E-text prepared by Mark C. Orton, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the numerous original illustrations. See 30747-h.htm or 30747-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30747/pg30747-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30747/30747-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Characters immediately after a caret (^) were superscripts in the original. SEAPORT IN VIRGINIA [Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON By Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick. A painting in oil after a pastel by James Sharples. (_Courtesy Mount Vernon Ladies' Association_)] SEAPORT IN VIRGINIA George Washington's Alexandria by GAY MONTAGUE MOORE [Illustration] Drawings by Worth Bailey Photographs by Walter Wilcox The University Press of Virginia Charlottesville The University Press of Virginia Copyright (C) 1949 by The Rector and the Visitors of the University of Virginia Second printing 1972 ISBN: 0-8139-0183-9 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-188711 Printed in the United States of America TO MY HUSBAND CHARLES BEATTY MOORE TOGETHER WE HAVE DELVED INTO WHAT RECORDS WE COULD FIND THAT MIGHT THROW UPON THE SCREEN SOME SHADOW OF THOSE WHO BUILT AND LIVED IN THE OLD HOUSES IN ALEXANDRIA [Illustration] PREFACE Twenty years ago on a hot and sultry July afternoon, my husband and I started to Mount Vernon to spend the day. On our return to Washington, we lazily drove through the old and historic town of Alexandria--and bought a house! The town at once became of vital interest to us. We spent months and years going through every vacant building into which we could force an entrance. Our setter dogs could point an empty doorway as well as a covey of quail, and seemed as curious about the interiors as we were ourselves. I became obsessed with a desire to know the age of these buildings and something of those early Alexandrians who had lived in them. Old maps and records littered my desk. Out of the past appeared clerks on high stools wielding quill pens and inscribing beautiful script for me to transpose into the story of one of America's most romantic and historic towns. It has been impossible to write about every house in Alexandria--even about every historic house. I tried to recall the old town as a whole. A succession of hatters, joiners, ships' carpenters, silversmiths, peruke makers, brewers, bakers, sea captains, merchants, doctors and gentlemen, schoolteachers, dentists, artisans, artists and actors, began to fill my empty houses. Ships, sail lofts, ropewalks, horses, pigs, and fire engines took their proper places, and the town lived again as of yore--in my imagination.