported,” tax collections were down, tourism
was down, the [George Mason] hotel lost money,
and the city’s budget and salaries were cut.”
The year 1933 opened ominously when
the new Ford plant shut down temporarily in
January because of a strikes at plants of Ford
suppliers in Detroit. In March, however,
Alexandria’s four banks (including Burke &
Herbert Bank, the only bank then that still
exists now) survived the national banking crisis
by honoring payroll withdrawals and even
attracting new depositors.
Yet it was to be Alexandria’s worst year of
the Depression. By mid-December, 1,860
Alexandrians (15 percent of the workforce)
had registered as unemployed, and on the last
day of 1933, Potomac Yard laid off another 93
workers. Local charities ran short of funds.
The value of new construction permits fell to
less than fifty percent of that in 1932.
Alexandria’s economy stagnated.
Like America’s other Main Streets, King Street
suffered badly. “One day we took in $38 and
were so thrilled we called relatives in Florida to
tell them,” recalled Bess Hayman, who, with her
husband Ben, ran Hayman’s family clothing
store on King Street. On January 1, 1934, the
Gazette thought it necessary to list for its readers
the somewhat grim “ingredients necessary to a
happy New Year.” These were “courage,” “determination,”
“faith,” “hope,” and “luck.”
R E C O V E R Y
In late 1933, new president Franklin
Roosevelt’s New Deal recovery and relief pro-
❖
The Ford distribution plant in 1933. The
large vacant area in front of the houses is
the present Windmill Hill Park, also known
as Lee Street Park..
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY,
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
C H A P T E R I X
5 3

❖
Above: The Old Presbyterian Meeting House
graveyard before being cleaned up by the
American Legion. The intact table
memorial in the foreground marks John
Carlyle’s grave. St. Mary’s Catholic Church
is on the far side of the graveyard.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Below: The home of Dr. James Craik,
Washington’s friend and doctor from before
the French and Indian War until
Washington’s death. The house, located at
210 Duke Street, is shown around 1928,
before it was restored.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
54
grams began to affect Alexandria, and the
Gazette reported that during 1934 “employment
and considerable aid” were given
Alexandria “by the Federal Government
through its various agencies.”
Also, as more people came to Washington
to administer President Roosevelt’s New Deal,
its population overflowed to the quieter scene
in Alexandria. The city’s colonial history and
older houses were particularly attractive. As
the Gazette reported at the beginning of 1935:
“Restoration of colonial houses continues
bringing many new families to the city,” much
to the city’s benefit.
Restoration of Alexandria, both by
organizations and by individuals, had
begun earlier. In one early restoration effort,
the Second Presbyterian Church began in
1925 successfully restoring the Old
Presbyterian Meeting House. In 1927
American Legionnaires helping to clean up
the Meeting House grounds discovered a
neglected tomb that was later dedicated as the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the
American Revolution.
Meanwhile, in 1917, the owners of
Gadsby’s Tavern had sold much of the interior
of its ballroom to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York. Nine years later, a travel
book described the tavern as “a mere shell”
with the lower floor being used as a junk shop
and the upper floors “divided into cheap
lodgings.” American Legion Post #24 came to
its rescue in 1929 and bought the tavern for
$18,000. During the Great Depression, the
Legion held onto the property and even
managed some restoration work.
Possibly motivated by this new interest in
Alexandria’s history, an Alexandrian whose
name indicates her own connection to the
city’s history, Sarah Carlyle Fairfax Herbert
Hooff, instigated in 1929, with her husband
Charles R. Hooff, the restoration of old houses
in what would become known as Old Town,
starting with the house at 121 Prince Street on
Captain’s Row. The same year, Gay Montague
Moore bought, with the encouragement of
Mrs. Hooff, the rundown brick house at 207
Prince Street and began its restoration.
This process proved attractive to people
coming to Washington. As historian William
Seale wrote: “Newcomers who liked old
houses learned they could buy one in
Alexandria for a very low price—sometimes
under a thousand dollars—patch it up,
wall in the back yard…and have a pleasant
living situation.”
At the end of 1935, the Alexandria Gazette
reported: “Hundreds of new residents came to
the city as soon as houses were available, and
new homes were sold almost as rapidly as
they were completed.” At the beginning of
1937, a business census taken by the federal
government “showed marked increase in the
number of business enterprises here [in
Alexandria] including a wide variety of
stores.” In 1939 the Torpedo Factory
reopened, construction on National Airport
began, and the Gazette reported that 1939
was “the most progressive in the history of the
city,” with the building total exceeding the
previous year’s record by more than two
million dollars. It seems that for Alexandria,
the Depression was largely over.
L I B R A R Y
S I T - D O W N
A construction project creating jobs in
1937 was the building of Alexandria’s first free
library as a memorial to Kate Waller Barrett. It
opened to the public on August 21. It did
not, however, open to all the public—it was
whites only.

Exactly two years later, an effort was made
to change that status in what was possibly the
earliest sit-in demonstration in America for
the cause of African-American civil rights. On
the morning of August 21, 1939, five young
African-American men between the ages of 19
and 22, William Evans, Edward Gaddis,
Morris Murray, Clarence Strange, and Otto
Tucker, came forward one after another to the
desk librarian and requested a library card.
When refused, instead of leaving, each got a
book off a shelf, sat down at a table, and
quietly began reading. The flustered librarian
asked the young men to leave, but they stayed
where they were.
The police were called, and when they
arrived, they found outside the library a
crowd of some three hundred people,
including reporters and photographers. Inside
the police reluctantly arrested the five young
men without a struggle, escorted them
outside without handcuffs, and later charged
them with disorderly conduct.
Watching the proceedings from just inside
the library door was fourteen-year-old Bobby
Strange. As soon as the police arrived, he
dashed off to inform the man who had planned
the sit-in, Samuel Wilbert Tucker, a 26-year-old
African American lawyer who had remained in
his office at 901 Princess Street. Tucker had
graduated from Howard University, read law in
Alexandria, and only five years earlier had been
admitted to the Virginia Bar at age twenty-one.
While an undergraduate student at Howard,
Tucker had watched first-hand as Harvard-Law-
School-educated, African-American lawyer
Charles Houston transformed the Howard law
school from a sleepy backwater into a fully
accredited, cutting edge intellectual institution.
He also followed Houston’s precedent-setting
cases in persuading courts to require black students
to be admitted to all white law schools in
Maryland and Missouri.
Houston had not challenged directly the
legality of the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of
separate but equal but had shown instead that
Maryland and Missouri had failed to provide
African Americans with equal institutions.
Tucker, however, wanted to attack separate
but equal directly and outlaw it. His vehicle
was the library challenge.
When the case came for trial, the city of
Alexandria was represented by 31-year-old
city attorney Armistead Boothe. Boothe was
from a politically-connected Alexandria family
and had been a Rhodes Scholar from the
University of Virginia. In this case “he served
as the reluctant agent of Jim Crow,” as author
Steve Ackerman wrote. He had been out of
town the day the five young men had been
charged and had no more interest in sending
them to jail then they did of going. He
requested repeated continuances of the case.
In the meantime, Alexandria rushed to provide
a separate library for African Americans.
In April 1940, the city provided African
Americans a library (the Robert Robinson
Library, now the Black History Museum) and
over time quietly let the charges against the
five young African-Americans lapse.
The Robinson library had less money, fewer
books, and shorter hours than the white
library, and Tucker was disgusted with it. Still
it was a beginning, and Alexandria’s African-
American community used it. Before any further
civil rights actions were taken, Alexandria
and the rest of the United States were in World
War II, and Samuel Tucker was in the army.
W O R L D W A R I I
On December 7, 1941, fifteen-year-old
William Glasgow was hanging out at
Timbermann’s Drug Store on Washington
❖
Above: The five sit-down demonstrators
being escorted out of the Alexandria library
by the Alexandria police on August 21,
1939. In back from left to right: William
Evans, Otto Tucker, Edward Gaddis, and
Officer Jack Kelley. In front are (from left to
right) Morris Murray and Clarence Strange.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, VF-PEOPLE-GROUPS COLLECTION.
Below: Civil rights attorney
Samuel W. Tucker.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA BLACK HISTORY MUSEUM.
C H A P T E R I X
5 5

❖
Above: World War II draftees from the
Alexandria area with bags packed posing on
the front steps of the federal courthouse at
200 Washington Street.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, MARY LYONS COLLECTION.
Below: With wartime food shortages
creating many nutritional problems, home
economist Ida Lansden explains to
housewives from Chinquapin Village the
necessity of preserving the vitamin content
of available foods.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. PHOTOGRAPH
BY ANN ROSENER.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
56
Street with some friends, when, as he remembered
years later, another friend “burst out of
the front door of his father’s Palace Cleaners
and yelled, ‘They’ve bombed Pearl Harbor!’”
One of Glasgow’s young friends only response
was: “Where’s that?”
Several Alexandria families knew, however,
exactly where Pearl Harbor was — they had a
son, husband, or brother in service there.
Learning whether they were safe was for some
families a long wait. Not until a month later
did the parents of Private Vannoy Herfurth
learn that their son had been on his way to
church in Honolulu when the attack came
and was unharmed. He wrote home that he
“saw the whole thing, but can’t tell you exactly
what went on.”
Alexandrians were surprised when and
where the war started, yet the fact that war
came may not have been a surprise. Hints that
it was approaching came in 1939 when the
Torpedo Factory reopened and again in April
1941, when the first MkXIV type torpedo produced
in the plant was tested in Maryland.
Soon, however, Alexandrians became
familiar with air raid wardens, blackouts,
meat shortages, tire quotas, rationing
coupons, victory gardens, U.S.O. Clubs, scrap
metal drives, draftees leaving home, and other
indications on the homefront that the country
was at war. Families had on their back porches
buckets of sand and five-gallon pails for
water to put out fires from incendiary bombs.
Antiaircraft guns stood at the corner of Henry
and Oronoco Streets, on top of the Torpedo
Factory, and several other places in town.
Women in uniform walked Alexandria streets,
to the approval of at least one young woman,
who “admired them all so much because they
were so well-groomed, with neat hair and polished
fingernails.”
Three weeks after Pearl Harbor, the city’s
morale was boosted when both President
Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister
Winston Churchill visited Christ Church to
pray for “victory and peace,” as the Alexandria
Gazette reported.
Alexandria’s first reported war casualty was
Charles E. Craven of 113 North Columbus
Street, second mate aboard a Standard Oil
tanker torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine
off the North Carolina coast on
February 24, 1942, less than three months
after Pearl Harbor. Notices would continue to
come to Alexandria homes during the war as
101 Alexandria servicemen were killed. Many
years later, Alexandrian Shirley Grimm
Warthen remembered at the age of nine or ten
learning of the death of a brother on Iwo Jima.
Some of her small friends came to her door and
handed her apple blossoms cut off a neighborhood
tree and said, “Here, we’re sorry.”
Perhaps the biggest change the war brought
about in Alexandria was in new housing. From
5,000 to 6,000 workers from as far away as
Mississippi and Wyoming were employed in
the Torpedo Factory. Chinquapin Village,
housing 350 families, was constructed for them
on the current site of Chinquapin Recreation
Center and its athletic field. A trailer park was
established in Del Ray, and at the urging of the
federal government, the Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company built Parkfairfax, a rental
housing development consisting of 1,684
apartments that opened in 1943. (It still exists
off Quaker Lane and I-395.)
Finally, on September 2, 1945, Japan
formally surrendered, and the war ended.
Soon, once again, Alexandrians returned home
from war.

C H A P T E R
CHANGE AND PRESERVATION
1946-2010
X
No longer distracted by a war overseas, Alexandrians began to look around their hometown.
Some saw things they thought should be changed; others liked things as they were. This basic disagreement,
what to change and what to preserve, soon became Alexandria’s central concern.
H I S T O R I C
P R E S E R V A T I O N
A postwar construction boom animated Alexandrians as it did people throughout the country.
Property along Washington Street in particular became the subject of a number of rezoning requests
from prospective developers. Yet the city’s authority over construction there was circumscribed by the
1929 agreement between Alexandria and the federal government on the George Washington Memorial
Parkway, which ran along Washington Street. The agreement provided that building activity along the
Parkway would be “in keeping with the dignity, purpose and memorial character of said highway.”
In early 1946 the National Parks and Planning Commission (NPPC) and the National Park
Service, the federal government’s monitors of the Parkway agreement, complained to the city
council that it was allowing too much development along Washington Street, thus endangering the
“memorial character” of the Parkway, and threatened court action. The NPPC even reported it was
considering constructing an elevated roadway along the Alexandria waterfront as an alternative.
These threats gave the city council pause. By the end of June 1946, the city attorney, at the request
of Councilman Paul L. Delaney, had drafted an ordinance, based on a similar ordinance in Charleston,
South Carolina, that would establish an historic preservation district and create a Board of
Architectural Review. The board would rule on the “appropriateness” of certain exterior architectural
features of buildings to be erected, altered or restored within the historic district based on similar
features of buildings in the immediate area. The board also would rule on the demolition of buildings
built within the district in 1846 or earlier. A specific policy of the board was “preservation of the
memorial character of the George Washington Memorial Parkway.”
The Alexandria Chamber of Commerce, the Real Estate Board of Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax,
and the Retail Merchants Association led opposition to the ordinance. They opposed the measure in part
❖
A watercolor painting of restored houses at
the northeast corner of Queen and St.
Asaph Streets in the Old and Historic
District. The narrow house in the middle is
sometimes called a “spite house.” Although
possibly built to house a relative or servant,
it also may have been built to spite a
neighbor by blocking an alley leading to the
back of the neighbor’s home where he kept
his stable and horses.
COURTESY OF ALEXANDRIA ARTIST TODD HEALY.
C H A P T E R X
5 7

ecause it “infringes on the rights of the individual
to use his property in a lawful manner” and
would “prohibit the orderly development and
progress of the City of Alexandria.”
Alexandrians interested in historic
preservation generally supported the
ordinance. Earlier, the Alexandria Association
(founded in 1932 as a private organization
advocating historic preservation) had urged
that buildings being remodeled or
constructed along Washington Street be in
harmony with Alexandria’s eighteenthcentury
architecture, a concept that became
the goal of Alexandria preservationists.
At the Council’s stormy session on August
13, 1946, the ordinance passed, with the
strong support of Councilmen Delaney and
Thomas A. Hulfish, by a narrow vote of 4-3.
The Old and Historic Alexandria District
established by the ordinance extended from the
Potomac River west to Alfred Street and from
Montgomery Street south to Great Hunting
Creek. The board was composed of seven
people, including two architects, a member of
the City Planning Commission, and a licensed
real estate broker.
Since 1946, the ordinance has been amended
numerous times, and the board’s decisions
frequently have been controversial. Despite
controversy and setbacks, the board has helped
preserve what Peter Smith, the board’s former
principal staffer, called “one of the largest
collections of eighteenth-century architecture in
the United States.”
S C H O O L
D E S E G R E G A T I O N
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court
announced its decision in Brown vs. Board of
Education declaring that separate schools for
white and black children was unconstitutional.
Virginia, however, in what became known as
“massive resistance,” fought school integration
in the courts and in the legislature.
In September 1956, Virginia enacted laws
requiring the governor to close a school that
enrolled a single black student. This was no
idle threat. Earlier the General Assembly had
revoked Arlington County’s right to an elective
school board after the board outlined a
desegregation plan for the 1956-1957 school
year. Armistead L. Boothe, State Senator from
Alexandria (who earlier had prosecuted the
library sit-down demonstrators) had proposed
giving a local school board the option to make
its own decision concerning the pace of
desegregation, but his proposal was defeated.
Whatever the Alexandria school board and
its school superintendent T. C. Williams might
have thought about integration, it had little
choice but to followed the state lead, so that in
the late summer of 1958, four years after Brown
v. Board of Education was announced, no
African-American student attended a white
school in Alexandria.
Alexandria then had sixteen white schools
and three black schools with a total enrollment
for the coming school year, 1958-1959, of
approximately 11,500 students, 85 percent
white and 15 percent black. By then the school
board had completed much needed
improvements to two of the black schools: Lyles-
Crouch Elementary School, which had just
moved into a new building in April 1958, and
Charles Houston Elementary School, located in
a building constructed in 1919 to which an
addition had recently been added. (The third
African-American school was the new Parker-
Gray High School, which opened in 1950.)
On August 11, 1958, twelve black students
attempted to register at all-white schools closer
to their homes than the black schools they
were expected to attend. All were turned
down. They then sued in U.S. District Court to
compel the Alexandria system to admit them to
those all-white schools. One of the lawyers
representing the students was Otto L. Tucker,
Samuel Tucker’s brother and one of the library
sit-down demonstrators.
When school started that year,
Superintendent Williams immediately fired
Blois O. Hundley, a cafeteria worker at the Lyles-
Crouch Elementary School and mother of two of
the children. At the following school board
meeting, Williams explained, according to the
board’s minutes, that it was incongruous to have
a school employee “suing the organization in
which she is working” and that the firing “had
nothing to do with reprisal” or her race. Less
than a month later, however, Superintendent
Williams, with board approval, offered to
reinstate Hundley.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
58

