Ludwell Lee, a son of Richard Henry Lee, built Belmont in 1800 and lived there until his death in 1836. He rests in its garden. Soon after he died the estate was acquired by Miss Margaret Mercer who, born in 1791, was the daughter of Governor John Francis Mercer of Cedar Park, Maryland. Miss Mercer conducted a school for young ladies at Belmont until her death in 1846. She was a woman of broad education with pronounced views on the abolition of negro slavery and she it was who built the nearby Belmont Chapel on a part of her estate. After passing through the hands of many owners the property was purchased in 1931 by Colonel Patrick J. Hurley, Secretary of War under President Hoover, and since then he and Mrs. Hurley have made it their country home. For several years he has invited the Loudoun Hunt to hold its annual horse show there. COTON Across the highway Thomas Ludwell Lee, cousin to Ludwell Lee, about the same time built his home Coton, naming it after an English home of the earlier Lees. On Lafayette's visit to America in 1825, he was a guest of Ludwell Lee and a great festival, in honor of his visit, was staged at both Belmont and Coton. It is said that after nightfall a double line of slaves, each holding aloft a flaming torch, was stationed between the two mansions to light the way of the celebrants as they passed from one house to the other. The original mansion has long since disappeared save for parts of its foundations. A second mansion was later erected on another part of the estate and in turn was destroyed by fire. The present stone dwelling, the third to bear the name, was erected by Mr. and Mrs. Warner Snider, the present owners of the estate, in 1931. OATLANDS George Carter, great-grandson of Robert Carter, the "King Carter" of early Colonial days, received in 1800 from his father, Councillor Robert Carter of Naomi Hall, a tract of 6,000 acres south of Leesburg, a small part of the vast Carter holdings. Upon this land during the ensuing two years he built Oatlands, the most pretentious and elaborate of the Loudoun homes of that day. George Carter did not marry until attaining the discreet age of sixty years when he took as his bride Mrs. Betty Lewis, a widow, who had been a Miss Grayson. Both George Carter and his wife are buried in the gardens of Oatlands. The estate was acquired in 1903 by the late William Corcoran Eustis of Washington and is now the country home of his widow under whose care both residence and extensive gardens retain their justly celebrated charm and beauty. Mrs. Eustis, a daughter of the late Levi P. Morton, at one time Governor of New York and later Vice-President of the United States, has long been the Lady Bountiful of Loudoun. None of the county's residents has ever equalled her benefactions to its poor and to its public institutions of every kind. ROKEBY