Alexandria Archaeology Looks Back at 250 Years of Alexandria History
The 1750s
Points in Time
- 1750: Population of Fairfax County is 5,546.
- 1752: The "American Company performs The Merchant of Venice at Williamsburg
- 1753: Fairfax County courthouse established at Alexandria
- 1753: Philip Alexander dies
- 1754: Braddock's army defeated by French in Pennsylvania
- 1755: George Washington moves to Mount Vernon
- 1756: Commencement of the Seven Years' War
- 1757: British army under Lord Clive defeats French at Battle of Plassey in India
- 1758: George Mason IV builds Gunston Hall
- 1759: British capture Québec
The 1750s
"As agreeable a Place as could be expected"
"The town is built upon an arc of this bay; at one extremity of which is
a wharf; at the other a dock for building ships, with water sufficiently
deep to launch a vessel of any rate or magnitude." [Archdeacon Andrew
Burnaby] "Belhaven," as the new town was often called by its residents,
experienced a growth spurt in its first years, assisted by commerce and
by the removal of the Fairfax County courthouse and jail from Springfield
(near Tyson's Corner) to Alexandria in 1753. Still, it would be decades
before construction would fill the twenty-one-block area originally
chartered. Several of the lots were resold by the town's trustees in 1754,
after their purchasers failed to build upon them. Travelers in the mid
1750s could have crossed a bridge over the marshy "gutt" at the north end
of town (Oronoco Park today) and seen the tobacco warehouses, kiln, and
other buildings at Point West (southeast of the intersection of Lee and
Oronoco Streets). Continuing south on Fairfax, they would have seen at
least a couple of houses on each blockface, some comfortable and others
quite rude. Crossing Queen, one would have noticed a marked change:
the wealthy merchants and landowners, who had purchased double lots
on the central waterfront, had constructed the first masonry buildings
and may have even had ornamental gardens. The finest was John Carlyle's
stone mansion south of Cameron Street, which commanded a river view and
faced the new courthouse "paled in with Posts and Rails" next to market
square. Several homes clustered around King Street, including William
Ramsay's (today's Visitors' Center). Several more small houses stood
along the way to the town's southern boundary. There were a number of
frame structures along Royal Street, the only other north-south road,
but not as many as on Fairfax. Near the river, of course, one would find
several warehouses, including the new public warehouse at Point Lumley
(foot of Duke Street) where the first boat construction began.
Alexandria was still lacking in urbanity and amenities. Mrs. Charlotte
Browne, accompanying her brother, a British officer, wrote in March
1755: "Extremely hot but as agreeable a Place as could be expected,
it being inhabited but 4 years. Went...to every House in the Place to
get a Lodging, and at last was obliged to take a Room but little larger
than to hold my Bed, and not so much as a Chair in it ...." Moving to
the first floor, her situation improved: "It consisted of a Bed Chamber
and Dining Room, not over large. The Furniture was three chairs, a Case
to Hold Liquor and a Tea Chest..." The trustees found it necessary to
"suppress the keeping & raising of hoggs...and that those already
raised be either kept up in inclosure or killed..." And having witnessed
several deaths and funerals, Mrs. Browne noted that "It is the Custom
of this Place to bury their Relations in their Gardens."
But things were improving. Hugh West operated an "ordinary" or tavern
adjacent to his ferry from 1745. Taverns were a growth industry; eighteen
ordinary licenses were issued in the 1750s, although no more than six were
operating at any one time, plus one at the Cameron settlement. Perhaps
the finest was the "George," at the northwest corner of Cameron and
Royal. It had six guest rooms, three fireplaces, a bar, a dining room and
a billiard room. With all the house and boat construction, carpenters
came to town, as did tobacco, grain and dry goods merchants, the first
couple of doctors, and even a wig maker. Recreation reflected the very
British interest in gaming; horse races were held outside of town,
and the first school was financed largely by a lottery in 1760.
