Book cabins and camping at Bull Run and Pohick Bay Regional Parks, or cottages at Algonkian Regional Park.

Published Articles

Docent Dispatch - December 2019

On November 18, we were joined by the Dementia Friends of Virginia for a brief training session on what to know about dementia and how best to serves those members of our community. Here are the key points on communication that came from this training:

Docent Dispatch - November 2019

By the time she started pitchingThanksgiving to America, Sarah Josepha Hale knew her power. She was edging towards 60, and for a decade she had been the editress (her preferred term) of Godey’s Lady’s Book, one of the most widely read publications in the United States. Women followed her lead in matters of dress, food, and home— anything that required good taste— and she could convince men, too, to do what she wanted.

In 1860 the population of Alexandria was12,862. When the Civil War ended five years later, about half this number of Union soldiers, “contrabands” and Confederate prisoners remained behind in Alexandria’s cemeteries. It is not surprising, then,
that a few restless souls remain behind as well.

The South Boundary Stone is America’s first federal monument, laid in 1791 by Benjamin Banneker as part of a surveying project to outline the newly created District of Columbia.

Regal would be the best way to describe the photograph of Mary Church Terrell. Delicately swathed in lace, satin and crystals, the charismatic civil rights activist is seen in profile. The front of her tasteful Gibson pompadour is dappled with light and her face is illuminated as if a single ray of sun had parted the clouds in the sky. It’s a highly flattering image of the D.C. activist
and suffragist, and Terrell thought so herself.

Thomas Crocker’s book Braddock’s March, available in the Carlyle House library, provides some interesting historical context for tours of the house. On a grassy embankment at the west end of the National Mall in downtown Washington, just across the street from the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), sits a stone cairn that marks where Gen. Braddock and his troops embarked to
fight the French and Indians. I was always puzzled by its location until I read Crocker’s book. He explains that Braddock’s forces moved out over a number of days in several detachments, taking different routes before they converged again later in the journey.

During Queen Anne’s War against the French and the Spanish in 1713 the British Crown recruited thousands of privateers. With the war over many of these privateers turned to piracy. Almost immediately these buccaneers and their skull and crossbones flagged ships threatened the Virginia Capes.

The next article in our series will cover the relationship between George Washington and John Carlyle from 1770 through 1775. We will cover their evolving business relationship, their continued social relationship, their political affiliation as the American colonies inch their way towards rebellion, and finally, the newly important relationship between John Carlyle and William Herbert. There are 65 entries in this period containing a wealth of knowledge on these topics.

Eighteenth century Virginia gentry houses were frequently constructed over raised or below-ground cellars. These cellars were usually divided into storage areas for tools, food supplies, alcoholic beverages, etc. Some cellar spaces also supported activities such as meat storage and dairy processing, functions normally found in detached structures. Martha Washington instructed her niece Fanny Bassett Washington on May 24, 1795 to “…goe into the sellars (sic) meat house and look into the milk and butter.”

Docent Dispatch - February 2019

For most people in Colonial Fairfax County, Christmas was a simple affair – mandatory church in the morning and a celebratory meal (if they could afford it) in the afternoon. Church was an integral part of the colonists’ daily lives. There was no formal separation of Church and State: the ruling monarch of Great Britain was head of both institutions, and used these offices to keep order throughout the British Empire. In this month’s Found in the Archives, we look at how Church and State
operated together in Colonial Fairfax.

Hello all! I hope you enjoyed the first article from my research project concerning the relationship between John Carlyle and
George Washington from 1754-1759, as well as finding the information contained therein useful. Today, we will discuss the
evolution of that relationship from 1760- 1769, and how this spread through their respective families.