Part 5 (1/2)
Every geographical section of the United States has here a representative type of citizen who has chosen this quiet village for a home. For this and other reasons Falls Church is probably the most thoroughly American community in the country. This distinction, if admitted, must come as a natural sequence from its situation as a suburb of the Nation's capital, from the cosmopolitan character of its society, and from the fact that so many of its residents are connected with the Executive Departments as a part of the machinery of representative government.
The village is situated in a county of the Old Dominion rich in events of historic interest. In Colonial days, in the times of the Revolution, as in the days of the civil strife, Fairfax County furnished her quota of ill.u.s.trious sons. At Gunston Hall on the Potomac dwelt George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, p.r.o.nounced the most remarkable paper of the epoch, and the foundation of the great American a.s.sertion of independence as afterward draughted by Jefferson. In Fairfax County lived and died the immortal Was.h.i.+ngton, and his ashes repose in its soil at his beloved Mount Vernon. During the late civil war every part of its territory was a battle ground and breast-works thrown up by contending armies over a generation ago may still be seen here and there within its borders. At the beginning of our war with Spain twenty-five thousand volunteer soldiers from a dozen States pitched their tents on a favored spot in this ancient county, where they were schooled to proficiency in the art of modern warfare.
The old Episcopal church, from which Falls Church takes its name, still stands as a monument linking colonial days with the present. Around it cl.u.s.ter memories of great events in American history, for past its substantial walls have marched soldiers of all our leading wars since the day Was.h.i.+ngton guided the lordly Braddock over the road hard by down to the time of our recent war with Spain. The old church has pa.s.sed through many vicissitudes since Was.h.i.+ngton wors.h.i.+pped there. It served as a recruiting station for patriots of the Revolution, then abandoned as a house of wors.h.i.+p for a long period of years; subsequently it was reopened and throughout the civil war used alternately as a hospital and a stable by the Union Army. To complete the chain of events in this connection soldiers enlisted for the Spanish-American war were encamped near by and pickets of the camp stood guard under the shadow of its walls.
Falls Church thirty years ago was a mere hamlet of, perhaps, a dozen houses. It is to-day the largest town in the county of Fairfax and its population is steadily increasing. Forces are now at work which may eventually make it the largest town in Northern Virginia, with the possible exception of Alexandria. Upon the completion of the new bridges now in course of construction across the Potomac and the improved facilities for reaching Was.h.i.+ngton by means of steam roads and trolley lines, the tide of suburban home-seekers from the capital city must turn this way, whereby this Virginia village is destined to become a Virginia city which may bind the old mother commonwealth closer than ever before to the Federal City and the National government.
The Town of Falls Church.
Falls Church is an incorporated town of about eleven hundred inhabitants. Endowed by State law with the name of town when a mere hamlet, it is still ”the village” to its citizens. It is situated on the Bluemont branch of the Southern Railway 9 miles from Alexandria, and 45 miles from Bluemont at the foot of the Blue Ridge. An electric railway connects it with Georgetown, D. C., 6 miles distant, and it is 13 miles over the Southern Railway to the business center of Was.h.i.+ngton. Located originally in Fairfax County its growing area has overlapped into the adjoining county of Alexandria, taking within its corporate limits the extreme southwestern part of what was at one time the District of Columbia.
It is essentially a village of homes, nearly all of which are set in ample grounds adorned with rare trees, well-kept lawns, and tasteful shrubbery and hedges. Its fourteen miles of streets are bordered with beautiful maples, and in summer the princ.i.p.al avenues are bowers of living green.
Like the National Capital in its inception, Falls Church is a town of magnificent distances. Within its corporate limits is room for ten thousand people without overcrowding.
At an alt.i.tude of 300 feet above Was.h.i.+ngton, summer days here are pleasant and summer nights cool and sleep-inducing.
The social atmosphere is most refined, and the moral tone of its citizens cannot be surpa.s.sed. No saloons have been allowed in Falls Church since its incorporation as a town thirty years ago.