In January 1959, Judge Albert V. Bryan, Sr.,
of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria ordered
the board not to refuse the admission of
African-American students on the basis of race.
(Only days earlier, the U.S. District Court in
Norfolk and the Virginia Supreme Court both
ruled the massive resistant legislation illegal.)
Still the Alexandria School Board refused
the students’ admission. This time its decision
was based on six criteria that on their face
were racially neutral. However, when Judge
Bryan reviewed the board’s action, keeping
Superintendent Williams on the witness stand
for most of a day, he ruled against the board
and ordered that on February 10, nine of the
students be admitted to white schools.
After the board’s defeat, Marshall J. Beverley,
a former Alexandria mayor and candidate for the
Virginia Senate, praised the “gallant fight” of
Superintendent Williams and attorneys “to try
and stop integration of our good public
schools.” He stated, according to the Alexandria
Gazette, that “the hearts and minds of the
majority of our citizens are sick over the thought
of Alexandria being integrated.” Of his
opponent in the State Senate race, Beverley said
“The remark of Armistead Boothe that we
should all stop the fight and unite sounds like
we should give in to the NAACP…I know the
citizens will be law abiding and accept the court
order tomorrow, but feel they will express their
feelings at the ballot box against those who have
helped and encouraged integration.” In the
following primary, former mayor Beverley lost to
Senator Boothe by almost two-to-one.
On February 10, Kathryn, Sandra, and Gerald
Turner; Jessie Mae Jones; and Sarah A. Ragland,
escorted by relatives, “walked up the long hill to
the spanking new William Ramsay elementary
school and into the school main entrance
without event” the Gazette reported. James E.
and Margaret I. Lomax entered Theodore Ficklin
Elementary School also without trouble. These
Alexandria students were the first African-
Americans in Virginia to attend formerly allwhite
elementary schools. At the same time,
James Ragland and Patsy Ragland entered
Francis Hammond High School without event.
However, this peaceful first day did not mean
all would proceed smoothly toward full
integration of Alexandria schools. Early black
students in all-white schools were excluded
from dances and sports teams, spat upon, and
the object of racial slurs. Yet African-American
Sarah Ragland, only eight years old and one of
the very first to attend an all-white school in
1959, remembered years later that on Valentine’s
Day, “I got a valentine from every kid in the
class. My name was spelled a hundred ways, but
that didn’t matter. The message was there.”
Gradually, through the actions of wellmeaning
people of both races, integration
progressed. In 1962, Ferdinand T. Day, an
African-American, was appointed to the
Alexandria School Board, and in 1971 he
became its chairman.
Also in 1971, the 11th and 12th grades of
Alexandria’s three separate high schools, black
and white, were merged into one high school,
T. C. Williams High School (opened six years
earlier and named after the former
superintendent). At first, all did not go
smoothly. When the new school year began, the
Alexandria Gazette reported that “a band of
white teenagers pelted school buses loaded with
black students.” Yet at the same time, the fully
integrated T. C. Williams football team “was
undergoing calisthenics a few feet away on the
Hammond practice field.”
Coached by black coach Herman Boone and
white assistant coach Bill Yoast, the football
team’s previous head coach, the T. C. Williams
❖
The nine children who in 1959 were the first
African-Americans to attend Alexandria’s
all white schools.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY,
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
C H A P T E R X
5 9

❖
The yearbook photo of the T. C. Williams
Titans football team of 1971 that was the
subject of the film Remember the Titans.
COURTESY OF WALTON H. OWEN II.
Opposite, top, left: Before urban renewal,
the view along the south side of the 500
block of King Street looking east toward Pitt
Street from the corner of St. Asaph’s and
King Streets. The second floor of the tall
building on the far left once housed an
opera house and later a bowling alley. In
the early 1800s, the Rembrandt’s Shoes
store at the far right was the store and home
of silversmith Adam Lynn, Jr.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS,
HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY.
Opposite, top, right: Archaeologists and
volunteers investigated an old privy/well
uncovered in the 500 block of King Street
during the 1970s downtown urban renewal
project. The buildings had been removed
and excavation had begun for the
Alexandria Courthouse and parking garage.
COURTESY OF ALEXANDRIA ARCHAEOLOGY.
Opposite, bottom: In the foreground is the
Fawcett-Reeder House at 517 Prince Street.
The front part was built circa 1775 making
it one of the oldest remaining buildings in
Alexandria. The exposed wood is the
house’s original, old growth wood. In
the background is the Alexandria
Courthouse constructed on the south side
of the 500 block of King Street as part of
urban renewal.
PHOTOGRAPH BY TED PULLIAM.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
60
football team became the undefeated Virginia
AAA champions. Upon its return home from its
victorious championship game, as the Gazette
reported: “A roaring celebration at National
Airport was marked by black and white
mothers embracing in joy.” The team’s victories
helped ease the integration of T.C. Williams
High. (In 2000, the team and its coaches
became the subject of the movie “Remember
the Titans” starring Denzel Washington.)
Finally, on opening day in September
1973, all Alexandria schools were integrated.
U R B A N
R E N E W A L
Only a year and a half after the first black
children walked into all-white Alexandria
schools, the city faced another issue about
change almost as controversial—urban renewal.
On July 19, 1960, city officials made
public a plan for reviving downtown
Alexandria prepared by John J Beggs, a New
York urban planner employed by the city. The
plan hit Alexandria like a bomb—both in the
widespread destruction of Alexandria it
proposed and in Alexandrians’ explosive
reaction to it.
According to the Alexandria Gazette, the plan
proposed to raze 20 entire blocks of downtown,
an area extending from Washington Street east
to Fairfax Street and from Oronoco south to
Prince Street. The only buildings to be spared in
this area were structures “of acknowledged
historic and architectural value.”
In their place would be built a mixture of
structures: a high-rise apartment building, a
large parking lot, commercial buildings, an
auditorium, and “a great motor hotel.” City
Council had not endorsed the plan; yet V. Ward
Boswell, local real estate agent and chairman of
the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing
Authority, the city agency that had hired Beggs,
told a Gazette reporter: “This [plan] is a must.”
Adverse reaction was immediate and
intense. The Old Town Civic Association, the
Alexandria Gazette, the Alexandria Association,
and even the Alexandria School Board, as well
as individual citizens, opposed the plan.
The week after its release, the Alexandria City
Council met to consider the Beggs plan. The
Gazette reported the meeting was expected to be
attended by “the most riotous aggregation of
indignant citizens since the War of 1812.” At the
meeting, speaker after speaker opposed the plan,
and one Alexandrian named Beggs stood up in
the back of the room to announce he wanted his
friends and neighbors to know he was not the
author of the plan and was no relation to him. At
the end of the comment period, Mayor Leroy S.
Bendheim moved that the plan be rejected, and
his motion passed unanimously.
Yet, the need for revitalization of downtown
was generally acknowledged. Many businesses
in the downtown area badly needed repairs,
and as one official stated: “There are vacant
stores all along King Street.” When a young
couple who recently had bought a home in
Yates Garden took a walk on King Street, the
woman looked around and told her husband,
“We’ve made a mistake.”
The amount of taxes downtown businesses
paid was an indication of their declining health.
Tax records for the previous year indicated that
76 merchants in the area covered by the plan
each paid less than $101 a year in taxes and that
businesses there paid real estate taxes amounting
to only 2.25 percent of total city receipts. “As
shopping centers were built in outlying areas,
many consumers preferred to stay away from
downtown where parking was difficult and after
dark the area was considered unsafe,” wrote
historian Patricia Ellen McClosky. Renovation
might bring customers back downtown.
Many preservationists themselves were not
against urban renewal entirely, but they wanted
to be part of the planning process. When the
City Council in August 1960 instructed the city
planner to complete a new urban renewal plan,
it also appointed a citizens’ advisory committee
to review it.
On June 18, 1963, the Council approved the
Gadsby Commercial Urban Renewal Plan,

named after Gadsby’s Tavern, which was to be
preserved. The plan was to be implemented in
three phases: under Phase 1, two entire blocks,
the one where Gadsby’s was located (to be called
Tavern Square) and the City Hall block (referred
to as Market Square), would be developed;
Phase II covered the south side of the 300, 400,
and 500 blocks of King Street and the north side
of the 500 block of King; and Phase III was to
develop the 600 block of King Street.
Approval did not end the controversy over
the development as it progressed, which
included heated battles at the Board of
Architectural Review and City Council over the
preservation of individual buildings and the
appearance of structures that would replace
them. Still, Tavern Square and Market Square
(Phase I) were completed in June 1967 and the
last of Phase II was completed in 1981. Phase III
was never implemented.
T H E
W A T E R F R O N T
In the 1950s and 1960s, the waterfront was
viewed as different from other parts of
downtown, partly because for almost its entire
length it was separated from downtown shops
and homes by the old railroad that exited the
Wilkes Street tunnel and ran along Union Street
and partly because most of Alexandria’s
remaining industrial sites were located along
the waterfront.
Those facilities, however, had gradually
become disused and had deteriorated. Also,
only a few ships a year docked along the
waterfront at only a few places, such as the
Robinson Terminal Warehouse Corporation’s
wharves at the foot of Oronoco Street (on old
West’s Point) and the foot of Duke Street (old
Point Lumley) where they unloaded mainly
newsprint from Canada and Scandinavia.
Along the water were pockets of neglected
lots and rotting wharves, such as the “Barge
Wharf” lot at the foot of Wolfe Street
containing, as described in the Gazette, “eight
ramshackle structures consisting of shacks,
barges on foundations, and outhouses and
sheds” that had become “a gathering place for
tramps, vagrants, alcoholics, and drunkards.”
In the late 1960s, the old Alexandria
Fertilizer and Chemical Factory property on the
west side of Union Street between Queen and
Oronoco was developed into a complex of threestory
homes known as the Brandt Townhouses.
Possibly encouraged by this successful
residential development, in December 1971,
Watergate Improvements, Inc., filed plans with
the city Planning Commission to construct a
650-unit condominium complex on the two
block area on the waterfront bounded by Union,
Oronoco, and Queen Streets (site of old
Fishtown). The complex would consist of four
18-story buildings, each set upon 20-foot stilts
and rising 178 feet in the air.
A number of Alexandria residents, including
Ellen Pickering and Robert L. Montague III,
opposed the project, arguing it would “tower
over historic Old Town,” and increase traffic, air
pollution, water pollution, and noise.
Supporters, such as the Alexandria Board of
Trade, contended it would add about $600,000
to the city income, and as Councilman Wiley
Mitchell said, “turn a neglected area of blight into
a prime urban asset.” In March 1972 the council
unanimously approved the project after
attaching 43 conditions worked out with
Watergate Improvements.
Defeated by the city
council, opponents of the
development filed suit
against the city and
Watergate in Alexandria’s
circuit court in June 1972,
contending that the city
did not own the land on
which the project would
be built. The U.S.
Department of the Interior
agreed. It had long
contended that the United
C H A P T E R X
6 1

