Part 14 (2/2)

It was after that the home, for many years, of the Barbers. Old Mrs.

Barber moved there with her grandchildren when she sold her home where the United States Naval Observatory now stands. She was the daughter of Major Adlum whose home was The Vineyard where the Bureau of Standards is now. His place was well named for he was a great horticulturist, the first to domesticate the Catawba grape. It grew wild in North Carolina.

Chapter X

_Gay (N) Street--East to Rock Creek_

Across High Street (Wisconsin Avenue) along Gay (N) Street on the northwest corner of Congress (31st) is the Baptist Church which has just celebrated its 75th anniversary. It was originally a small frame building, up on a bank. The present building was erected in 1890.

On the southwest corner of Gay (N) and Congress (31st) Streets stood, not so very many years ago, an attractive old white house with long porches, tiers of them, across the back overlooking a garden. I think the present building is what it was converted into in the period that did the best to rob Georgetown of all its charm.

Here, in 1795, Dr. James Heighe Blake built his home. He was a very eminent citizen, a member of the first vestry of Saint John's Church, one of the very first to advocate schools of the Lancastrian system and a reformatory, and the very first person to suggest a health officer for the City of Was.h.i.+ngton. He moved over to the city and became its third mayor from 1813 to 1817. His daughter, Glorvina, married William A.

Gordon, senior, of whom I have already spoken.

Here, at one time, lived Judge Walter c.o.x, grandson of Colonel John c.o.x.

His wife was a daughter of Judge Dunlop. Still later, the school of Miss Jennie and Miss Lucy Stephenson was here, which was well attended in the seventies and eighties. In the spring of 1875, a romantic elopement took place. A young girl of sixteen, an orphan, who was said to be ”an heiress,” went off to Baltimore very early one morning with the son of a minister who taught Latin in the school.

When the pupils came that morning, they sensed the excitement and gathered in groups in the gallery. Eventually, the news leaked out and the chief topic was that the young lady took no baggage, not even a nightgown, in her flight.

Just below here, on Congress (31st) Street, in the latter part of the last century lived a lady much beloved by rich and poor. She was the first person to conceive the idea of a diet kitchen for the needy. She had not much of this world's goods, so she went daily to the different butchers who gave her sc.r.a.ps of meat which she cooked, and had continually on hand jars of ”beef tea.” All the doctors knew where to apply when they had patients who were in need of it. She was the widow of Captain Charles Carroll Simms, an officer of the old navy who went with the Confederacy, and at the famous battle in Hampton Roads, was second in command of the _Merrimac_, and in command after the chief officer was killed. She was Elizabeth Nourse, daughter of Major Charles Joseph Nourse, of The Highlands.

Next door, below Mrs. Simms' house, stands the Methodist Protestant Church which not long ago celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. The lot for it was purchased in April, 1829, but the founders for a year or two previous to that had been wors.h.i.+pping in the Presbyterian Church building, Saint John's or the Lancastrian schoolroom. It is now a Christian Science Church.

Across the street from the church, next door to the Post Office, the tall brick house is where a family lived which in the nineties was a mystery to Georgetown--the Oueston family--father, mother, and daughter.

No one knew what was the father's business, and no one ever saw the mother out, but it was rumored that she came from South America, was of royal blood, and had a throne on which she sat, dressed accordingly. The daughter was known then, and for many years afterwards, as ”the girl of a thousand curls.” She was tall and slender, and her magnificent suit of dark hair was a ma.s.s of curls, making her head look like ”a bushel basket.” She wore ankle-length dresses of a style totally different from what every other girl wore: white stockings, when all of us wore black, and black slippers, laced up with narrow black ribbons.

And then up to the northeast corner of Gay (N) and Congress (31st) Streets, to the tall yellow house, now an apartment house. For many years it was at the home of the Snyders. Dr. John M. Snyder died at the age of 36, in the enjoyment of a fine reputation in his profession, of an unusual accident.

The story is told by Dr. Samuel Busey, in his _Personal Reminiscences_:

Dr. Snyder had bought a farm called ”Greenwood” a little way out of town toward Tenallytown, and one afternoon at Dr. Busey's home, ”Belvoir,” now the Beauvoir School, was telling Dr. Busey how he was enjoying pruning the old oak trees on his place of dead wood. Dr.

Busey warned him that he was engaging in a dangerous amus.e.m.e.nt and related the story of how a hired man of his, doing such a job, had had a bad fall, but, fortunately, without injury.

Two or three days later, Dr. Busey was summoned to ”Greenwood,”

where he found Dr. Snyder dying from just such an accident. The branch of the tree he had been sawing off was hanging by a splintered sliver, too weak to support its weight and, in swinging to the ground, had knocked away the ladder on which Dr. Snyder was standing.

His wife was Sophy Tayloe, a member of the well-known family of the Octagon House in Was.h.i.+ngton, and beautiful old Mount Airy in Virginia.

As a widow in her old age, she had a steady admirer, a general, who came every afternoon at the same time in his Victoria, and took her to drive.

I can see her now, a small, slight figure in her cape, and little black bonnet tied under her chin, and holding one of those quaint little ruffled sunshades to keep the sun out of her eyes.

She had one daughter, Miss Annie, who had the loveliest rosy cheeks (no rouge in those days), who never married. One son, Bladen, was an artist, and he used to be a familiar sight with his camp-stool and easel on the streets, painting.

Georgetown was not so ”arty” in Bladen Snyder's day, unfortunately, so he was considered very ”odd.”

The other son, Dr. Arthur Snyder, was a fine surgeon, and an ardent horseman.

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