About that time the house was destroyed by fire and the land was sold by John Carter O'Neal, of the Inniskillen Dragoons, son of Anne Carter who had married an Englishman, to Henry D. Cooke. The western part of this square was bought in 1805 by Mrs. Elisha O. Williams. She was Harriot Beall, daughter of Brooke Beall, the third of these sisters to settle on The Heights, and she also bought her home with money inherited from her father's estate. [Illustration: HOME OF BROOKE WILLIAMS] Six months after buying the property Mrs. Williams was left a widow. She built a home and lived there with her small children, and thirty years later gave the northern part of her land to her son, Brooke Williams and his wife, Rebecca. It was on the spot where the Home for the Blind now stands. Mrs. Rebecca Williams was a very beautiful woman and all her children inherited her beauty. The daughter who was named Harriot Beall for her grandmother became the most famous girl who ever grew up in Georgetown. The romantic story of her marriage to Baron Bodisco, the Russian Minister, runs thus: It all started with a Christmas party which the baron gave for his nephews, Waldemar and Boris Bodisco. To this party all of the boys and girls were invited, and great bonfires lighted the way, for there was little gas in those days. Among those who came was Harriot Beall Williams, the beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter of Brooke Williams, senior. Baron Bodisco, a bachelor of sixty-three, became completely enamored of Miss Williams that evening, and it is said that the next morning he walked up the hill to meet and escort her to school--the school, of course, being the same Seminary of Miss English. My story is copied almost entirely from Miss Sally Somervell Mackall's _Early Days of Washington_, for nothing could improve on that: Miss Williams' family were much opposed to the marriage, and at one time the engagement came near being broken. She told Mr. Bodisco that "her grandmother and everybody else thought he was entirely too old and ugly." His reply was that she might find someone younger and better looking, but no one who would love her better than he did. They were married in June, 1849, at four o'clock in the afternoon, at her mother's home on Georgetown Heights. Only the immediate relatives and the bridal party witnessed the ceremony, after which there was a brilliant reception. The wedding party formed a circle and just back of them on a sofa sat a row of aged ladies in lace-trimmed caps, among them her grandmother, Harriot Williams and her three sisters, Mrs. Benjamin Mackall, Mrs. William Stewart, senior, and their cousin, Mrs. Leonard Hollyday Johns, senior, all of whom were between seventy and eighty years of age.