❖
Above: A drawing of the Watergate
Improvements, Inc.’s proposed 650-unit
condominium complex to be built east of
Union Street, north of Queen Street, and
south of Oronoco Street. The Robinson
Terminal Warehouse Corporation,
North, complex is shown at the far right of
the drawing.
COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF HISTORIC ALEXANDRIA, T.
MICHAEL MILLER COLLECTION
Below: Activist Ellen Pickering argued
before the Alexandria Planning Commission
on January 4, 1972, against the city’s sale of
waterfront property to Watergate
Improvements, Inc.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS. PHOTOGRAPH BY DON MACAFEE.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
62
States owned that land, and in December 1973,
the U.S. attorney general entered the courts
with a suit to quiet title to 22 tracts of
waterfront property from Daingerfield Island to
Jones Point Park.
The suit’s key issue concerned the location of
the boundary between the District of Columbia
and Virginia after the 1632 grant from King
Charles I establishing the Virginia bank of the
Potomac as Maryland’s boundary, Virginia’s
ceding property to form the District of Columbia
in 1791, the federal government’s retrocession of
property along the Potomac waterfront to
Virginia in 1847, and subsequent federal and
Virginia actions. Because of the complexity of
this issue, for years to come individual property
settlements entered into as part of the suit
established frameworks for resolving waterfront
development issues. As of 2010, seven tracts still
were part of the court action. (The proposed
Watergate site is now Founders Park.)
The old Torpedo Plant was one area along
the waterfront not part of a suit. The city had
purchased the property from the federal
government in 1970, before suits were filed. In
1974, largely through the efforts of artist Marian
Van Landingham, one of the four buildings of
the complex became the Torpedo Factory Art
Center, ultimately home to 80 plus studios, six
galleries, over 160 artists, the Art League
School, print making classes, and the
Alexandria Archaeology Museum.
T H E C I T Y A S H I S T O R I C
P R E S E R V A T I O N C U S T O D I A N
In 1965, in the midst of urban renewal, the
Smithsonian Institution financed Richard
Muzzrole to do “salvage archaeology,”
examining Alexandria’s wells and privies
uncovered by bulldozers and saving what
artifacts he could. When the Smithsonian’s
program ended in June 1971, Muzzrole
continued his excavations using his own money
and funds provided by a group of Alexandrians
until in 1973, prodded by citizens, the city
created its first archaeology position. In 1975
the city established the Alexandria Archaeology
Commission to provide formal citizen
involvement in the archaeology program, the
first such commission in the country, and in
1977 hired Pamela J. Cressey to be the city’s
head archaeologist. One of her principal duties
became managing Alexandria’s Archaeology
Protection Code adopted in 1989.
The city gradually took over and began
managing many of Alexandria’s historic
properties, such as Gadsby’s Tavern and Fort
Ward. To help preserve Alexandria’s story, the
city named a full-time historian, T. Michael
Miller; started the Special Collections-Local
History branch of the Alexandria library; and
established the Archives and Records Center.
In 1984 the city created a second historic
district, the Parker-Gray District, which
included an area from North Alfred Street west
to North West Street and from Cameron Street
north to First Street.
In addition, Carlyle House, the Athenaeum,
the Lee-Fendall House, and Freedom House
(the former Franklin-Armfield slave pen) have
been preserved by non-profit organizations,
and Alexandria churches have preserved their
historic places of worship. A number of other
non-profit organizations have been established
to promote historic preservation and
education. Also individuals, such as Marianne
(Polly) Hulfish, have continued to restore
Alexandria’s historic old homes.
A N N E X A T I O N A N D
N E W C O M M U N I T I E S
In 1952, Alexandria annexed from Fairfax
County the largest geographical area added in
its history, an area bounded by Quaker Lane
on the east, King Street-Route 7 on the north,
a rambling curve from King Street to the
Southern Railroad on the west, and roughly
today’s beltway on the south.
The annexation encompassed Landmark
Mall, Cameron Station and Ben Brenman Park
(site of the Union army’s Camp California

manager in 1985, and, in 1991, Patricia Ticer
was elected the city’s first woman mayor. In
1995, Ticer was elected the first woman from
Alexandria to serve in the Virginia Senate.
Formerly the site of the largest slave
trading company in the United States, in 2003
Alexandria elected African-American William
Euille as its mayor.
during the Civil War and a U.S. army
quartermaster depot during World War II),
the Carlyle and Eisenhower Valley
developments, and the Virginia Theological
Seminary and Episcopal High School. Today
part of the area is the location of vibrant
Latino and Ethiopian communities. (In 2010,
Alexandria school authorities reported that
English, Spanish, and depending on the year,
Amharic—the language of Ethiopia—or
Arabic were the languages most spoken by T.
C. Williams High School students and that 29
percent of its students were foreign born.)
With this annexation, the site of Alexandria’s
first rival, the 1740s village of Cameron,
became part of the city, although Cameron itself
long ago ceased to exist. The annexation also
brought into the city the homesite of the
Alexandria area’s first known European
inhabitant, seventeenth century’s John Coggins.
N E W
L E A D E R S H I P
Since Margaret Brent was the first European
to own land in the future Alexandria,
accomplished women have been associated
with Alexandria. It was not until after World
War II, however, that women began to take
principal leadership roles in city government
and represent the city on the state level.
In 1954, Irene Pancoast became Alexandria’s
first female judge when appointed to the
Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. In
1963, Marion Galland was elected the first
Alexandria woman to serve in the Virginia
House of Delegates. In 1973 Alexandrians
elected Nora Lamborne and Beverly Beidler, the
first women on the city council, later followed
by long-term council member Del Pepper. Vola
Lawson was appointed the first female city
C O N C L U S I O N
Alexandrians have faced numerous
challenges—agricultural shifts, financial
failures, industrial and technological changes,
fires, and devastating wars—yet again and
again adapted, recovered, survived, and even
flourished. And as they adapted, they
managed to preserve the historical structures,
artifacts, and stories that made, and continue
to make, Alexandria unique.
In its latest adaptation, Alexandria is no
longer an industrial or international shipping
city. Instead, according to the city’s website,
it has “a growing base of high-technology
firms, management consulting companies,
professional services, and trade and professional
association headquarters,” many of which value
the city’s proximity to Washington. In addition,
its historical museums, Torpedo Factory Art
Center, shops, restaurants, and historical
atmosphere have made Alexandria a prime
tourist destination. Perhaps most importantly,
families who have their roots in the city and
people from many parts of the United States and
the world continue to find Alexandria a
delightful place to live.
Alexandria’s history, of course, continues.
It also continues to be discovered.
Alexandrians recently began rediscovering a
community of former slaves who settled on
the grounds of Fort Ward immediately after
the Civil War. In 2002, a cache of 4,000 of
Robert E. Lee’s family papers was found in
two old steamer trunks stored for 84 years in
a basement vault at Burke & Herbert Bank &
Trust Company. And in 2007 while digging at
the site of the Contrabands and Freedmen’s
Cemetery, archaeologists discovered a Clovis
spear point broken and left behind by an
Indian stone worker some thirteen thousand
years ago.
❖
Top, left: Virginia State Senator and former
Alexandria Mayor Patricia S. Ticer.
COURTESY OF THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, NINA TISARA COLLECTION.
Below: Alexandria Mayor
William D. Euille.
COURTESY OF MATTOX PHOTOGRAPHY.
C H A P T E R X
6 3

BIBLIOGRAPHY
There are numerous sources for this book, and a footnoted version of the text will be available in the Special Collections/Local History
Branch of the Alexandria Library. The principal sources are as follows:
Abbot, W. W., et al, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1983- .
Ackerman, Stephen J. “The Trials of S. W. Tucker.” Washington Post Magazine, June 11, 2000.
Alexandria Gazette, 1784-2009, Microfilm, Special Collections/Local History, Alexandria Library.
Barber, James G. Alexandria in the Civil War. Lynchburg, Virginia: H.E. Howard, Inc., 1988.
Cressey, Pamela J. “The Alexandria, Virginia City-Site: Archaeology in an Afro-American Neighborhood, 1830-1910.” Ph.D diss., The
University of Iowa, 1985.
Feldkamp, Martha S. “A History of Alexandria, Virginia, in the Depression Years of 1930-1934.” Master’s thesis, The George Washington
University, 1977.
Hambleton, Elizabeth and Marian Van Landingham, eds. Alexandria: A Composite History. Alexandria: The Alexandria Bicentennial
Commission, 1975.
Heineman, Ronald L., John G. Kolp, Anthony S. Parent, Jr., and William G. Shade. Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia,
1607-2007. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2007.
Howard, Mark. “An Historical Study of the Desegregation of the Alexandria, Virginia, City Public Schools, 1954-1973.” Ph.D. diss., The
George Washington University, 1976.
Hurd, William B. Alexandria, Virginia, 1861-1865. Alexandria: Fort Ward Museum, 1970, 3rd ed., 1980.
Kundahl, George G. Alexandria Goes to War: Beyond Robert E. Lee. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2004.
McCloskey, Patricia Ellen. “Urban Renewal and Historic Preservation: A Case Study of Alexandria, Virginia, 1945-1980.” Master’s thesis,
The George Washington University, 1999.
Macoll, John D. and George J. Stansfield, eds. Alexandria: A Towne in Transition, 1800-1900. Alexandria: Alexandria Bicentennial
Commission and Alexandria Historical Society, 1977.
McCardell, Lee. Ill-Starred General: Braddock of the Coldstream Guards. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986.
Miller, T. Michael. “The Homefront: Wartime Alexandria, 1941-1945, Parts I and II.” The Fireside Sentinel, vol. VII, nos. 1 and 2
(January/February 1993 and March/April 1993).
Miller, T. Michael, ed. Pen Portraits of Alexandria, Virginia, 1739-1900. Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, Inc., 1987.
Munson, James. Colo. John Carlyle, Gent.: A True and Just Account of the Man and His House. Northern Virginia: Northern Virginia Regional
Park Authority, 1986.
Pippenger, Wesley E. John Alexander: A Northern Neck Proprietor, His Family, Friends and Kin. Baltimore: Gateway Press, Inc., 1990.
Rice, James D. Nature & History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2009.
Ricks, Mary Kay. Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
Robbins, Allan W., ed. “Alexandria in the War of 1812.” Alexandria History, vol. VI (1984).
Shomette, Donald G. Maritime Alexandria: The Rise and Fall of an American Entrepot. Westminster, Maryland: Heritage Books, 2005.
Sizemore, Bobby. “George Johnston: Forgotten Patriot.” Northern Virginia Heritage, vol. 3 (1981).
Smith, J. Douglas. Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia. Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 2002.
Smith, Peter H. “The Beginning of Historic Preservation in Alexandria – Moving Toward the Creation of the Old and Historic District.” The
Alexandria Chronicle, vol. IV (winter 1996).
Smith, William Francis and T. Michael Miller. A Seaport Saga: Portrait of Old Alexandria, Virginia. Virginia Beach: The Downing Company
Publishers, 1989, 3rd ed., 2001.
United States Navy Department. Naval Documents of the American Revolution. 8 vols. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office,
1964-1980.
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880-1901.
Wahll, Andrew J. Braddock Road Chronicles 1755. Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, 1999.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
64

SHARING THE HERITAGE
H i s t o r i c p r o f i l e s o f b u s i n e s s e s , o r g a n i z a t i o n s , a n d
f a m i l i e s t h a t h a v e c o n t r i b u t e d t o t h e d e v e l o p m e n t
a n d e c o n o m i c b a s e o f A l e x a n d r i a
Wisnewski Blair & Associates, Ltd. ................................................6 6
George Washington Masonic Memorial ............................................7 0
Office of Historic Alexandria ........................................................7 3
Advanced Resource Technologies, Inc. .............................................7 4
Inova Alexandria Hospital ............................................................7 6
Virginia Theological Seminary .......................................................7 8
Alexandria Lighting & Supply, Inc. ................................................8 0
Systems Planning & Analysis, Inc. .................................................8 2
The Nath Law Group ....................................................................8 4
Simpson Development Company, Inc. ..............................................8 6
John M. Barber ...........................................................................8 8
Charles R. Hooff, Inc., Realtors ® ....................................................8 9
Juvenile Detention Commission for Northern Virginia ........................9 0
Roberts United Memorial Methodist Church .....................................9 1
A Tribute to Judge Grenadier .........................................................9 2
Grenadier, Anderson, Starace & Duffet, P.C. ....................................9 3
HEW Federal Credit Union ...........................................................9 4
T. J. Fannon & Sons .....................................................................9 5
SPECIAL
THANKS TO
MPR Associates, Inc.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
6 5

WISNEWSKI
BLAIR &
ASSOCIATES,
LTD.
❖
Above: A 1.3 million-square-foot secure
campus designed by WBA.
Below: Eisenhower Center III Office
Building and Parking Deck, Alexandria,
Virginia. WBA provided master planning,
architecture, space planning, and
construction administration services to
the Simpson Development Company for a
98,000-square-foot, six-story office building
and a 315-space, five-story parking garage
in Alexandria, Virginia.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
66
Wisnewski Blair & Associates, Ltd., an
Alexandria-based design firm, has provided
fully integrated architecture, interior design,
planning and sustainable design for nearly
thirty-five years.
Organized in 1976, Wisnewski Blair &
Associates has grown from completing
mostly local Alexandria projects to having a
national presence.
The firm began when Joe Wisnewski, FAIA,
PE, a structural engineer, teamed up with Ray
Lewis, AIA, an architect, to work on local
projects in Alexandria. The two formed Lewis/
Wisnewski & Associates, Ltd. Luther C. Blair,
Jr., AIA, joined the firm in 1977 and the name
was changed to Wisnewski Blair & Associates
in 1987 when Lewis left the firm. Since the
firm’s inception, Wisnewski has been very
active with the American Institute of Architects
(AIA). He served as a board member as well
as President of the Northern Virginia Chapter;
board member for the Virginia Society AIA;
National AIA Regional Director of the Virginias;
and National AIA Vice President.
Other key individuals in the development
of the firm include Russell D. Embs, AIA, who
joined the firm in 1980 and retired in 2009,
and J. Patrick Halpin, AIA, who came with the
firm in 1984.
Most of WBA’s early work was completed for
private developers and the city of Alexandria.
Much of the firm’s Alexandria portfolio has
been within the boundaries of the Historic
District and much of the early work included
residential townhomes and commercial
townhouse offices for the city of Alexandria.
The firm also performed work for some
very small clients in the early days. A
legendary figure in the firm’s history is a Mr.
McCants who came into the office one day
and said he needed some work done on his
home. It was a very small house, but Joe
Wisnewski took at look at it, helped the
owner find a contractor, and provided some
suggestions for making the space more
efficient. There was an alley on the side of the
house and, at that time, a common alley could
be used as an entrance to a home. So, the
front entrance was moved to the alley way,
which made the home more efficient by
increasing the useable space in the living area.