The French and Indian War
The major event of the 1750s was the French and Indian War. Virginian
participation in the wars between the European powers became significant
only after 1739 during the "War of Jenkin's Ear" and "King George's War"
(1739-1748). By the time these conflicts had ended, Pennsylvanian and
Virginian traders were pushing into the Ohio River Valley--territory
claimed by France. From 1749 the French took steps to secure the Ohio
Valley and, in mid 1752, attacked an outlying trading post. In 1753,
Governor Dinwiddie sent the 21-year-old George Washington to protest
the French action and to ascertain their intentions. Washington reported
that only by force could the French be prevented from full occupation of
the valley. Convinced of France's hostile intent, the Governor ordered
that the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (in western
Pennsylvania) be fortified, and sent a small army under Washington to
take the post. The French beat them to the site, built Fort Duquesne
and, with some difficulty, defeated Washington's force at their hastily
constructed "Fort Necessity." Thus began a two-year undeclared colonial
war which coalesced into and helped spark a European "Seven Years' War"
which reached from Canada to India.
General Edward Braddock arrived in Alexandria in April 1755 to lead an
army of 1400 British regulars and 450 colonials to Fort Duquesne. At John
Carlyle's house he met with the governors of five colonies--Dinwiddie
of Virginia, Sharpe of Maryland, Shirley of Massachusetts, Morris of
Pennsylvania and DeLancey of New York--to discuss strategy, finances,
and possible campaigns against other French strongholds. Robert Orme's
journal indicates Braddock did not want to stay here long, "as the
greatest care and severest punishments could not prevent the Immoderate
use of spirituous liquors, and as he was likewise informed the water of
that place was very unwholesome...." The army set out on the route we
now know as Braddock Road; a cannon, said to be one of Braddock's, can be
seen today at the intersection with Russell Road. On July 9, eight miles
from Fort Duquesne, Braddock's army was ambushed and defeated by about
one thousand French and Indians, and Braddock was killed. Washington
retreated to Virginia, burying General Braddock near the site of Fort
Necessity.
For the next three years, the British conducted a lackluster and
disastrous campaign. However, a new prime minister, William Pitt the
Elder, committed England to total war and to reinforcing the colonies. The
effects were soon felt. In mid 1758, the British took the fortress
at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. Then the French were forced to
burn Fort Duquesne, whose site was seized by the English and renamed
Pittsburgh in honor of the vigorous prime minister. The following year
was a nightmare for the French, who lost Fort Niagara, Fort Carillon
(Ticonderoga), and Fort Frédéric (Crown Point) along the
Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. Finally, Brigadier General James Wolfe's
superior army won a crushing victory over the Marquis de Montcalm's forces
and captured Québec. The French surrendered Canada the next year,
and thus ended the war on the American mainland.
A Place in Time
The crescent-shaped bay upon which Alexandria was founded offered
proximity to the Potomac, but consisted largely of shallows and mud
flats bounded by thirty-foot bluffs. The first citizens of Alexandria
industriously altered the natural landscape to remove these impediments
and fit their economic needs and concept of livability. The wealthiest
merchants paid a premium for waterfront lots giving them the ability
to construct homes between Fairfax Street and the bluff with private
wharves and warehouses below. Work place and home were thus combined
on the same one-acre "urban plantation" largely built and maintained
by African slaves like John Carlyle's servants Jerry, Joe, Cook, Penny,
Charles, Sibreia, Kate, Moses, and Nanny.
One of the best places to get a sense of this two-tiered town is the 200
block of Cameron Street and the rear of the Carlyle House. Although the
terrace was not original to the house, it gives you a vantage point to
appreciate the elevation shift between Fairfax Street on the bluff and Lee
Street (formerly Water Street), which was originally literally covered
with water midway between Oronoco Street (West's Point) and Duke Street
(Point Lumley). Look at the now-exposed coarse stone foundations on the
ca. 1777 Wise's Tavern (201 North Fairfax) and you will get an idea of
how the bluff and Cameron Street block were cut down and graded. Grading
probably first began in the 1750s, but continued in the area until around
1800. The soil was likely used to fill in the eastern part of Cameron
and Water Street.
