This house was built in 1794 and designed by architect William Lovering who is also credited with designing the Thomas Law House (featured last in this series), The Maples (which will be featured next), the Octagon House and Wheat Row, both of which will be featured later in this series. The house was designed in the Federal style popular at the time and was built as a double house, occupying 468 and 470 N. St. SW.
The lot on which the house was built was originally owned by Notley Young who deeded it to the City Commissioners when the site of the federal city was first determined. Captain William Mayne Duncanson, a wealthy merchant who came to Washington from Europe on a boat with Thomas Law in 1795, lived in the 470 half of the double house from 1795-96. He lived in the house while awaiting his new home, later known as The Maples, was being built on Capitol Hill. The Maples will be featured next in this series.
Several years later, the other half of this house was occupied by William Cranch. Cranch was the son of Mary Smith whose sister was Abigail Adams, making William the nephew, by marriage, of President John Adams. William married Nancy Greenleaf in 1795 and had four sons and three daughters. Their great-grandson was poet T.S. Elliot
A Harvard educated lawyer, Cranch moved to Washington D.C. in 1791 where he worked in private practice for 10 years. From 1800-1801 Cranch served as a City Commissioner for the District before being nominated by his uncle, John Adams, to serve on the newly established U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia
This post shares photos and a brief history of the Thomas Law House in Southwest Washington D.C.
The Thomas Law House was built between 1794 and 1796. It was designed by architect William Lovering who is credited with the design of several other properties which will be featured later in this series including The Octagon House, Wheat Row and the Duncannon-Cranch House. Thomas Law, formerly of the British East India Company, had recently immigrated to the United States with two of his three illegitimate sons born from his Indian mistress. He met and married Elizabeth Parke Custis, who was twenty years his junior, in 1796 and the couple moved into this newly built home which was then dubbed “Honeymoon House”. Elizabeth Parke Custis was the eldest granddaughter of Martha Washington from her first marriage. Elizabeth’s brother was George Washington Parke Custis, the builder of Arlington House (the Custis-Lee Mansion) and the father of Mary Anne Randolph Custis who would marry Robert E. Lee. Thomas and Elizabeth would live in this beautiful Federal Style home for only about five months before moving to a new home which was then under construction. They would divorce in 1811.
From 1814-1827, this house was occupied by Richard Bland Lee, brother of Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee and uncle of Robert E. Lee. Richard was the second cousin of Thomas Sim Lee, whose winter house in Georgetown was featured earlier in this series. Richard had served as a U.S. Representative from Virginia in the very first session of congress and had helped negotiate the Compromise of 1890 which established the Capital City of Washington D.C. He served three terms in congress and then returned to his family’s tobacco plantation – Sully – in Chantilly, Virginia. Financial hardships in the family eventually forced the sale of Sully after which Richard and his wife moved to the Thomas Law House. Richard would serve under President James Madison as a commissioner charged with helping rebuild the city after the War of 1812 and would later be appointed as a judge by James Monroe. He lived in this home until his death in 1827.
This post shares photos and a brief history of the Thomas Sim Lee Corner in Georgetown in Washington D.C.
At the end of the block where the Old Stone House has stood since 1765, you can find the historic winter home of Thomas Sim Lee, an associate of George Washington who had served as a colonel during the Revolution. He went on to become the 2nd and 7th Governor of the state of Maryland. During his first term, Lee consulted with then lieutenant colonel Uriah Forrest who would later live down M Street from Lee in what’s now known as the Forrest-Marbury House (read about it HERE). After his second gubernatorial term ended in 1794, Lee moved to Georgetown and built this lovely corner house. In July of that year, Washington offered Lee a role on the Board of Commissioners which was overseeing construction of the new capital city, but Lee turned him down. After the death of his wife, Mary, in 1805, Lee moved permanently to his country estate in Frederick County.