The town has an excellent graded public school with a high cla.s.s of instructors, besides a number of private schools. Eleven churches, including three for colored people just outside the town limits, afford ample accommodation for all church-goers within a radius of many miles.
All the leading religious denominations are represented. The church edifices are most creditable for a town of its size, and two are fine examples of church architecture.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. E. T. Fenwick.]
The history of Falls Church begins with the building of the old Episcopal Church from which the place takes its name, but the town itself is of modern growth. By a strange series of coincidences the old church, as well as the town at a later period, has been in touch in various ways with the National Government since Colonial days.
Was.h.i.+ngton was a vestryman and at times attended service here. It served as a recruiting office for patriots of the Revolution. Dolly Madison took the road for Leesburg leading past this church when fleeing from the White House during the panic of the British invasion. Capt. Henry Fairfax went forth with his company of Fairfax volunteers from the Falls Church to the Mexican war and his body, borne home from far Saltillo, found a resting place within its churchyard. Skirmishes between Union and Confederate troops occurred all around its walls, and during the war of '61 it served the purposes of a hospital for Union soldiers. To make the chain of incidents complete, a farm near by was chosen at the outbreak of the Spanish-American war as a training camp for United States volunteer soldiers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Presbyterian Church]
Few events of moment in government affairs can occur without directly affecting some resident of Falls Church, since this little town has its quota among the officers of the army and navy, in the rank and file of the army, and on the forecastle of the man-of-war, to say nothing of a full representation on the rolls of the several executive departments.
When the battle s.h.i.+p Maine was blown up in Havana harbor two jackies from Falls Church were on board, fortunately escaping with their lives.
After Aguinaldo's capture by General Funston, it was a Falls Church man who commanded the gunboat which conveyed the captive around the Island of Luzon to Manila. The brave General Lawton, killed on the firing line in the Philippine war, had so recently been a citizen of the town that his death was deplored as a personal loss by his former neighbors.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. W. M. Ellison]
About the middle of the last century there was a large influx of settlers to Fairfax County from Northern New York and the New England States, attracted by the milder climate and the cheaper lands then offered for sale. Among the families who came about that period and settled nearest the old Falls Church were the Baileys, Birches, Barretts, Coes, Ellisons, Iveses, Lounsberrys, Munsons, Osbornes, Ryers and Sherwoods--all familiar names, and many of them or their immediate descendants now prominent residents of this village.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. George G. Crossman]
Early in the seventies two government clerks drove over the rough and hilly road from Was.h.i.+ngton and looked around the little hamlet of a dozen houses scattered along the Leesburg turnpike from the old brick church to the railroad station at West End. They were impressed with its inviting hills as the ideal situation for country residences. The excellent water from unlimited springs, the cool breezes and pleasing prospect from the hilltops overlooking hot and dusty Was.h.i.+ngton in the distance, persuaded them to make their homes in this ideal place. At that time the railroad facilities to Was.h.i.+ngton were most unpromising.
The coaches were little better than the present freight car caboose, the schedule was unreliable, the trains slow, and a change of cars had to be made at the Alexandria junction. Such drawbacks did not deter these men from carrying out their purpose of locating here. They decided to ride or drive back and forth to their work in the department at Was.h.i.+ngton.
Others soon followed these pioneers, and a settlement of government employees was the result. Many of those who followed the first two pioneers were from New England. They were families for the most part endowed with all those st.u.r.dy qualities of integrity, frugality and piety, characteristic of their section, and soon the church of their fathers stood within a stone's throw of the church of the early Virginians.
Since the day our townsmen, Mr. Charles H. Buxton and Prof. W. W.
Kinsley, the pioneers of modern Falls Church, first settled here, the increase of population has been slow, but it has been of steady and sterling growth. The conservatism of the land-owners has given less rapid growth than were its tone purely speculative. The population as reported by the United States census for 1890 was 792; the census of 1900 gives the population at 1007, an increase of over 27 per cent.
during the ten years. The tax roll for 1903 shows property of taxable value of $420,125, an increase of $149,040 over 1890.