Wisnewski recalls that the client came to
the office personally each month to make a
small payment on his account. He had a sheet
that he and Joe would initial with the amount
paid each month until the project was paid
in full.
Architectural specifications in the early
days of WBA were very time and labor
intensive. Specifications had to be hand typed
and to edit the specifications they were
physically cut and pasted, which was much
more efficient than retyping by hand. The first
automated specs utilized IBM punch cards,
which included an entire box of cards. The
IBM cards turned out to be too slow and
cumbersome because they were not
numbered and had to be kept in order and
not mixed up. Veteran employees still
remember the day an administrative assistant
dropped a box of about a thousand IBM cards,
throwing an important project into disarray.
Many of Alexandria’s landmark buildings
were designed by WBA, including Towngate,
Roundhouse Square, Lee Street Square, Prince
Street Plaza, Duke Street Square, Village on
the Strand, and King Street Exchange.
The firm’s work for the city of Alexandria and
Alexandria City Public Schools includes projects
at Alexandria City Hall, Casey Clinic, Torpedo
Factory, Lee Center, Friendship Fire House, Fish
Market, Lloyd’s Row, Ramsey House, Cora Kelly
Magnet School and Recreation Center, John
Adams Elementary School, Charles Barrett
Recreation Center, T. C. Williams High School,
and Frances C. Hammond Jr., High School.
“Wisnewski Blair & Associates have had
a positive impact on the city and citizens
of Alexandria through their design, and
the renovation and additions to Lee Center,
Cora Kelly Magnet School, the Cora Kelly
Recreation Center, and the renovation and
additions to Charles Barrett Recreation
Center,” commented Alexandria Mayor Kerry
J. Donley in 1997. “The firm is a model for
maintaining quality business.”
Most recently, WBA completed the
Eisenhower Center III Office Building and
Parking Deck for Simpson Development.
Currently, WBA is one of the architects for the
1.7 million square feet BRAC 133 project at
Mark Center.
WBA’s federal government portfolio has
grown over the years from Indefinite Delivery
Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts to multibuilding
secure campuses. Specialized
components of these secure projects include
command/operations centers, data centers,
set-back requirements, central plants, visitor’s
centers and SCIF space. Anti-terrorism/force
protected design solutions require elements
that ensure the protection of people and
property but do not visually detract from the
site or structure.
WBA was involved in an unusual project at
the White House during the administration of
President Ronald Reagan. An area where press
conferences were held had a lot of greenery
and bushes that were being watered so much
it started to leak into the communications
center below.
❖
Above: North Garage Visitor Center, BRAC
133 at Mark Center, Alexandria, Virginia.
As part of a team led by Duke Realty, WBA
provided architectural, interior design, and
sustainable design services for BRAC the
1.7-million-square-foot campus. WBA
designed the two parking garages located in
the North and South campuses in addition
to a transportation center and visitor center.
The interior design team is responsible for
space planning and FF&E for public spaces
within the campus.
Below: An 880,000-square-foot secure
campus designed by WBA.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
6 7

❖
Top: Towngate Executive Office Center.
The four building office complex located
adjacent to the George Washington Parkway
in North Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.
The 220,000-square-foot complex is built
above a three level, 450-car underground
parking garage providing access to all four
buildings. Two of the buildings are owned
and occupied by the National Headquarters
of the Salvation Army.
Above: The lobby of a secure
government facility.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
68
Because the project was in a high profile
area, work could not begin until the
President left town. WBA then had a very
small window of time to manage the
contractor and take out all the grass and
plants and put them to the side while the
waterproofing was repaired. A backhoe
contractor was on stand-by twenty-four
hours a day during the project so the
plantings and grass could be quickly
replaced should the President return early.
Although WBA completes most of its
work in the Virginia, Maryland, West
Virginia, and Washington, D.C. region, its
reputation and skill in designing secure,
force protected buildings has allowed the
firm to compete for and complete projects
nationally and internationally. In the past
five years, WBA has master-planned more
than 12.5 million square feet and designed
eight built-to-suit office buildings ranging from
150,000 to 530,000 square feet.
WBA has been able to weather economic
downturns by having a diverse range of clients,
and concentrating on several key market areas:
Government, R&D, Commercial Development,
and Education. For example, in the 1990s
when there was a downturn in WBA’s work
with private developers and R&D work, the
government sector was strong and kept the
company strong until the private work returned.
The firm had a Verizon contract in the mid
1990s for which it performed more than 2,500
task orders.
By 1978—two years after it was founded—
WBA had completed projects totaling $26
million in construction costs. By 1985, the
firm had grown to twenty-one employees and
the interior design group was organized. By
the late 1980s-early 1990s, the firm had
grown to sixty-eight people. The recession
of the early 1990s reduced the firm to thirtythree
employees, after which it resumed its
growth to its current employment level.
A number of key individuals have been
instrumental in WBA’s growth and development
in recent years. They include:
• Kevin M. Farquhar, AIA, who joined the
firm in 1996 and focuses on technology
projects and secure campus work. He
worked on the firm’s Verizon contract.
• Steven T. Weir, AIA, came to the firm in
1998 and works on airport projects as
well as focusing on architectural interiors
for secure campus work.
• Stephen F. Ours, AIA, joined the firm
in 1992 and concentrates on federal
government projects as a Certified Code
and Building Plan Reviewer.
• Alicia Goldberg, AIA, joined WBA in 1992
and has concentrated on projects for NIH
and the FBI at Quantico.
• Candace N. Hoskins, AIA, came to the firm
in 1985 and works with the Navy and
National Parks Service projects.
• Terry L. Perry, FIIDA, has been with
WBA since 2003 and serves as Director
of Interiors.
Currently, WBA has sixty-five employees
with revenues in excess of $16.7 million
annually. The firm’s core customer base is made
up of private developers (for both private and
government tenants), the federal government
(GSA, FBI, Department of State, U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, Department of the Navy),
state and local governments (Fairfax County,
Loudoun County, City of Alexandria), higher
education (George Mason University, Northern
Virginia Community College), and property
managers (corporate interiors).
The firm has occupied several offices
over the years but has always maintained
its headquarters in Old Town Alexandria.
The firm’s current address is 44 Canal
Center Plaza.

Wisnewski Blair & Associates is
ranked among the Top 25 architectural
firms in the Washington metro area by
Washington Business Journal. WBA has
received several awards for its projects
over the years and was recently
honored with two Northern Virginia
NAIOP awards for its Northern Virginia
Resident Agency project: ‘Best Building,
Environmentally Responsible Green
Construction Base Building’ and ‘Best
Building, Institutional Facility Over
$20 Million.’
WBA and its employees contribute
annually to a number of community
organizations such as the Juvenile
Diabetes Research Fund’s Annual Real
Estate Games. During this event, more
than 1,700 people from the local commercial
real estate community compete against each
other in an all-day Olympic-style sporting
event. The money raised goes to finding a cure
for juvenile diabetes.
The firm also participates in WeCare,
a national event that unites Boys and
Girls Clubs of America with furniture
manufacturers Geiger and Herman Miller and
local architecture and design firms to provide
holiday parties for children in need. In
addition, employees are involved in the
Salvation Army Angels Giving Tree and
Alexandria’s Adopt-A-Family Christmas
program, two programs that allows people to
provide children and seniors in need with
holiday gifts.
WBA is also involved in Canstruction ® ,
organized by the American Institute of
Architects Northern Virginia Chapter.
Canstruction ® is both a design/build
competition and a community service. Design
teams have assembled thousands of cans of food
in order to build their structures and thousands
of Arlington families benefit as the food is
donated to the Arlington Food Assistance
Center, a nonprofit organization providing
supplemental groceries to families in need.
The plan for the future of Wisnewski Blair &
Associates is to grow its core markets and adapt
to the changing environment of the design
industry. For example, the firm has developed a
Sustainable Design practice group and has fully
embraced new rendering technologies and
Building Information Modeling.
The firm realizes that the success of a project
is inherently linked to the clients’ satisfaction. A
key component of WBA’s design philosophy is
to begin by gaining a thorough understanding
of the client’s needs and goals as well as
the external forces driving the project. By
understanding these issues, WBA is able to
develop designs with the knowledge that the
clients’ needs have been addressed and the
impact on the environment has been minimized.
For more information about Wisnewski
Blair & Associates, Ltd., check their website at
www.wba-arch.com.
❖
Above: Village on The Strand, Alexandria,
Virginia. One of WBA’s first projects, this
multi-use commercial complex was created
adjacent to the Alexandria Waterfront
through the renovation of two warehouses
and the construction of a new commercial
building. The complex houses Chadwick’s
Restaurant, shops and office space.
Below: Mount Vernon Texas Gate,
Alexandria, Virginia. WBA was responsible
for the major renovation of the historic
gateway entrance to George Washington’s
home at Mount Vernon.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
6 9

✧
Above: The statue of George Washington in
Memorial Hall.
COPYRIGHT THE GEORGE WASHINGTON MASONIC
MEMORIAL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ARTHUR W. PIERSON, FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA.
Below: Charles Callahan.
GEORGE
WASHINGTON
MASONIC
MEMORIAL
COPYRIGHT THE GEORGE WASHINGTON MASONIC
MEMORIAL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ARTHUR W. PIERSON, FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
70
The Father of Our Country, George
Washington, is honored by numerous
memorials throughout the Washington, D.C.
area. The George Washington Masonic
Memorial in Alexandria honors not only
the soldier and statesman, but also George
Washington, the Mason.
Washington’s character was such that from
almost the day he took his Masonic obligations,
he was the same man in private as he was
in public. Throughout his lifetime, in Masonic
terms, he became a “perfect ashlar,” a just and
upright Mason, and a true Master Mason.
Washington was indeed a “living stone”
who remains the cornerstone of American
civilization. He is American Freemasonry’s
“grand exemplar” who countless Freemasons
seek to emulate in their own lodges and in their
own communities.
The concept of a Masonic Memorial to the
first president was initially proposed in the
1850s by Washington’s “mother lodge,”
Fredericksburg Lodge 4. However, creation of
the memorial did not begin until Washington’s
birthday, February 22, 1910 when Freemasons
from throughout the nation gathered in
Old Town Alexandria to discuss building a
Masonic Memorial.
Mindful that Washington’s history is
intimately connected with the history of
the nation, these Masonic leaders felt his
membership and involvement in Freemasonry
was an inspiration and should be remembered
for all time.
From that meeting, the George Washington
Masonic Memorial Association was formed.
Thomas J. Shryock, who served as Grand Master
of Maryland for thirty-two years, was chosen as
the first president of the association and his
background in commercial activity, political and
military service and philanthropic dedication
gave the association legitimacy and energy.
Working closely with Shryock was Charles
Callahan of Alexandria Washington Lodge 22.
Callahan balanced Shryock’s industry with a
great vision to honor George Washington.
Although never elected president of the
association, Callahan, more than any person,
is the father of the Memorial. It was Callahan
who purchased the first parcels of land
upon which the Memorial was built. It
was Callahan who convinced Alexandria-
Washington Lodge to undertake the Memorial
Project while securing the Grand Lodge of
Virginia’s endorsement. The publication of his
1913 book Washington the Man and the Mason
funded the project in its infancy. Today the
Memorial’s address is 101 Callahan Drive;
named in his honor.
Shryock died in 1918 and was succeeded
by Louis A. Watres, past grand master of

Pennsylvania. A successful lawyer and
industrialist in Scranton, Pennsylvania,
Watres commanded a regiment in the
Spanish-American War, was elected county
solicitor, state senator, and lieutenant
governor of Pennsylvania. He was a president
of the Boy Scouts, chairman of the YMCA, and
served on many foundations and boards. It
was Watres who organized the grand lodges,
raised the money, and discovered the talent to
make Callahan’s dreams a reality.
It was Watres who discovered the architect
for the Memorial, Harvey Wiley Corbett of
New York City. Corbett had assisted with
plans for the Brooklyn Masonic Temple and
later designed the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company building, the Roerich Museum, and
became the principal architect of the famed
Rockefeller Center.
After viewing Schuter’s Hill in Alexandria,
Corbett made a quick sketch of a colossal
lighthouse of Freemasonry dedicated to
Washington. Within a few weeks, his sketch
became a formal proposal, which the
Association approved in 1921.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the
George Washington Masonic Memorial took
place on Schuter’s Hill on June 5, 1922.
Despite the memorial’s great expense, the
Association was determined not to borrow for
the project. Construction proceeded as money
was donated by Grand Lodges, lodges, and
individual Masons.
The Memorial’s cornerstone was dedicated in
a Masonic ceremony on November 1, 1923.
President Calvin Coolidge, former President and
Chief Justice William H. Taft, along with other
dignitaries and thousands of Freemasons from
around the nation participated in the ceremony.
The design of the Memorial was inspired
by the lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt, one of
the ancient Seven Wonders of the World.
Masonry had been a guiding light to
Washington during the formation of the
nation. The Memorial is the lighthouse of
Freemasonry, spreading the light and
knowledge of Freemasonry to the World.
Freemasons faithfully supported the
project and, for more than a decade, the
Association raised in excess of $350,000 each
year as the Memorial rose higher and higher.
When completed, the Memorial contained
nearly 75,000 tons of cement, gravel, sand,
New Hampshire granite, and steel, in addition
to more than a million feet of lumber and
twenty-five tons of nails.
Even the onset of the Great Depression failed
to slow work on the Memorial. On May 12,
1932, the George Washington Masonic
Memorial was dedicated during the bicentennial
years of Washington’s birth. President Herbert
Hoover was the speaker at the dedication.
Work on the Memorial’s interior began in
earnest following World War II. In 1945,
Shriners International dedicated two large
display rooms. Alexandria Washington Lodge
✧
Above: The first meeting of the George
Washington Masonic National Memorial
Association Meeting, 1910.
COPYRIGHT THE GEORGE WASHINGTON MASONIC
MEMORIAL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ARTHUR W. PIERSON, FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA.
Below: The exterior of the monument.
COPYRIGHT THE GEORGE WASHINGTON MASONIC
MEMORIAL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ARTHUR W. PIERSON, FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
7 1

✧
Above: The replica Lodge room.
COPYRIGHT THE GEORGE WASHINGTON MASONIC
MEMORIAL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ARTHUR W. PIERSON, FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA.
Below: The 2010 Board of Directors.
COPYRIGHT THE GEORGE WASHINGTON MASONIC
MEMORIAL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ARTHUR W. PIERSON, FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA.
opened its Replica Lodge Room to display
many invaluable Washington Masonic
artifacts. The third floor exhibitions were
installed in 1948, well before the elevators
were installed.
On Washington’s birthday in 1950,
President and Past Grand Master of Masons
in Missouri, Harry S. Truman, dedicated the
great bronze Washington statue in Memorial
Hall. The statue of Washington as a Master of
his Lodge is over seventeen feet tall and
weighs more than seven tons. It was sculpted
by Bryant Baker and funded by International
Order of DeMolay for Boys.
Work in the tower began in earnest after
installation of both elevators, which move
horizontally as they move vertically because
of the convergence of the building to the top
floor. The Royal Arch Chapter Room, the
Cryptic Masons’ Room and the Knights
Templar Chapel were completed during the
1950s and 1960s. The Grand Lodge of
Pennsylvania dedicated the sixth floor Louis
A. Watres Library, and, in 1966, the two
Scottish Rite Supreme Councils jointly funded
the fourth floor George Washington Museum.
The last stones of the surrounding skirt
wall were placed in 1972. The Tall Cedars of
Lebanon opened their room on the ninth floor
observation desk in 1984, and the world’s
largest Masonic emblem was dedicated on the
Memorial’s front lawn in 1999.
Today, visitors enter Memorial Hall through
the massive portico, symbolic of the ancient
Greek and Roman temple entrances. On either
side of the portico are engraved tablets from
Washington’s correspondence that reflect his
deep regard for the Masonic Fraternity.
Throughout the nine floors of the Memorial
are many displays and exhibits representing
some of the Appendant Bodies that comprise
the family of Freemasonry. The exhibitions
are designed to educate visitors about
Freemasonry’s self-improvement purpose,
whose members—like those highlighted in
the exhibits—improve themselves as they
improve society.
The George Washington Masonic Memorial
is located at 101 Callahan Drive in Alexandria
and is open daily, except for major holidays,
from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Guided tours are
offered several times daily to the George
Washington Museum on the fourth floor and
the Appendant Body exhibits in the Tower.
The final stop on the tour is the Observation
Deck which provides a panoramic view
of Alexandria, Washington, D.C., and the
surrounding area.
The last decade has witnessed a rededication
to the Association’s original mission. Under
the leadership of Presidents Warren Lichty,
W. Scott Stoner, Michael Brumback and current
President Anthony Wordlow, the Association
is poised for a second century of service to
the Craft. The Memorial remains a lasting
monument to George Washington the man, the
Mason and the Father of the Nation.
Copyright the George Washington Masonic
Memorial, All Rights Reserved.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
72