The Thomas Sim Lee house would go through several owners over the next century and a half, but it eventually fell into a dilapidated state and was slated for demolition in 1950. This was right about the time that congress had authorized the purchase of the Old Stone House a block away, and a Georgetown resident named Dorothea de Schweinitz quickly mobilized her friends to save the Lee Corner from the wrecking ball. The Architectural Review Board of the Commission of Fine Arts reviewed the property and recommended against demolition. Miss de Shweinitz organized her neighbors and helped found Historic Georgetown Inc. which sold shares at a dollar apiece and purchased the property outright. They then began renovations of the building and found renters to occupy it. The simultaneous preservation of the Old Stone House and the Thomas Sim Lee Corner was the beginning of a movement to save historic Georgetown, a move I’m sure area residents are grateful for today…
This post shares photos and a brief history of Rosedale in Cleveland Park in Washington D.C.
The area we now call Cleveland Park was once part of a massive 800 acre estate owned by Colonel Ninian Beall. After Beall’s death in 1717, his property was divided among his 12 children and a tract of it was bought by a man whose name is lost to history. This man built a small stone cottage on the property around 1740 and the estate was known as Pretty Prospects. In 1793, the property was acquired by General Uriah Forrest, who had been the mayor of Georgetown and was at that time serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Forrest had a large wood-framed house built onto the front of the stone cottage and renamed the property Rosedale. Rosedale was the Forrest family’s country estate which they built while living in the Forrest-Marbury House in Georgetown (read about that house HERE).
General Forrest was a prominent citizen of early Washington D.C. and Rosedale played host to many important people including President John Adams. Forrest himself would die in the front parlor of the house in 1805. Rosedale remained in the family until 1917 when it was rented by the Coonley family.
This post shares photos and a brief history of the The Forrest-Marbury House in Georgetown in Washington D.C.
The Forrest-Marbury House was built in 1788 by John Stoddert and soon became the city home of Georgetown’s 3rd Mayor and Stoddert’s business partner, General Uriah Forrest. Forrest had lost a leg during the Battle of Brandywine in the Revolution, and would go on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. On March 29th, 1791 General Forrest hosted his old friend and former commander, George Washington, and other prominent local landowners for dinner before their historic meeting at Suter’s Inn which I discussed briefly in my last post in this series on The Old Stone House (read it HERE). In 1794, Forrest moved out of this house and to his country estate across town which he called Rosedale where he lived out his days. Rosedale will be featured next in this series.
From 1800-1835 this house was owned and occupied by William Marbury, a successful local banker. On the last day of John Adams’ presidency, Adams nominated Marbury to be a Justice of the Peace in Washington D.C. This nomination was blocked by incoming president Thomas Jefferson and his secretary of state James Madison. Marbury filed a lawsuit asking for a writ of mandamus which would force the Jefferson administration to complete his commission and in 1803 the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Marbury v Madison. This case would deny Marbury his commission not on the grounds that he didn’t deserve it, but on the grounds that to do so was outside the constitutional power of the Supreme Court. This famous early case established the principle of judicial review. Marbury’s adversary in the case, James Madison would later live in the Octagon House which will be featured in a later post in this series…
This post shares photos and a brief history of the The Old Stone House in Georgetown in Washington D.C.
The Old Stone House was built was built in 1765 on what was then Bridge Street (now M Street) in Georgetown, ten years before the Declaration of Independence and almost 30 years before the founding of Washington D.C. Built of locally quarried stone as a one story structure by a cabinetmaker named Christopher Layman, the building would serve as both his home and shop. After his death later that year, Layman’s widow sold the building to Cassandra Chew who added a rear kitchen in 1767 and a second floor soon thereafter. The third floor was added in the 1790s. Over the next hundred and fifty years, the building would change hands, and uses, many times. By 1953, when the National Park Service purchased the property, it was the site of a local car dealership. The Park Service has since restored much of the Old Stone House to an 18th Century appearance and it is open to the public as part of C & O Canal National Historical Park. It is considered the oldest standing structure in Washington D.C. on it’s original foundation, and is one of very few pre-Revolutionary buildings to be found in the District.
Interestingly, the Park Service points to a mistaken identity as one of the reasons the Old Stone House was preserved. On March 29th, 1791 George Washington was meeting with area landowners to discuss the purchase of land by the federal government to establish the new capital city.
