Military echoes are not lacking from the inventory of his possessions. Is it possible that "1 Blue cloth coat with vellam holes"[75] related to his military service as major of Virginia militia? Was this perchance the coat worn by Major Carlyle in 1755 when the Redcoats of His Britannic Majesty's forces and the Virginia Militia fought under General Edward Braddock and met defeat at Great Meadows at the hands of the French and Indians? Major Carlyle was quartermaster in those days, with the mission of scouring the countryside for horses and forage. Objects of military use more easily picked out of the list taken by his executors include a spyglass, guns, pistols, swords, saddles, saddlebags, holsters, a powder horn and "2 spontoons." It is a local tradition that a store of these latter antique weapons were left behind in Alexandria by Braddock's direction and that they constituted part of the equipment of the town watchmen until the outbreak of the War Between the States. [Illustration: Mantel in the dining room] John Carlyle was a Scotsman of gentle birth, of the Limkilns branch of Carlyles of Torthorwald Castle. He left his home in Dumfrieshire for Dumfries in Virginia at the age of twenty to enter one of the Scottish shipping firms in that town in the year 1740. Foreseeing the end of that port, he moved to the village of Belle Haven, and with John Dalton set up in the mercantile and shipping business by 1744. This firm, under the name of Carlyle & Dalton, was destined to become the most important one in the new port, and John Carlyle the leading citizen. He was one of the influential men in Fairfax County who agitated for a town at Belle Haven, at the Hunting Creek warehouse. He was selected by the assembly as one of the incorporators of the town of Alexandria, and as one of the first trustees. Active in the town from the beginning, he helped build the courthouse and market place. He was the town's first "Overseer." In 1755 he was ordered to build a warehouse at Point Lumley, a hundred feet long, twenty feet wide, with thirteen-foot pitch, as well as to build roads and clear streets. [Illustration: John Carlyle's shell and silver snuffbox. Listed and described in the inventory of his estate] Carlyle bought the third lot put up for auction on July 13, 1749, No. 41, paying thirty _pistoles_. As the auction continued, he purchased another lot adjoining the first for sixteen _pistoles_. Upon his two lots he erected in 1752 the greatest private house in Alexandria for two or more decades, and furnished it with the best his ships could carry.