The Office of Historic Alexandria: Saving
Alexandria’s Historical Structures, Artifacts,
and Stories.
On Braddock Road in the early 1950s, the
remains of breastworks and rifle
trenches of Fort Ward, one of the earthen
forts that protected Washington and
Alexandria during the Civil War, lay
abandoned and overgrown.
Interest in preserving it began with
individual citizens, as has been typical with
other Alexandria historical sites. In 1953, site
neighbors urged the City of Alexandria to
purchase the property and restore the fort.
The City agreed, making Fort Ward the first
historic site owned by the City. In 1964, the
restored fort and a Civil War museum opened
to the public.
In 1961, Fort Ward was the site of the
City’s first archaeological investigation. Later,
as a result of citizen interest in preserving
artifacts unearthed by the City’s downtown
urban renewal project, Alexandria in 1973
began funding a permanent archaeology
program, soon becoming one of the first
cities in America to employ a full-time
archaeologist. The Alexandria Archaeology
Museum now exhibits items chosen from
more than two million artifacts.
In 1969, after very vocal community
action, the City condemned and purchased
its second historical site, The Lyceum,
constructed in 1839 to hold lectures on
scientific and cultural topics and house the
Alexandria Library Company. Newly
renovated, it re-opened in 1974 as Virginia’s
first Bicentennial Center and became in 1985
the City’s history museum.
In 1972, also in connection with the
bicentennial, American Legion Post #24
turned over to the City Gadsby’s Tavern,
where presidents Washington, John Adams,
Jefferson, and Madison were once lavishly
entertained. It now is operated as a museum
of historic tavern life.
Finding itself in 1982 with different
departments administering different historical
sites, the City created the Office of Historic
Alexandria to bring them, plus the Alexandria
Archives and Records Center, under the
administration of one City office.
Then in 1987, the City placed the
Alexandria Black History Museum under
OHA’s jurisdiction. The museum, established
earlier by the Alumni Association of Parker-
Gray School and the Alexandria Society for
the Preservation of Black Heritage, is located
in Alexandria’s first library for African
Americans, built in response to the 1939
effort to integrate a whites-only library by
what may have been the first sitdown
demonstration for civil rights in the
United States.
In 1988 the City acquired the Friendship
Firehouse Museum and its equipment
from the Friendship Fire Company. Most
recently, in 2006, the Landmarks Society of
Alexandria turned over the Stabler-Leadbeater
Apothecary Museum to the City. Established
in 1792, the Apothecary operated until 1933
when it closed its doors for the last time.
Much of the original collection, including
elixirs, potions, and blood-letting devices, is
now on display.
Today, OHA’s museums and historical sites
help preserve Alexandria’s historical
structures, artifacts, records, and stories for
present and future generations.
OFFICE OF
HISTORIC
ALEXANDRIA
✧
Constructed around 1796-1797, Lloyd
House is one of the best examples of
Alexandria's late eighteenth-century
Georgian style. Saved from demolition in
the 1950s, Lloyd House was later acquired
by the Alexandria Historical Restoration
and Preservation Commission with funding
from private and public sources. Lloyd
House was extensively restored in 2002-
2007 and became home to the Office of
Historic Alexandria administration.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
7 3

ADVANCED
RESOURCE
TECHNOLOGIES,
INC.
✧
Above: Horace F. Jones, President and CEO.
Below: The dedicated management and
headquarters staff who have been with the
company for over ten years.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
74
At the age of twenty-five, Horace Jones was
commanding 250 men in combat in Vietnam.
It was an experience that gave him confidence
and taught him responsibility. “The decisions
I had to make put people’s lives in my hands,”
he explains. “After an experience like that,
you have the feeling that anything else life
thrusts at you is secondary.”
While in the military, he received his master’s
and doctorate degrees in education. After
retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel at
age forty-one, Dr. Jones was ready to explore
new career paths. He subsequently held
a number of executive level positions
with several high-tech corporations in the
Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It was
1986 when he mustered the management and
training experience he learned in the Army,
through his education and in corporate America
to found his own firm, Advanced Resource
Technologies, Inc. (ARTI). His wife, Vera, has
been at his side from the beginning and has
played a major role in the development of ARTI.
After winning a number of subcontract
assignments, Dr. Jones applied to the Small
Business Administration (SBA) for his 8(a)
certification, which enables small companies
to compete for government contracts. In 1990,
ARTI won its first prime contract with the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA). At the time ARTI consisted of only
Dr. Jones and a handful of part-time employees.
A second large contract with the National
Institute on Drug Abuse elevated the company’s
profile and allowed Dr. Jones to add additional
employees. A subsequent contract with DARPA
moved the company into the information
technology arena and facilitated ARTI’s pursuit
of larger contracts.
In 1997 the company graduated from the
SBA’s 8(a) program, and continued to win
business with government and private sector
clients, a somewhat rare feat given that ARTI
now had to compete for contracts with much
larger and established companies. However,
since graduating from the program, ARTI has
infused new ideas, techniques and solutions
into its service offerings to ensure its clients
achieve their business goals and initiatives
in a cost-effective manner. The company
consistently exceeds its clients’ program
objectives and requirements because it not only
cares about their mission, but also because its
employees have adopted their
clients’ mission as their own.
Over the years ARTI has
adapted its service offerings
to meet the ever evolving
mission critical needs of its
clients. The company has set
an impressive record providing
information technology
and security services solutions
at competitive rates to federal
defense and civilian agencies.
Today ARTI’s core competencies
include Information and

network security, IT operations & management;
program management & logistics, and
health information technology.
Dr. Jones’ strategic approach to managing
the growth of ARTI has proven beneficial for
ARTI as well as its clients, who currently include
DARPA, the Department of Homeland Security,
the Department of Justice, the Department of
State, the Office of the Chief Army Reserve,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the Missile Defense Agency and
the Department of Health and Human Services.
Over the years, ARTI has amassed a number
of awards that attest to the quality of service the
company’s employees consistently deliver. More
notable recent awards include the 2007
DiversityBusiness.com. Top Diversity-Owned
Business of the Year; 2006 UT Battelle Service-
Disabled, Veteran-Owned Small Business of the
Year; 1997, 2005 Black Enterprise Magazine’s
Top 100 U.S. African American-Owned
Companies; 2005 East Tennessee Technology
Council Navigator Award for Outstanding
Community Service; 2005 The Black E.O.E
Journal’s Top 100 U.S. African American-
Owned Businesses; and the 2001-2003
Minority Business News’ 100 Certificate of
Achievement for Top U.S. Minority Companies.
Additionally, ARTI was the first graduated
8(a) company to win the Department of
Defense (DoD) Nunn-Perry Award for
successfully elevating a small start-up servicedisabled
veteran/woman-owned business to
a higher level of performance excellence
and growth through DoD’s Mentor-Protégé
Program. To this day ARTI continues to mentor
numerous small businesses in order to foster
mutual business relationships and provide
opportunities for subcontracting and increased
professional accomplishments in the future.
Dr. Jones’ unwavering commitment to the
security of the soldiers serving under him
decades ago continues to this day. Today
more than seventy percent of the support
staff at ARTI’s headquarters on King Street
in Alexandria has been with the company
for more than ten years. These are highly
motivated employees with many years
of professional experience and academic
qualifications in a multitude of management
and technical disciplines.
ARTI’s employees are involved in a number of
community and charitable activities, including
the institution of an academic program that
provides high school students in Tennessee with
information and communication technology
experience using Cisco networking systems. In
addition, the company and its employees have
sponsored local sports teams, provided
internships for high school and college students,
mentored new small businesses, and generated
opportunities for hiring former military
personnel. Charitable events supported by the
organization include the annual NOVAUL golf
tournament and community leaders award
dinner, the Toys for Tots campaign of the local
fire department, and Carpenter Shelter for the
Thanksgiving Food Drive.
ARTI, a Service-Disabled, Veteran-Owned
Small Business, is headquartered at 1555 King
Street in Alexandria, with project locations in
Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
“The ARTI motto of ‘Teaming for Success’
has never been more evident than it is today,”
says Dr. Jones. “Our dedicated employees,
satisfied customers, and loyal friends have stuck
with us through thick and thin. ‘Teaming for
Success’ at ARTI means teaming internally, with
fellow employees, as well as externally, with
customers, friends and other companies.”
✧
Above: The headquarters reception desk at
1555 King Street.
Below: Advanced Resource Technologies
provides information and network security
solutions for federal and commercial clients.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
7 5

INOVA
ALEXANDRIA
HOSPITAL
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
76
Inova Alexandria Hospital was founded in
1872 when Julia Jones, fearing a typhoid
epidemic among the crew of a ship in Old
Town Alexandria’s harbor, urged friends
at St. Paul’s Church to form an infirmary.
Alexandria Infirmary, housed in the home of
Dr. Frances Murphy at Duke and Fairfax
Streets, was the second hospital established in
the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the first
hospital in Northern Virginia.
More than 138 years later, Inova Alexandria
Hospital continues to provide quality healthcare
to the community and has grown into a
318-bed, not-for-profit hospital offering a full
range of medical services.
Alexandria Infirmary changed its name to
Alexandria Hospital in 1902 and, spurred
by lack of space and a growing demand
for healthcare, the hospital moved to a
new building at the corner of Duke and
Washington Streets in 1917.
The facility continued to grow and, in 1946,
was fully approved for residency training
in medicine, surgery, obstetrics/gynecology,
pathology, and radiology.
Ground was broken for the current
Seminary Road location in 1959 and the
hospital moved to its new building in 1962.
President Lyndon B. Johnson was the main
speaker at the dedication. In 1997 the
hospital merged with Inova Health System to
become Inova Alexandria Hospital.
Inova Alexandria Hospital has recorded an
impressive number of ‘firsts’ during its long
history. In 1953, it became the first hospital
on the East Coast to institute the use of
epidural anesthesia in obstetrics. In 1961, it
was the first facility in the nation to staff an
emergency department around the clock with
full-time ER physicians, an approach now
known nationally as the “Alexandria Plan.”
In 1977, the hospital became the first in
Northern Virginia to provide a full body
computerized tomography (CAT) scan
unit, and, in 1978, Inova Alexandria
became the first hospital in the
Washington area to offer labor and
delivery rooms where expectant mothers
could labor, deliver, and recover in the
same room.
In addition, the hospital was the first
in Northern Virginia to provide magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) (1986), and
the first hospital in Northern Virginia
with a one-stop cardiac surgery unit
where patients stay in one unit from
admission to discharge (1988).
In more recent years, Inova Alexandria
Hospital became the first in Northern
Virginia to offer brachytherapy treatment
for prostate cancer (1991).

In 2003 the hospital became the first
in the metropolitan area to offer a dedicated
Neurovascular Care Unit, which provides
complete stroke care from diagnosis
to treatment, rehabilitation, and ongoing
patient support.
The long list of impressive ‘firsts’
continues, including the distinction of being
the first in the metro area to adopt eICU ®
monitoring system in the Intensive Care Unit
in 2004, and the first hospital in Northern
Virginia to install a Trilogy linear accelerator
to provide image guided radiation therapy for
cancer patients in 2006.
Inova Alexandria Hospital offers a full
range of healthcare services including a cancer
center; cardiovascular and interventional
radiology; cardiac and physical rehabilitation;
diagnostic radiology; occupational health
services; certified stroke center; surgical
services, and a women’s center.
As part of Inova Health System, Northern
Virginia’s leading not-for-profit healthcare
provider, the hospital attracts some of the
country’s top physicians and invests in new
technology and equipment to offer patients
world-class care close to home.
With nearly 2,000 employees, including
650 physicians on staff, Inova Alexandria
Hospital serves a customer base that includes
more than 65,000 outpatient visits each year.
Inova Alexandria Hospital and its medical
staff have received numerous awards and
quality distinctions for excellence in patient
care. Many of its physicians have been
recognized by both Washingtonian and
Northern Virginia magazines as “Top Doctors.”
The hospital is certified by The Joint
Commission, an organization that evaluates
hospitals across the country for quality care.
The hospital’s cancer center is accredited
by the American College of Surgeons, a
distinction awarded to only twenty-five
percent of the nation’s hospitals. Inova
Alexandria was one of the first hospitals in
Northern Virginia designated as a Primary
Stroke Center.
The hospital is currently investing more
than $84 million to enhance its emergency,
cardiac, vascular, surgical, and laboratory
services as part of Project 2010. This project
will enhance the hospital’s existing healthcare
services and improve patient access.
Funding for Project 2010 represents the
largest investment of capital into the hospital
since 1972.
As the community’s need for healthcare
continues to grow, Inova Alexandria Hospital
remains dedicated to preserving its tradition
of providing quality health.
For more information about Inova
Alexandria Hospital, visit www.inova.org/iah.
✧
Opposite, top: Alexandria Hospital, Duke
and Fairfax Streets, 1873.
Opposite, bottom: Alexandria Hospital,
Duke Street location, 1917-1974.
Left: Alexandria Hospital nurses in the
mid-1890s.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
7 7