The photos below come from a recent visit to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park near the town of Lynchburg, Virginia. It was the site of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia which effectively ended the American Civil War.
After the siege of Petersburg and the fall of the Confederate Capital at Richmond, General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia west with the hopes of turning south to North Carolina and joining with General Joseph Johnson’s army there. They moved towards the train depot at Appomattox Station hoping to find much needed supplies waiting for them there. Union General Phillip Sheridan and his cavalry arrived first, capturing the supply trains and forcing Lee to turn his thoughts towards Lynchburg instead. Surrounded by Union troops, they made one final push at dawn on April 9th, 1865. It didn’t take long to realize that they were surrounded and Lee called for a meeting with Ulysses S. Grant to discuss the terms of surrender.
The site chosen for this conversation was the home of Wilmer McLean in the tiny village of Appomattox Court House. The generals met in the parlor, recreated above, to hammer out the details. The terms offered were very generous as the Confederate soldiers were to be immediately paroled and even allowed to keep their horses and sidearms. Their parole papers were printed in the nearby Clover Hill Tavern. The Southerners marched into town, stacked their rifles, turned over their cannons and marched out. While the surrender of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was not the end of the Civil War, there was little chance or hope for the Southern cause in its aftermath. The war would technically drag on until early summer, with skirmishes across the south, but the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse was the beginning of the end. Four long years of fighting which cost over 600,000 lives was finally nearing its conclusion…
The photos below come from a recent visit to Monocacy National Battlefield Park just south of Frederick Maryland - site of the “Battle that Saved Washington”. Civil War Chronicles will trace the major battles of the Eastern Theater of the war through photos and brief histories.
The Battle of Monocacy is a bit of an outlier in that it wasn’t really a major battle of the Eastern Theater of the Civil War, but a minor one with major implications. While Generals Grant and Lee were engaged in the final grappling of the war around Petersburg, south of Richmond, Lee wanted a distraction to pull some of Grant’s army away. He attempted this by sending General Jubal Early to go on the offensive and attack into Union territory, the third Confederate invasion of the North during the war. Early was sent with 15,000 men to threaten Washington D.C. and, if possible, to raid the prison camp at Point Lookout and free the Confederate soldiers being held there. Lee also knew that a presidential election was looming and he hoped that another invasion of the North might bring about the defeat of Lincoln and a favorable end to the long and brutal war.
Early’s army crossed the Potomac River into Maryland on the 4th of July, 1864 and marched past Sharpsburg, the site of the Battle of Antietam two years earlier. You can’t march 15,000 infantry troops across a state without anyone noticing, and word quickly got to General Lew Wallace who was then the Union commander in Baltimore. Wallace gathered what men he could muster and quickly set off towards the west. Thinking quickly, Wallace decided to head towards Monocacy Junction, just south of Frederick, Maryland. He didn’t know where the Confederates were headed, but this point would allow his troops to defend the Georgetown Pike to Washington, the National Road to Baltimore and the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Line. If he got there first, he could strategically place his men along the Monocacy River and defend all three of those routes which crossed the river at that point. He arrived in time to dig in and establish a line of defense.
It’s been a warm week here in D.C. – summer has definitely arrived. I’ve had some nice days to get out and explore the city this week, but also some hot and humid ones and a few epic thunderstorms as well. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced summer in our nation’s capital, and there are definitely pluses and minuses. I will say that the lack of traffic anywhere at any time makes the heat of summer a little more tolerable. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, that lack of traffic definitely makes for cleaner air and clearer skies – something my camera sees even more than I do. That is one of the plusses of the situation. We’ve been enjoying some summer fruit too, which is one of the best things about summer anywhere. We’ve had beautiful cherries, watermelon, strawberries and others and I’m looking forward to peaches very soon.
Last Friday my stepfather made some wonderful homemade pizzas and we sat in the basement and played some games and listened to some music while we chowed down on a couple of pies. It was another great Forget-About-It Friday, which we are grateful for. This coming week we will tap our homebrew and see how it turned out, and begin our next batch as well – an American Cream Ale. I’m looking forward to having a taste and to keeping the brewing going while I’m home. It’s fun and there’s a (hopefully) fine finished product at the end. After the cream ale, I want to try something a little more complicated now that I’m getting my brewing confidence back up.
