Salona, Fairfax County, VirginiaAnderson, Ellen L.
History
Salona, Fairfax County, Virginia
Anderson, Ellen L.
Salona (McLean, Va.)
Robert Gamble, in his volume on Sully, quotes a letter which states
that Richard Bland Lee, Jr., was under the tutelage of the Reverend
Mr. Maffitt at some time preceding 1805.[58] This again would suggest
that Maffitt had a school at Chantilly, close to Richard Bland Lee's
home at Sully. Another biographer mentions that
Edmund Jennings (Lee) was born at
Alexandria, then in the District of
Columbia, on the 3rd of May, 1797.... Mr.
Lee received his earliest educational
training at the school of the Rev. Mr.
Maffitt in Fairfax, a school of high repute
at that day.[59]
Unfortunately no dates or locations are given by the letter-writer or
the biographer.
In his history of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House, William B.
McGroarty described Maffitt in a footnote as "a Presbyterian minister
who conducted a school for boys in Fairfax County near
Alexandria."[60] Neither Chantilly nor Salona was very close to
Alexandria.
A letter from A. C. Stuart to Elizabeth Collins Lee in 1805 states
that:
Mr. Maffitt intended to leave the place
where he now resides and purchase a small
farm, that he, Frank (Francis Lightfoot Lee,
Harriotte's youngest brother) intended to do
the same, that they were to spend their time
in the pursuit of agriculture, botany, and
philosophy.[61]
Was this wish expressed because Chantilly was not Maffitt's property
but that of his stepchildren, because Maffitt was lonely without
Harriotte, or because he wanted to give up teaching for farming?
Somehow, from the guardianship accounts, it seems likely that Maffitt
did not farm the Turberville acres, but rented out whatever he could,
while he busied himself otherwise.
Usually the _Alexandria Gazette_ carried announcements of the
openings of new schools, but no announcement of Maffitt's school ever
seems to have appeared. Because Maffitt performed the marriage of
_Gazette_ publisher Samuel Snowden to Mary Longden on January 8,
1802,[62] such an announcement might have been expected. Neither did
the _Gazette_ report Maffitt's departure from the Alexandria area.
Probably Maffitt was still living at Chantilly when he married for
the second time between 1807 and 1811 before William Maffitt, Jr.,
was born. His second wife was Ann Beale Carter Carter
(1767-1852),[63] widow of Charles B. Carter. Ann, also known as
Nancy, was the daughter of Robert Wormely Carter of Sabine Hall in
Richmond County, and Winifred Beale.[64] William, Jr., the only child
of this marriage, was born in November, 1811, and christened in the
Presbyterian Meeting House in February 1812.[65]
In August 1812, Maffitt was appointed a trustee of an academy to be
established in Haymarket. Among those serving with him were Ludwell
Lee of Belmont, Francis Lightfoot Lee, then living at Sully, and
William Fitzhugh of Ravensworth.[66]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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