VIRGINIA
THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
78
Founded in 1823 at St. Paul’s Episcopal
Church in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia
Theological Seminary is the largest and strongest
seminary in the Anglican Communion. Here,
men and women train for ministry worldwide.
Our students include those preparing for
ordination, lay women and men, and clergy
returning for advanced degrees. Side by side,
they seek an understanding of the truth in the
light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
To meet the desperate
needs in the Episcopal
Church during the early
nineteenth century, a
small group of dedicated
men committed themselves
to the task of training
a new generation of
church leaders. Francis
Scott Key was one of this
group which, in 1818,
formed “An Education
Society” and five years
later opened the “School
of Prophets” to become
the Protestant Episcopal
Theological Seminary in
Virginia. When the school
opened in Alexandria with
two instructors, fourteen
students were enrolled.
From the beginning, graduates of the
Seminary went out to serve the church and
the world. Drawing students from nearly all
states east of the Mississippi, its students
ministered in states and territories from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. By the time of the Civil
War, the global missionary spirit had led
graduates to open for the Episcopal Church
such mission fields as China, Japan, Liberia,
and Greece.
The Civil War struck a harsh blow to the
Seminary. During the war, the Seminary
continued operations in the Shenandoah
Valley, while the seminary grounds became a
U.S. Army hospital. From March 1862 to
August 1865, the hospital treated thousands
of wounded and ill U.S. Army soldiers as well
as some Confederate States Army prisoners of
war. The bodies of many of those who died at
the hospital were buried on Seminary
grounds, but were later moved to Arlington
National Cemetery. Campus buildings still
bear initials of U.S. Army soldiers inscribed
by them on bricks and walls.
After the war, professors and eleven battleweary
veterans reopened the Seminary on the
war-ravaged campus. By 1923 the Seminary
had regained the resources, the certainty of
full enrollment, and the invested funds which
had characterized the institution in 1860. The
years between 1923 and 1946 saw steady
progress, but the end of World War II marked
the advent of the present era of continuing
expansion and improvements.
The Bishop Payne Divinity School, a
distinguished black institution, was started by
the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1878. It
was named for the Right Reverend John
Payne, an alumnus of the Seminary in the
class of 1836 and the first bishop of Liberia. It
merged with Virginia Theological Seminary
on June 3, 1953.
Today, the Seminary is a thriving
institution, serving more than 250 students
from around the world and offering a range of
programs that support both lay and ordained
ministries in the Church. Degrees offered
include a residential Masters of Divinity; a
two-year Masters of Theological Studies
degree; a Masters of Christian Education
degree; and a Doctor of Ministry degree. In
addition, throughout the year there are special
lectures and programs that are aimed at any
person interested in growing in the faith.
Virginia Seminary believes that the
theological education is greatly enhanced
when done within an ecumenical,
international and cross-cultural context.
Through the Seminary’s Center for Anglican
Communion Studies, Anglicans from around
the world are trained. The Seminary is
committed to partnerships around the
Communion that enable us to stay connected
to our brothers and sisters in Christ as we
seek to understand the different contexts out
of which we come, particularly to different
interreligious contexts.
Virginia Seminary also houses the Institute
for Christian Formation and Leadership, a
multifaceted academic program for clergy and
lay people. Through workshops, conferences,

and long- and short-term courses, the
Institute empowers those in ministry to
exercise their gifts with a strong grounding
in theology. The Institute also administers
the Evening School of Theology, a program
open to lay people of all denominations who
wish to deepen their understanding of the
Christian faith and experience.
The Bishop Payne Library, the theological
research center and portal to electronic
databases on campus, draws religious
scholars from the community, the nation, and
the world. As a major resource for the study
of worldwide Anglicanism, its over 200,000
volumes are particularly rich in the areas of
biblical studies, church history, theology, the
Protestant reformation and denominations,
litergics, and missions. The Archives, on the
lower floor of the Bishop Payne Library,
contain the records of both the Virginia
Theological Seminary and the Bishop Payne
Divinity School and the personal papers
of individuals connected with the two
seminaries. The Archives also curates the
African American Episcopal Historical
Collection, a joint project with the Historical
Society of the Episcopal Church, which
documents the experience of African
Americans in the life and ministry of the
Episcopal Church.
In October 2009 the Seminary launched a
self-guided audio tour of the campus and its
history. The tour is open to the public during
normal business hours. For information on
tour hours, please contact Virginia Seminary’s
Welcome Center at 703-370-6600, or visit
our website at www.vts.edu.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
7 9

ALEXANDRIA
LIGHTING &
SUPPLY, INC.
✧
Above: The Alexandria Lighting and Supply
showroom, 1961.
Bottom, left: The Alexandria Lighting and
Supply counter, 1961.
Bottom, right: The Alexandria Lighting and
Supply showroom, 1963.
Alexandria Lighting & Supply, Inc. is a
family-owned and operated business now in
its third generation and will celebrate its
fiftieth anniversary in 2011.
Edward Delman and Irwin Goldberg
teamed up to create Alexandria Lighting &
Supply in May 1961. Edward had worked for
electrical wholesalers in the District and
Alexandria and met Irwin, who was a lighting
salesman at the time. The two opened for
business in the Powhatan Shopping Center
and moved to the company’s present location
at 701 North Henry Street in 1963. Edward’s
wife, Edith, served as bookkeeper for the
business. The three operated the business for
three years before hiring their first employee.
The original windows in the company’s
present location were beautiful plate glass
designed to accentuate the showroom.
Although both Edward and Irwin stood
watch, the windows were damaged during the
riots of 1968. They were then replaced with
smoky Plexiglas for protection. Clear glass
was put back into the showroom windows
during a general facelift in the mid 1990s.
The second generation of leadership,
Edward’s son, Eric, entered the business in
1979. Edward’s daughter, Ellen, joined the
firm two years later in 1981. The firm
welcomed the third generation in 2008
when Eric’s son, Sam, entered the business.
Eric currently serves as president of
Alexandria Lighting & Supply and Ellen as
secretary/treasurer.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the “Electric
Deli” became a trademark of the business.
The term evolved from a buffet held at the
business every Saturday. Regular clients made
a point of doing their buying on Saturdays
when they were assured of being treated to
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
80

coffee, bagels and Danishes. Samuel Delman,
Edward’s father, who lived within walking
distance of the shop, came by every Saturday
to enjoy the food and the customer’s company.
“We do everything electrical,” Eric told a
reporter during the firm’s fortieth anniversary
celebration. “We provide the finest products and
services for contractors, homeowners, property
managers, commercial, and government
customers.” The company was involved with
lighting solutions in the White House.
“We are known for our service,” Eric
continued. Customers return frequently for
the knowledgeable sales staff, hard to find
items and to browse the wide range of lighting
fixtures in the showroom.
Homeowners can always find great deals on
products to enhance their home and lifestyle
at Alexandria Lighting. From dimming
systems to low voltage, recessed, track, and
outdoor lighting, customers can depend on
Alexandria Lighting for the widest range of
home improvement items. Alexandria Lighting
also repairs all types of lamps on the premises.
Various U.S. government agencies make
up a large portion of Alexandria Lighting’s
business, along with local municipalities
such as the City of Alexandria, Fairfax
County, Prince William County, Prince
George’s County and Arlington County.
Now that the company is nearing its fiftieth
anniversary, the management’s business plan
is to stay small, manageable and competitive.
Alexandria Lighting has maintained a profit
sharing plan from its inception and plans to
continue sharing profits with its employees.
Alexandria Lighting’s employees believe
strongly in giving back to their community and
are involved in a number of charitable organizations,
including Children’s National Medical
Center, Browne Academy, Good Shepherd
Housing and United Community Ministries.
For additional information about Alexandria
Lighting & Supply, Inc., check their website
at www.alexandrialighting.com or visit their
showroom at 701 North Henry Street in
Alexandria, Virginia.
✧
Above: The Alexandria Lighting and Supply
showroom, 2001.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
8 1

SYSTEMS
PLANNING AND
ANALYSIS, INC.
✧
Right: SPA employee Jamie Bixler.
Bottom: Phillip Lantz is interviewed about
his government contractor experience for a
local radio program.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
82
Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. (SPA),
founded in 1972, contributes to national
security decisions, which are important to the
nation. SPA provides decision support to key
leaders throughout the Departments of Defense,
Homeland Security, and Energy.
Through objective analysis and
assessments, SPA looks at issues from a
technical, operational, programmatic, policy
and business perspective. For more than three
decades, SPA has provided workable, timely,
and affordable solutions to complex
issues. SPA’s support includes executive
decision support, systems engineering,
operations analysis, and acquisition support.
The company’s work primarily supports
government leaders with expertise in strategic
deterrence, nuclear weapons security and safety,
unmanned systems, surface warfare and missile
defense, undersea warfare, air warfare, war game
development and execution, critical infrastructure
protection, and financial management
and program management support.
SPA was founded by Phillip E. Lantz, who
grew up in Wyoming and became a submarine
officer in the U.S. Navy. After finishing his tour
with the Navy, Lantz and his wife, Paula, came
to the Washington, D.C. area in 1965.
Lantz worked in positions of increasing
responsibility at two technical organizations.
Then, in 1970, he had what he calls, “an
amazing opportunity to work on a challenging,
important decision for the nation. It changed
my professional life and was the basis for
founding this company and the culture we still
live by today.”
He founded SPA with only three people
and an objective to “perform interesting work
that impacts important decisions.” That
objective still guides the company today.
Because of his desire to build the business on
principle and integrity first, with profits being
a result–rather than the driving force of the
company, many people ask him, “Phil, what
do you plan to do next?” SPA’s success has
meant he never had to find out.
SPA has grown, without ever having acquired
another company, from the initial three
employees to more than 500, including 330 in
Alexandria. In addition to the headquarters at
2001 North Beauregard Street in Alexandria,
SPA has locations in Crystal City, M Street in
Washington, Norfolk, and San Diego. SPA is also
located on the Internet at www.spa.com.
SPA was founded to work with the U.S.
Navy on nuclear weapons programs. The
company soon expanded into other agencies
with the Department of Defense and today
works with every service within DoD, and
with the Coast Guard. After 9/11, SPA had an
opportunity to help the Department of
Homeland Security with the challenges it
faces. The company still works with
Homeland Security today and more recently
began work with the Department of Energy.
In an interview with Executive Spotlight,
Lantz emphasized the company’s focus on
quality, rather than quantity of work. “Our
reputation is built on the quality of our work,”

he said. “Our clients are senior leaders in their
fields, and over the years we have earned
positions of trust with them. They trust us to
give us their toughest problems and they rely
on our answers; they rely on our integrity. Our
belief has always been that doing good work
gets us more work. Each year, our work
increases and our growth continues.”
The company hires people based on their
experience and capabilities, and also pays
particular attention to their commitment to the
type of work SPA does. “The work that we do is
not for everyone,” said Lantz. “But for those who
have a desire to work on issues of great importance
to our country, the work itself is motivating
and rewarding.” SPA understands that a highquality
staff is the key to the company’s success.
A well-known phrase at SPA is that “our
most valuable assets go home every night.” The
company works hard to maintain a peoplecentered
culture that provides employees
with a professional work environment, strong
compensation and benefits packages, and
opportunity for individual initiative. Its efforts
were validated in 2008, 2009 and 2010 by the
Washington Business Journal, which selected
SPA as one of the “50 Best Places to Work in
Washington.” In 2009, Washingtonian Magazine
also placed SPA on its “Great Places to Work” list.
These recognitions are especially meaningful
because they are based on employee surveys.
The commitment of SPA employees does not
end on the job. Their hard work and passion
also extends to the community through
involvement in schools, food drives, fundraising
events, and other community activities.
As an example, SPA holds a backpack and
school supply drive each year to help
Alexandria students begin the school year
right. A recent SPA food drive for a local food
bank netted 593 pounds of food that fed 293
families. SPA employees use their experience
each year as volunteer judges for the
Alexandria City Schools Science Fair. The
company also participates in the Marine Corps
Toys for Tots and the Salvation Army Share the
Warmth coat drive, with more than 200 coats
and toys donated in one year. More than forty
sets of sweatpants and sweatshirts were
collected for Wounded Warriors recovering at
Walter Reed Medical Center. Each event is
employee-initiated and led, and is proof of the
caring people SPA employs.
SPA also makes monetary contributions to
organizations like the American Red Cross,
the American Heart Association, Alzheimer’s
Association, St. Jude Children’s Hospital,
Community Hospice foundation, and
Alexandria Campagna Center. Quarterly
American Red Cross blood drives are held onsite
at SPA headquarters, and the company
sponsors an employee team annually for
the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.
SPA employees also “adopt” local families
who need assistance during the holidays.
As SPA completes its thirty-eighth year in
business, the company remains a strong,
growing and thriving part of the Alexandria
landscape and contributor to the national
security of our nation.
✧
Above: SPA employees John Reagoso, Kevin
Morrissey, and Jenny Anderson Peoples
discuss a project.
Below: SPA is a “people place.”
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
8 3

THE NATH
LAW GROUP
✧
Below: The Partners of The Nath
Law Group.
Bottom: A drawing of The Nath Law
Group’s building located in
Historic Alexandria.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
84
The Nath Law Group is a boutique
intellectual property law firm with primary
offices located in Alexandria. The Nath Law
Group strives to provide a business approach
to its client’s global intellectual property
(IP) and transactional legal needs. The
firm specializes in patent and trademark
prosecution, licensing and enforcement and
has strong expertise in filing and prosecuting
domestic and foreign origin applications before
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The
firm’s scientific expertise spans all technical
disciplines with particular emphasis on
chemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology,
electrical and mechanical inventions.
The Nath Law Group also offers corporate
transactional services across a wide range of legal
issues that can arise during the lifecycle of a
business. These areas include corporate formation
and structuring, mergers and acquisitions,
corporate compliance, licensing and other contractual
issues, dispute resolution, and employee
and key executive incentive packages. The firm’s
corporate transactional practice compliments its
IP practice effectively and seamlessly.
The firm was founded in 1993 by Gary M.
Nath, who became a lawyer after a career as a
scientist. He completed degrees in biology and
chemistry at Rider University and then began
studying for a Ph.D. in biochemistry from
Temple University before deciding on a career
in law. “I didn’t even know what patents were,
I just knew I preferred not to work in a science
lab,” Nath says.
Nath started his patent career as a patent
examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office while attending law school in the
evening. He earned his law degree from
Washington College of Law at American
University. From there, he gained experience as
Patent Council for three Fortune 500 companies
and honed his entrepreneurial skills as a
founding member of more than ten start-up
companies before forming his own firm.
The Nath Law Group, formerly known as
Nath & Associates, began as a result of Nath’s
many years of corporate practice plus a desire
to be a business owner. The market niche he
selected was based on a boutique practice
focused on patent, trademark, copyright,
licensing, and enforcement matters while taking
a business approach to handling clients’ work,
specifically how a business can grow using their
intellectual property rights.
The firm opened in Washington, D.C. with
only three people but increased to five after the
first full week of operations. At first, the phone
system did not accommodate rolling calls and
some recall that all five employees had to run
through the office trying to answer the phone.
Only one phone would ring, but no one knew
which phone it would be.
Nath was soon joined by Irvin Lavine and
Donald Sandler, each a former managing partner
of law firms highly respected throughout the IP
community. Lavine had worked for the second
oldest IP firm in the nation, an organization that
dates from the Civil War and counted Robert E.
Lee among its trademark clients.