The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. My mom spent Saturday cooking up a storm and we had a wonderful dinner on Saturday night as well. Sunday I spent some time reading my new (to me) book about the Gettysburg Address which I’m really enjoying. I also got some photos edited and published from our trip to Antietam last week, and got some writing done as well. It was a pretty relaxing weekend all around, but it felt good to accomplish a few things along the way.
I hope you enjoy this post with photos and history from Forest Hills, a beautiful neighborhood in Northwest Washington D.C.
Resting quietly between Cleveland Park and Chevy Chase and bordered by Rock Creek Park to the east is the quaint neighborhood of Forest Hills. Those of us who grew up in the era of the Metro are probably more likely to think about this neighborhood as Van Ness/UDC. The station takes its name from Van Ness Street, the main cross street in the neighborhood, and the University of the District of Columbia. Since the northern border of the neighborhood is considered to be Nebraska Avenue, I grew up right across the street from Forest Hills.
Once home to a Native American soapstone quarry, Forest Hills has quite an interesting history. In 1763, long before the creation of Washington D.C., Col. Samuel Beale was granted a tract of land by Lord Baltimore and named the area Azadia. Much of this tract would later be purchased by Isaac Pierce who would build his namesake mill along Rock Creek. In 1814, Revolutionary War veteran and retired land surveyor John Adlum bought a 200 acre tract of land in the area to start a vineyard. He named his estate Springland Farm and went on to become one of the first commercial producers of wine in the country (Adlum is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown). During the Civil War, Forest Hills was the site of Fort Kearny – one of the ring of forts protecting the Capital City…
In 1713, two colonists were granted a tract of land extending from what is now Cleveland Park all the way to present-day Rockville. That tract long predates both the city of Washington DC and the United States as a whole, and its owners named it “Friendship”.
By the turn of the 20th Century, only two homes were located in the area, one was located a few hundred yards back from Wisconsin Avenue in a grove of silver maples, and the other lay closer to the road and was owned by the Ball family. This home had an attached blacksmith shop and also served as a changing station for stagecoaches bound between Rockville and Georgetown. In the early 1900s, trolley tracks were laid connecting Georgetown to Montgomery County, and the area became prime real estate.
Over the next decade, the land was purchased and subdivided by two men, Albert Shoemaker and Henry Offutt, and a small community began to developed. By 1914, the Village of Friendship Heights and The Hills was recognized by the state of Maryland, and the community around it was also known as Friendship Heights. This was a rural area, and an annual fall hog slaughter was a much anticipated event…
Tenleytown grew up around the intersection of what are now River Road and Wisconsin Avenue, two roads which long predate both the city of Washington D.C. and the United States. River Road, in fact, predates European settlement to the area altogether, serving as a Native American trail to the Potomac River. In the early days of European settlement, the roads were used to transport goods from surrounding farms to Georgetown, then a major port city on the river. It is not surprising, then, that John Tennally, from whom the neighborhood takes its name, would build a tavern and blacksmith shop at the intersection of these historic roads. A small community soon grew up around the tavern and was known as Tennally’s Town. During the Civil War, Fort Pennsylvania was built nearby to protect the Capital City and was later renamed Fort Reno. After the war, a small African-American community known as Reno City was built in the area. When a streetcar came through at the end of the 19th century which connected Tenleytown to Downtown Washington, the neighborhood began to grow and flourish. Woodrow Wilson High School, Alice Deal Middle School and a water revoir and water tower were built, sadly displacing many of the residents of Reno City in the process. A proposed hospital on the site was never built. As the neighborhood developed, two major retailers, Sears and Roebuck and Hechinger’s Hardware Store, opened for business in Tenleytown and a Metro station further connected the neighborhood to the rest of the city. Today, Tenleytown is embracing its history as one of the oldest neighborhoods in what is now Washington D.C. with a wonderful historic walking tour and several historic plaques around town.