The wharf built by Carlyle and Dalton between Cameron and King Streets
is one of the best archaeological sites for documenting the filling
process. The Lee/Cameron intersection was just below sea level in
1750, but about eleven feet above in 1891. During the construction of
the Torpedo Factory condominium project in 1982, City Archaeologists
discovered Carlyle and Dalton's waterlogged, rough, yellow pine wharf
logs beneath fill from the nineteenth-century Smoot's lumberyard and the
World War I-era Torpedo Factory Building Number 1. Under the sidewalk
of the south side of the 100 block of Cameron Street remain the timbers
which formed the wharf's northern end.
Architecture and material culture
The eighteenth century was the era of the Enlightenment, a flourishing
of faith in the power of human reason. Thinkers of the era "discovered"
a rational order to the universe, an order which they claimed was also
revealed by the use of reason. The Enlightenment held out the promise
of the perfectibility of mankind, of imposing order on nature, and of
dispelling superstition and tyranny. The supremacy of reason suggested
the autonomy of the individual--or at least of educated and thoughtful
individuals, and largely those who happened to be white, male adults
with property of the "proper" religious beliefs--and thereby set the
stage for the passing away of pre-industrial collectivism.
As seen from Alexandria's orthographic plan of 1749, our ancestors began
to reorder the world around them in a manner which was to them useful,
understandable, comfortable and profitable. Georgians had a penchant
for categorization, standardization, symmetry, specialization and,
to the benefit of manufacturers and merchants, emulation. It is
no coincidence, that the period produced Samuel Johnson's English
dictionary or multiple-piece, matching sets of dinnerware. Tasteful
images of symmetrical and geometric architecture were circulated among
gentlemen through the publication of grand and expensive folio editions
of pattern books like James Gibbs's A Book of Architecture (1720) and
William Adam's Vitruvius Scoticus (1750).
Georgian architecture reached its peak in the mid eighteenth
century. Originating in seventeenth-century England and later named for
the British kings of the house of Hanover, it was heavily influenced
by the classically informed architecture of Italian Renaissance
villas and townhouses. The "ideal" Georgian house was a symmetrical,
horizontally oriented and, preferably, masonry structure, two stories
tall, two rooms deep, with a central entrance in an odd number of
bays--preferably five. The prevailing horizontality and an ordered base,
body and top were often emphasized by a projecting "water table" above
the foundation, belt courses between stories and a prominent cornice.
Windows and doors lined up vertically and horizontally. Central front
and rear entrances encouraged a center hall plan, particularly useful
in Virginia for air circulation during the summer. Masonry buildings
often had articulated quoins at the corners, at the edges of projecting
pavilions, or surrounding doors, adding to the perception of solidity
and handsome workmanship. Windows with multiple small, squarish panes
and heavy muntins are also characteristic of this period. Window and
door surrounds often included decorative moldings or pediments, but
true porches were rare. Practitioners of the high Georgian style also
perpetuated the use of the tripartite Renaissance-period Palladian or
Venetian window, usually as a central visual focus.
The first local Georgian buildings were probably the Alexander family's
residences built in the 1740s at "Abingdon," the site of National Airport
parking garages, and at "Preston" south of Four Mile Run on the Potomac
River. The ca. 1753 stone Carlyle House (121 North Fairfax Street), home
of "merchant prince" John Carlyle, is the oldest high-style Georgian
structure in Alexandria. Its design reflects the eighteenth-century
taste for highly articulated and symmetrical buildings. The house is
strikingly similar to William Adam's 1725 Craigiehall in West Lothian,
Scotland, likely because Carlyle copied the design from Adam's recently
published pattern book. Despite living in town, Carlyle built essentially
a country house. Set well back from the street, unlike his neighbors'
homes, it had symmetrically flanking outbuildings, not unlike many
a riverside plantation. Did Carlyle simply believe that this was the
proper type of home for a gentleman, or did he harbor doubts about the
ultimate success of the town?
Additional Reading
James Munson, Col. John Carlyle, Gent.; T. Michael Miller, Pen
Portraits; Thomas Preisser, Eighteenth-Century Alexandria, Virginia
Before the Revolution, 1749-1776; Ronald Grim, The Origins and Early
Development of the Virginia Fall-Line Towns (the latter two are Ph.D.
dissertations).