As the firm grew, it leased additional office
space in available suites on several different
floors of a downtown Washington building.
Growth was rapid, and several interns were
hired and sent to various suites to work. After a
while, management realized that several of the
interns were sharing office furniture over
the course of a day, a problem that was soon
corrected. One of those interns sharing furniture
was Joshua Goldberg, who is now the partner in
charge of the Chemical, Pharmaceutical and
Biotechnology Department, and the managing
partner of the firm’s Research Triangle Park office
in North Carolina.
The Nath Law Group is recognized
internationally for its highly professional legal
standards and ethics. Since 1999, the firm has
been included in the Martindale-Hubbard Bar
Register of Preeminent Lawyers and has the
highest possible Peer Review Rating in legal
ability and ethical standards. Intellectual Property
Today, a patent trade publication, annually
recognizes Nath Law Group as one of the top
U.S. patent law firms.
The firm’s diverse client mix consists of
U.S., European, Middle Eastern, and Asian
multinational institutions, small businesses,
individual inventors and start-ups. In addition to
being extremely client focused and having a very
cost effective approach to performing IP legal
work, the Nath Law Group maintains a client
base with close affiliations in more than 130
countries. However, the firm maintains more
than fifty percent of a U.S. client base model.
Looking to the future, Nath believes firms
specializing in IP will be judged more on quality
than quantity. In a cover story in the magazine IP
Review, Nath noted that, “In most law practices,
the focus is on billing hours and the bottom line.
But these days, IP litigation is rarely a costeffective
route. Attorneys should be working
with clients to provide better insight into how
their IP strategy fits in with the overall business
strategy, so they can avoid costly court fees.”
The Nath Law Group includes more than
fifty U.S. employees with primary offices
located at 112 South West Street in Old Town
Alexandria. Other offices are located in the San
Diego, California and Research Triangle Park,
North Carolina areas.
Members of the firm contribute to many
local and national charitable organizations and
are involved in many professional associations,
serving in leadership and management
capacities. A number of professional employees
maintain active military reserve status and the
firm encourages all its members to be active
participants in community outreach activities.
For more information about The Nath Law
Group, please visit www.nathlaw.com.
✧
Above: The Alexandria Office Partners are
“thumbs up.”
Below: The staff and partners of The Nath
Law Group.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
8 5

✧
Emmanuel Episcopal Church.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
86
SIMPSON
DEVELOPMENT
COMPANY, INC.
Simpson Development Company’s rich
history began more than seventy-five years
ago when the five Simpson brothers—all
bricklayers—began providing masonry specialty
construction services in Alexandria.
Today, Simpson Development Company is
a highly respected commercial real estate
developer, general contractor and construction
management firm. In addition, Simpson
Properties, Ltd. is a full-service commercial
real estate property management firm
specializing in commercial leasing, and
property management services.
The year was 1933—the depths of the
Depression—when the five Simpson brothers
founded Simpson Brothers Construction
Company. This firm grew to become Eugene
Simpson & Brother, Inc., General Contractors,
in the early 1940s.
During World War II, the firm was involved
in the construction of several major military
installations, including Quantico Marine Base,
Fort Belvoir, Andrews Air Force Base, Belleview
Naval Station, and Walter Reed Hospital.
With the explosion of residential construction
following the war, the company constructed
more than forty schools in Fairfax County,
Arlington County and the city of Alexandria.
During this period of expansion, the
company constructed numerous national
headquarters, professional and other office
buildings, schools and public buildings, and
industrial projects throughout Northern
Virginia, including more than 100 buildings in
Alexandria. Some of the notable projects
included Alexandria Hospital, United Way of
America Headquarters, Market Square,
addition to City Hall, and renovations to
historic Christ Church.
During the 1960s, commercial business
was declining in the lower King Street area and
the city of Alexandria adopted the Gadsby Urban
Renewal Project to redevelop the old commercial
properties along the 300, 400, and 500 blocks of
King Street. Simpson Construction was selected
to complete the redevelopment and construction
of projects that included: the City’s Market
Square and Underground Parking Structure,
Kay Office Building, Tavern Square Office and
Retail, Bankers Square Office, 1st and Citizen’s
National Bank, and the City Courthouse.
The ten year Old Town revitalization
project included approximately 825,000
square feet of new office and retail space with
underground parking.
Starting in the early 1950s, as funds were
available over a thirty year period, the firm
completed the interior build-out of the ten
memorial floors of the George Washington
Masonic National Memorial.
Simpson Construction Company was also
instrumental in transforming the Alexandria
waterfront. From the 1800s until the early
1970s, the city’s waterfront was predominantly
industrial with shipbuilding, shipping,
manufacturing and warehouses dominating
the area. Major oil companies, including Shell,
Texaco, ESSO, AMOCO, and Getty Oil,
operated oil and gasoline storage tanks along
the waterfront, receiving oil products from
barges and trucking the products to Northern
Virginia and Washington area dealers.
Simpson Construction Company helped
transform the Alexandria Waterfront from industrial
to mixed-use properties by completing such
projects as the four-building TransPotomac Plaza
Office Complex, the twelve story Crown Plaza

Hotel, Waterfront Office Building, United Way
of America National Headquarters, Madison
Office Building, Torpedo Factory Art Center
renovations, Village on the Strand retail center,
and Robinson Duke Street Warehouses.
Simpson family principals involved in
Eugene Simpson & Brother, Inc. included
Eugene Simpson, Clarence Simpson, and
Donald F. Simpson, Sr., Key principals in the
Development and Property Management firm
were Donald F. Simpson, Sr., and Donald F.
Simpson. Jr., Lawrence Kahan, and Mel Fortney.
In 1982 the Simpson family interests sold
the Eugene Simpson & Brother, Inc. general
contracting operation to Centex Construction
Company of Dallas, Texas. This firm continued
general contracting projects throughout the
Washington metropolitan area.
Today, Simpson continues its history with a
staff of twenty-five committed real estate
professionals serving more than 300 clients in
the Northern Virginia area and managing
more than $25 million in annual revenues,
and 1.3 million square feet of commercial
space. The company continues to experience
steady annual growth and expects an increase
in both its revenue stream and client base
over the next few years.
The company maintains its headquarters in
the Carlyle area at 2331 Mill Road, in Alexandria.
The Simpson family has been involved in
local community affairs for more than seventyfive
years. In 1953, Simpson, with support of
local businesses and sponsors, donated labor,
materials, and funds to construct the Eugene
Simpson Little League Stadium in partnership
with the city of Alexandria, which provided
the Monroe Avenue property.
Over the past fifty-seven years, the Little
League baseball park has been an inspiration
to the community and the thousands of
Alexandria youth who have played there.
When relationships are built, something good
will come. The Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame
pitcher Bob Feller threw out the first pitch at
dedication of the stadium in 1953 and
returned in 2003 to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of the League.
Throughout its long history, the company has
built relationships as a foundation for the future.
The Simpson philosophy has been that when
you help the community, not only do you help
yourself, your family, and your business; you
build a strong foundation for future generations.
For three generations, the company principals
have devoted their efforts to such organizations
as the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce,
the Alexandria Rotary Club, the Alexandria
Economic Development Partnership, Salvation
Army, Alexandria Little League, Goodwin House
Foundation, Scholarship Fund of Alexandria,
Friendship Veterans Fire Association, Eisenhower
Public/Private Partnership, Alexandria City Public
Schools, and many others.
The Simpson family is proud to have participated
in the industrial and commercial growth
of Alexandria and the Washington metropolitan
area for more than seventy-five years.
✧
Above: Alexandria Little Major League,
June 1953. More than a thousand
fans watched the dedication of Eugene
Simpson Stadium.
Bottom, left: TransPotomac Plaza, 1981.
Simpson constructed four office buildings on
the Alexandria Waterfront.
Bottom, right: City Market Square and
Gadsby Urban Renewal, 1965-1972,
constructed by Simpson in Old Town.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
8 7

JOHN M. BARBER
✧
Above: Reaching for the Finish—
Hampton sloops racing on the
lower Chesapeake.
Below: Tilghman Island Sunset—The
Skipjack Hilda M. Willing returning home.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
88
Nationally known maritime artist, John M.
Barber, has painted the vanishing beauty of the
Chesapeake Bay for over thirty years. He first
experienced the bay during the late 1960s and
eventually he and his family owned property
and boats there while enjoying the bays many
treasures. It became the artist’s mission to capture
on canvas the sublime beauty of this, our
country’s most valuable and threatened estuary.
He is most known for his paintings of the
oyster dredging Chesapeake Skipjack, the last
remaining fishing vessels to work under sail on
North American waters. They were once plentiful
on the bay but now these graceful, wooden
sailing boats have dwindled to
about one half dozen. Among
his other subjects are lighthouses,
harbors and other
traditional vessels used by the
bay’s watermen as well as
recreational sailing vessels. He
also paints on location when
he travels to such areas as
Northwest Untied States, New
England, the Caribbean, Italy
and France.
As an active member of the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
and other regional environmental
organizations, the
artist has donated artwork
and copyrights which have
raised nearly a half-million
dollars for the benefit of
these groups endeavoring to
preserve the Chesapeake Bay. Barber is a
Charter Member of the American Society of
Marine Artists and currently holds the title of
Fellow within the Society.
Throughout these three decades the artist
has been recognized for his achievements by
organizations such as: the White House,
Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Izaak
Walton League, National Maritime Historical
Society and the Virginians of Maryland.
Barber has created original paintings for
the U.S. Presidential Administrations of
Reagan and Clinton as well as for the
American Battle Monuments Commission by
doing the official painting of the WWII
Memorial located on the National Mall in
Washington, D.C. One highlight of his career
was sailing with the late national news anchor
Walter Cronkite from Annapolis, Maryland to
Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
where he painted Captain Cronkite’s sailing
yacht Wyntje. These are but a few of the
clients with whom the artist has worked.
Over the years he has created nearly 1,000
works of original art with 136 of these
paintings being published as limited edition
prints, many of which are available in galleries
nationwide. Most of the artist’s works today are
custom paintings created in collaboration with
the client—realizing their dreams on canvas.
For more information contact John M. Barber
located at 10404 Patterson Avenue, Suite 205
in Richmond, Virginia 23238; 804-269-3025;
on the Internet at www.johnbarberart.com; or
email johnmortonbarber@gmail.com.

For more than eighty years Charles R.
Hooff, Inc. has offered its clients sound and
highly skilled real estate advice while playing
an instrumental role in the preservation of
Alexandria’s structures.
The company was founded in 1929 by
Mrs. Charles R. Hooff, Sr., formerly Sarah
Carlyle Fairfax Herbert. The Hooff sons, John
C. H. Hooff and Charles R. Hooff, Jr., took
over the family business after their return
from service in World War II. Charles R.
Hooff III followed in their footsteps and
became the principal broker and director of
the company in 1989.
The direction of the firm has changed over
the years, and today is oriented as a property
management firm and real property asset management.
Hooff feels it is imperative that
investors and absentee owners employ a professional
management firm to oversee their
property to preserve the assets value and insulate
the owners from the anxiety of property
management. The property management services
offered by the company include establishing
a fair market rental value for the property,
advertising properties for rent, and screening
and procuring quality tenants. In addition, the
firm assures that mortgages, taxes and insurance
payments are made in a timely manner,
schedules all maintenance for the property and
inspects the property on a regular basis. The
company provides accurate monthly statements
of transactions and a complete annual
summary for tax filing. Additionally, the property
manager is available twenty-four hours a
day by phone, e-mail, or fax for emergency
services. The company is committed to providing
the finest in professional management
services to the owner as well as the tenant.
In the 1920s, Mrs. Hooff was concerned
that Alexandria’s fine historic fifteenth to nineteenth
century homes would disappear unless
someone took an active role in preserving and
in some cases restoring them. Assuming that
leadership role, Historic Captain’s Row—the
100 block of Prince Street—became the initial
focus of her preservation activities together
with other motivated citizens including the
architect of the Capitol. She organized a
method of marketing the restored homes and
in one case sold the interior of a ballroom to
CHARLES R. HOOFF, INC., REALTORS ®
finance the restoration of the building.
In time others recognized the value of
historic structures and a preservation
order was passed by the city of
Alexandria. In the pre-war period Mrs.
Hooff was instrumental in bringing
the Edward R. Carr firm, a well established
Washington developer, over
from Washington to develop a new
and modest project known as Yates
Gardens. This love of historic structures
was not lost on her son, Charles,
who arranged to have the beautiful
Lloyd House purchased from the owners
the night before the demolition
was to commence.
In 1951, Charles R. Hooff, Inc.
moved from 216 Prince Street into
the Bruin House at 1707 Duke Street,
a house that had been owned by
Joseph Bruin and used as a ‘slave jail’
or holding facility until the Civil War.
The Bruin’s Slave Jail was opened in
1843 and was a dominant slave
dealer by 1847, and continued until
closed by the U.S. Marshalls office
during the war.
The company defended the building
against modification and destruction when
the City Planning Director suggested to
interested developers the building could be
removed. In 1999, Ruth Lincoln Kay, an
Alexandria historian, was commissioned to
research the history of 1707 Duke Street and
attempt to have the building added to the
Virginia Landmarks Register. The building
was entered in the National Register of
Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service, on August 14,
2000 because of its historic occupants—the
Edmonson Sisters. Today the Bruin House
is the only nineteenth century building
remaining in the King Street market area.
The goal of Charles R. Hooff, Inc. is to
continue providing professional, personal,
and, above all, superior service to all its real
estate clients and customers in the Northern
Virginia market area.
✧
Clockwise, starting from the top:
Sarah Carlyle Fairfax Herbert Hooff.
Charles R. Hooff III.
Bruin House, the home of Charles R. Hooff,
Inc., since 1954.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
8 9

✧
Top: Northern Virginia Juvenile
Detention Home.
Above: Sheltercare.
JUVENILE DETENTION COMMISSION
FOR NORTHERN VIRGINIA
The Juvenile Detention Commission for
Northern Virginia was founded in 1956 to house
youth who failed to show up for court appearances
and to provide public safety for youth
who were considered a threat to the community.
The Commission was organized by the
participating jurisdictions of Arlington and
Fairfax Counties and the cities of Alexandria and
Falls Church. It is a political subdivision of the
Commonwealth of Virginia and manages the
Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Home and
the Sheltercare Program of Northern Virginia.
The Commission operates the Northern
Virginia Juvenile Detention Home (NVJDH) is
a secure sixty bed, coeducational institution
for adolescents who are being held for
the juvenile courts of Northern Virginia. The
institution’s goal is to begin the process of
rehabilitation and lay the foundation for later
treatment. Adolescents in the program receive
a constructive and satisfying program of
indoor and outdoor activities, as well as
guidance to help them understand themselves
and come to grip with their problems. Youth
in the program are screened for undetected
problems with physical and mental health.
The New Beginning’s program is a secure,
coeducational community based program
designed to provide secure confinement for
youth aged fourteen to seventeen. The six
month program is for adjudicated youth who
receive care in a therapeutic environment.
Youth entering the program have clear, stated
objectives that must be met in order to
successfully complete the program. These
programs include care custody, educational,
medical, recreational, casework, emergency
psychiatric intervention, life skills, and various
other volunteer programs.
The Juvenile Detention Commission also
operates the Sheltercare Program of Northern
Virginia, which provides much needed services
to many at-risk adolescents in Alexandria.
Many of the children in the program have issues
that include dysfunctional home environments,
substance abuse, truancy, homelessness, out-ofcontrol
behavior, probation violations, mental
health issues, and behavioral problems at
school and in the home.
When placed in Sheltercare, the youth
are provided a safe, secure and structured
environment and are provided their basic
needs, including food and shelter. Counselors
develop individualized service plans for each
of the youngsters. For many of the adolescents,
this entails building life skills including
decision making, impulse control, leadership,
conflict resolution, anger management, and
communications skills. In group sessions,
they may receive education in such areas as
substance abuse or HIV/STDs.
The Sheltercare program provides hundreds
of adolescents with quality care and services
and the organizations continued growth
within the community is vital for the positive
growth of many youth in Alexandria.
Through its secure detention, New
Beginnings program and Sheltercare, the
Juvenile Detention Commission for Northern
Virginia is carrying out its stated mission: “To
create through good example, policy, programs
and environment, a safe and secure setting that
advocates good mental and physical health and
successful academic achievement.”
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
90

