[3] STONY HILL. NOTE.--It may not be uninteresting to mention that the Stony Hill mansion was an old red brick building erected in the 17th century, with a wide hall and Grecian portico, commanding an extensive and beautiful view of Aquia creek and the Potomac river. The dwelling had grown to be a large and rambling domicile under the additions of four generations of the Peyton's, and all of them improving men. This fine old colonial house was demolished during the first year of the Civil-war, 1861-62, by Federal troops, on the spurious pretext that it was a necessity to have at once material for baking ovens. The old red bricks of this stately home, brought from England, as ballast in sailing vessels sent out to fetch back tobacco to Bristol, were used to erect many ovens in which bread was baked for the invading northern army. When John Peyton lived at Stony Hill the estate consisted of 1900 acres of fine land, and as far as the writer knows, still does. It is owned and occupied in 1894, by Mr. Moncure, a son of the late President of the Virginia Court of Appeals, Judge R. C. L. Moncure, whose widow still lives, and is a descendent of John Peyton. Mrs. Anne Peyton was a woman of worth, thoroughly honest, sincere and straightforward, with a fund of practical common sense. Her conversational powers were of no ordinary kind. A sincere, devout and humble Christian, a good wife, devoted mother, kind and sympathetic friend, she was in all respects a remarkable person. While it does not come within our scope to here enter at length into her life and character, it is right and due to her memory, that reference should be made to her exalted piety. So domestic, unobtrusive, and retired was her plantation life, that her name is little more than an echo in the age in which she lived, and might scarcely be even that, if it had not been kept somewhat in mind by the fame of her distinguished son. A considerable part of her time, after she fixed her residence at Montgomery Hall, was spent in the seclusion of her apartments, and much of every day was given to meditation and prayer. She left behind many voluminous manuscript books, in which she had copied the Psalms, the Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and many striking passages from other parts of Holy Writ, and containing many prayers, (original and quoted,) and ejaculations, suited to various occasions. These were of the following character, which will give an idea of the whole: "Supply, Oh Lord, the wants of a heart which knows not even how to lay them open before thee, which does not so much as think of doing it, and which too often shuts out the light and consolation of which it stands in need." And--