Roberts Memorial United Methodist Church
traces its roots to 1832, when the church was
founded by members of Trinity ME Church in
Alexandria upon the request of African American
members of the Trinity congregation. Those
members were Francis Hoy, James Evans, Philip
Hamilton, Simon Turley, and Moses Hepburn.
As far back as 1775, African American
members of Trinity and their friends, who were
forced to worship in the galleries, had been
interested in the Methodist doctrines of John
Wesley, particularly since Reverend Wesley was
opposed to the enslavement of human beings.
An attempt to build in the 400 block of
North Columbus Street failed after the
community objected. However, Mr. and Mrs.
Josiah Davis sold the group some property on
Washington Street for $350. Reverend Charles
A. Davis raised considerable revenue for the
building, but when the Methodist Church
split into two factions—North and South—he
affiliated with the Southern faction.
The original name of the church was
Charles A. Davis Chapel, but when Davis
affiliated with the Southern faction, the name
was changed to Roberts Chapel in honor of
Reverend Robert Richford Roberts, a former
Bishop of the Methodist Church and a former
pastor of Trinity.
In the 1930s, the Methodist Church formed
six administrative units called Jurisdictions.
Five of the Jurisdictions were geographical
and the sixth was based on race. All African
American churches in the United States were
grouped under the Central Jurisdiction, which
troubled many of the church members. Roberts
Chapel was in the Washington Conference and
members attended Annual Conference sessions
at Morgan State College in Baltimore.
When the United Methodist Church was created
in 1968, it had 11 million members, making
it one of the largest Protestant churches in the
world. In 1954, the church name was changed to
Roberts Memorial United Methodist Church.
The church has remained in existence at 606
South Washington Street in Alexandria since its
organization. The church seats about 450 persons
in both the main floor and the galleries.
The mission of Roberts Memorial United
Methodist Church is to revitalize and encourage
active membership; to develop activities for all
members to deepen their faith through Christian
fellowship; to continue to initiate programs to
reach the community and advocate for social
justice; and to reach the un-churched and
underprivileged and to demonstrate the Good
News of Jesus Christ. The church also strives to
proclaim the Word from the Holy Bible and to
adhere to the principles and discipline of the
United Methodist Church.
In addition to special requests from the
Virginia Annual Conference or the general
church, Roberts Memorial United Methodist
Church responds to local and district charities.
The church supports Rising Hope UM Mission
Church and Alexandria Involved Ecumenically
(ALIVE, Inc.).
The church is located at 606A South
Washington Street, Alexandria, Virginia
22314-4011, or call 703-836-7332.
ROBERTS
MEMORIAL
UNITED
METHODIST
CHURCH
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
9 1

A TRIBUTE TO
JUDGE ALBERT
GRENADIER
✧
Judge Albert Grenadier.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
92
Albert H. Grenadier, an Alexandria Circuit
Court Judge who presided over many and varied
cases, is remembered as one of the city’s
most beloved jurists and one who enjoyed
being a judge in the city he called home and
in which he spent most of his lifetime. When
Judge Grenadier died at the age of fifty-eight,
the Alexandria City Commonwealth’s attorney
commented that, “He was an extremely gentle
person who let lawyers try their cases, but still
maintained control of the trial—a difficult
combination in an adversary process.”
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Judge
Grenadier moved to Alexandria at the age of
six. After graduating from George Washington
High School, he served two years with the
U.S. Navy, seeing action in the Pacific during
World War II. He earned his B.A. from George
Washington University, where he was elected
a member of Artus, the National Honorary
College Economics Society.
In 1951, Judge Grenadier was awarded
his Juris Doctor with Honors from George
Washington University Law School. He was
admitted to the Virginia State Bar and
joined the law firm of Bendheim, Fagelson,
Bragg and Giammittorio. He eventually
became the managing partner of its
successor firm, Fagelson, Schoenberg,
Billowitz and Grenadier.
In 1960, he was appointed a permanent
commissioner in chancery for the Alexandria
Circuit Court and also served as judge pro
tempore in divorce and chancery matters. He
served as president of the Alexandria Bar
Association and was active in the annual
Alexandria Bar Association Gridiron.
In 1979, Judge Grenadier was elected by
the Virginia General Assembly for the Circuit
Court vacancy in Alexandria and served with
distinction until his death in 1985. He is
survived by his wife Ilona Ely Grenadier,
founding partner of the law firm of Grenadier,
Anderson, Starace and Duffett, P.C.; five
children; and two step-children.
As a Circuit Court Judge, he was
compassionate where compassion was called
for, and a stiff-sentencing judge whenever
violence was involved. In a 1982 ruling,
believed to be unprecedented in Virginia,
Judge Grenadier permitted an AFL-CIO labor
leader to be disconnected from a kidney
dialysis machine and respirator in accordance
with his family’s wishes. The official died four
days later and his wife termed the Judge’s
decision a “humanitarian victory.”
An article in the Alexandria Port Packet
following his death termed Judge Grenadier
a respected judge who garnered the respect
of prosecutors, defense lawyers, plaintiffs,
defendants, liberals, and conservatives. “He
judged every case on the particular set of facts
affecting the problem…he had no knee jerk
reaction to it,” the newspaper added.
At his funeral, Judge Grenadier’s former
benchmate, retired Circuit Court Judge Wiley
Wright, recalled his colleague as a “warmhearted
man whose courtroom command was
tempered by the diversity of his interests and
human kindness.”

GRENADIER,
ANDERSON,
STARACE &
DUFFETT, P.C.
Grenadier, Anderson, Starace and Duffett,
P.C. began as Grenadier, Davis, Simpson &
Duffett, P.C. and is a “family” law firm with
origination in Alexandria, Virginia. The firm
was founded in Alexandria by Ilona E.
Grenadier, the widow of the late Alexandria
Circuit Court Judge Albert H. Grenadier.
Ilona received her B.A. degree from Mount
Holyoke College and her law degree from
George Washington University with Honors.
She has been listed in Best Lawyers in
America since its inception, is AV rated by
Martindale and in the Bar Register of
Preeminent Lawyers. She is also a member of
the American Academy of Matrimonial
Lawyers and the International Academy of
Matrimonial Lawyers, as well as the American
Bar Association, the Virginia State Bar, the
Virginia Bar Association and Virginia Trial
Lawyers Association. She began specializing
in family law in the early 1970s and it remains
the focal point of the firm‘s practice today.
While the firm now has offices in the
Fairfax County community of Reston,
Alexandria City, and in Leesburg, Loudoun
County, Virginia, the headquarters remains
in Alexandria. Two of the original four members
of the firm remain as principals: Ilona
Grenadier and Benton S. Duffett, III.
Duffett, an Alexandria native, joined the
firm in 1988 after graduation from law school
at the University of Richmond and is also a
domestic relations specialist. Steve Simpson
joined the firm after graduation from George
Washington University Law School and
remained with the firm until his untimely
demise in July 2006. Karen Davis is now
in private practice in Alexandria. Charles
Anderson joined the firm in 2000 and deals
with criminal, real estate, collections, small
business, wills and estates, as well as domestic
relations. Arlene Starace joined the firm
in 2002 with experience as a social worker
and former custody evaluator in the Juvenile
Court, as well as eighteen years of domestic
relations practice in Fairfax County, Virginia.
The firm now has thirteen attorneys,
most of whom specialize in domestic relations
practice. This includes prenuptial, marital
and post marital agreements, cohabitation
agreements, settlement agreements, divorce,
custody, matters of support, equitable
distribution, and other related matters.
In the ever-changing field of family law,
the firm of Grenadier, Anderson, Starace &
Duffett strives to provide its clients with
the knowledgeable, consistent, and reliable
advice and counsel to guide them through the
often difficult process of divorce or other
domestic relations problems. Using a team
approach developed early on means that generally
more than one attorney is assigned to
deal with the individual issues. Each attorney
brings his or her unique perspective and
experience to the case. The anticipated result
of such participation is to give each client
broad, well rounded and creative approaches.
The firm now represents clients in many
jurisdictions throughout the Commonwealth
of Virginia, including the cities of Alexandria,
Falls Church, Fairfax, Fredericksburg,
Manassas, Manassas Park, and Winchester;
and the counties of Arlington, Fairfax,
Frederick, Clarke, Greene, Loudoun, Prince
William, Stafford, Spotsylvania, Fauquier,
Orange, Warren, Albemarle, and others.
The headquarters of Grenadier, Anderson,
Starace & Duffett, P.C. is located at 649 South
Washington Street in Alexandria, Virginia and
on the Internet at www.vafamilylaw.com.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
9 3

HEW FEDERAL
CREDIT UNION
✧
Above: An account Booklet from 1938.
Below: HEWFCU representatives in 1971.
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
94
When it was founded nearly seventy-five
years ago, HEW Federal Credit Union was
operated by a group of volunteers. Today, the
credit union has more than sixty full time
employees and holds nearly $140 million in
assets and $80 million in loans.
This growth has come about because HEW
Federal Credit Union, as a member-owned,
not for profit financial cooperative,
is committed to its members. The
credit union will continue to treat all
members with respect and dignity
and offer honest, fair service to all
members at all times.
HEW Federal Credit Union
received its charter and began
operations on May 26, 1936, only
two years after passage of the
historic Federal Credit Union Act.
The charter was issued originally in
the name of Social Security
Employees Federal Credit Union.
The name was changed to FSA
Employees Federal Credit Union in 1946 and,
eventually, to HEW Employees Federal Credit
Union in 1955. In 1984, ‘Employee’ was
deleted and the name changed to HEW
Federal Credit Union.
Initially, membership was limited to
employees of the Social Security Board in
Washington, D.C., and their immediate
families. Numerous government reorganizations
and subsequent amendments to its
charter over the years have brought the credit
union to its current field of membership,
which serves primarily the employees of
the Departments of Health and Human
Resources (formerly HEW) and Education,
and their families.
It took thirty-six years for the credit union
to reach its first $10 million in assets and a
membership of 12,000. When the credit
union celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in
1986—just fourteen years later—assets had
jumped to $39 million, an increase of nearly
300 percent. HEWFCU surpassed the $100
million mark in assets in 2001 and, as of
June 2010, the credit union serves approximately
20,000 members and holds assets of
$140 million.
Growth since 1990 has been aided by a
number of significant mergers: Columbia
Hospital for Women Employees Federal
Credit Union, Queen of Peace D.C. Federal
Credit Union, Metropolitan Baptist Church
Federal Credit Union and HUM Federal
Credit Union.
HEWFCU began offering checking accounts
and credit cards in the 1980s, and online banking
and debit cards in the late 1990s.
Executive offices for the credit union are
located at 400 North Columbus Street in
Alexandria. The main office is in the Hubert
Humphrey Building at 200 Independence
Avenue in Washington and branch offices are
located in Falls Church, Virginia, and District
Heights, Maryland. A part-time service center
is located in Philadelphia and a mobile branch
was launched in 2009.
Employees of HEWFCU are active in a
variety of community activities, including
Martha’s Table, Suitland High School Canned
Food Drive, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Memorial, Arlington Partnership for
Affordable Housing, and the Annual Credit
Union Cherry Blossom Run.
Going forward, HEW Federal Credit Union
plans to continue providing products and
services that suit the needs of its target markets
within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan
area, including individuals who live,
work, worship, attend school, or regularly
conduct business in D.C., the city of
Alexandria, and areas of Arlington, Fairfax,
Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties.

T. J. FANNON
& SONS
For 125 years, residents of Northern Virginia
have depended on T. J. Fannon & Sons to
provide oil, gas, heating and air conditioning
for their year-round home comfort.
The company was founded in 1885 by
Thomas Joseph Fannon, the fourth of seven
children born to Michael Fannon and his wife,
Mary, who fled Ireland to seek new opportunities
in America. Their search brought them to
Alexandria where, for many years, Michael ran a
grocery and feed store on the Canal Basin.
Thomas worked as a clerk in his early years,
but a $500 loan from the owner of a wholesale
grocery business allowed him to open his own
grocery at the corner of Duke and Henry Streets.
In addition to groceries, the ambitious young
merchant stocked cord wood, coal and building
materials. In those days before central heating,
homeowners depended on coal fireplaces and
wood burning Franklin stoves to stay warm in
winter and to cook their daily meals.
The business expanded quickly. In 1898,
Thomas’ company was awarded the contract for
500 tons of Cumberland coal at $2.15 per ton
for the city gas works. Two years later, the firm
received the contract for supplying the city
electric light works with coal. The development
of automatic stokers and cast iron radiators
brought central heating to Alexandria homes
and the coal-fired boilers in the basement
increased the demand for coal.
Thomas retired in 1920 and his two young
sons, Frances and Chester, took over the
business. One of their first moves was to build
four giant silos with a capacity of 1,200 tons of
coal. Almost every day through the 1940s, two
or three car loads of coal would cross Duke
Street and fill the Fannon bins and silos.
When the first practical oil burner was
invented in the 1920s, the brothers realized a
new era in heating had arrived. They built an
18,000-gallon oil storage tank in the yard at
Henry and Duke and, by 1937, had added
40,000 gallons of storage.
The third generation of the Fannon family
joined the business when T. J. and William
came on board in the 1950s. The company
added air conditioning to its services in the
1950s, allowing the firm to provide home
comfort twelve months per year.
Today, T. J. is president of the company; his
sons Tom and Jack are vice presidents. They
oversee the widest range of home services
available in Northern Virginia—oil and gas
heat, air conditioning, heat pumps, water
heaters, and more.
Recently, Fannon Petroleum has opened a
new plant in Gainesville, Virginia, and the Duke
Street operation has been expanded to include
loading facilities, fleet repair and warehouse.
Since 1885, T. J. Fannon & Sons has changed
with the times, but one thing has remained the
same—the company’s reputation for personal
attention and the capacity to attend all your
home comfort needs.
✧
Above: The coal plant from 1885-1975.
Below: T. J. Fannon & Sons, 1200 Duke
Street in Alexandria.
S H A R I N G T H E H E R I T A G E
9 5

SPONSORS
Advanced Resource Technologies, Inc. ................................................................................................................................................74
Alexandria Lighting & Supply, Inc. .....................................................................................................................................................80
John M. Barber....................................................................................................................................................................................88
Charles R. Hooff, Inc., Realtors ® ..........................................................................................................................................................89
George Washington Masonic Memorial ...............................................................................................................................................70
Grenadier, Anderson, Starace & Duffet, P.C.........................................................................................................................................93
HEW Federal Credit Union.................................................................................................................................................................94
Inova Alexandria Hospital ...................................................................................................................................................................76
Juvenile Detention Commission for Northern Virginia.........................................................................................................................90
MPR Associates, Inc. ...........................................................................................................................................................................65
The Nath Law Group ..........................................................................................................................................................................84
Office of Historic Alexandria ...............................................................................................................................................................73
Roberts United Memorial Methodist Church .......................................................................................................................................91
Simpson Development Company, Inc. .................................................................................................................................................86
Systems Planning & Analysis, Inc........................................................................................................................................................82
T. J. Fannon & Sons............................................................................................................................................................................95
A Tribute to Judge Grenadier ..............................................................................................................................................................92
Virginia Theological Seminary .............................................................................................................................................................78
Wisnewski Blair & Associates, Ltd. .....................................................................................................................................................66
H I S T O R I C A L E X A N D R I A
96

LEADERSHIP SPONSOR
ISBN 9781935377412