A Portrait of Old George Town Part 18

Of course, he and Mr. Corcoran were near the same age and were both making their way as young men here in Georgetown at the same time, and it is very interesting to follow, from many letters, how their friendship continued through all their lives.

Mr. Peabody made frequent visits to his homeland, and used often to visit Mr. Corcoran at his home in Washington, and to spend the summers with him at the White Sulphur Springs.

When hearing of the beginning of the great gifts of his friend on this side of the water, he wrote in October, 1851:

However liberal I may be over here, I can not keep pace with your n.o.ble acts of charity at home; but one of these days I mean to come out, and then if my feelings regarding money don't change and I have plenty, I shall become a strong compet.i.tor of yours in benevolence.

He certainly made good his words. In London he entertained in princely style. The following letter is one of the many telling of his parties there:

London, May 16, 1853.

My dear Corcoran:

On the 18th I am to give a grand banquet to the American Minister and about sixty-five English and eighty-five American ladies and gentlemen, and have invited about fifty more for the evening. Mr.

Van Buren will be of the party and I hope to make it the best dinner party I have ever given, as I have the Star and Garter, Richmond, and the proprietor has no limit. I enclose you the programme of music during and after dinner.

I have taken the house--Star and Garter--for a Fourth of July dinner to gentlemen only, and expect about 150. I hear from Mr. Ingersoll that your friend, Mr. Buchanan, will leave in June. Now, although I only know Mr. Buchanan from his high character and what you say of him, particularly as he is unmarried, and I would like to invite the party for the fourth of July to meet "the American Minister, Mr.

Ingersoll, and the new Minister, Mr. Buchanan." Will you confer with Mr. Buchanan on receipt of this and try to get me permission to give the invitations as I propose? If Mr. Buchanan leaves 13th or 16th June, he will arrive in ample time.

Very truly,

GEORGE PEABODY.

In 1867 he gave $15,000 to found the Peabody Library in Georgetown. A large donation was given by him to the second Grinnell Arctic Expedition. The museum in Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, called by his name, is a fascinating collection of historic relics. To his birthplace he gave 50,000 pounds ($250,000) for educational purposes; for the Peabody Inst.i.tute in Baltimore 200,000 pounds ($1,000,000.00); to the trustees of the Peabody Educational Fund to promote education in the Southern States (part went to Washington and Lee University in Lexington). A dear old cousin of mine has told me of his visit to the White Sulphur to confer with Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Peabody on this subject. The thing he is remembered for in London is the erection of a huge block of model houses for working people at a cost of 500,000 pounds ($2,500,000). I suppose it was then that Queen Victoria wished to do him honor.

His true nature remained untainted by success, and Gladstone said of him: "He taught the world how a man may be master of his fortune, and not its slave."

In 1867 the Congress of the United States awarded him a special vote of thanks, and two years later, when he died in London on the 4th of November 1869, his body was brought home to America on a British warship, to be buried in Danvers, the town of his birth, now renamed Peabody in his honor.

Chapter XII

_The Seminary, Washington (30th) Street and Dumbarton Avenue_

Nowadays, all to the east of here bordering on Rock Creek has been made into a park and playground, and some attractive houses built overlooking them.

On the southeast corner of Montgomery (28th) Street and Dumbarton Avenue, the large brick building now used as a colored Temple of Islam was where Henry Addison, who had been mayor, was living when he died in 1870.

This house later was the home of General Christopher Colon Augur. One night he came out on his porch to remonstrate with a crowd of negroes gathered on this corner and making a disturbance. He was promptly shot by one of them.

Just east of here on Dumbarton Avenue at number 2720 is the home of the Alsop brothers, the well-known columnists, and a new Roman Catholic Church has been built for the colored people. There are six colored churches in the region hereabouts: This Catholic one, three Baptist churches, and two Methodists. Mount Zion Methodist on Greene (29th) Street is over a hundred years old. In the nineties, there were two men in the choir there, one an exceptional organist and the other, who had a very fine ba.s.s voice; he later went to Paris.

From this point to Rock Creek is the district that was known as Herring Hill, a synonym in the minds of old residents for the negro district. It got its name from the fact that in the spring great quant.i.ties of herring came up this far into the creek from the river, and were caught in large numbers.

I think this account, by Mr. William A. Gordon, of some of the customs of the negroes in the years gone by is very attractive and interesting:

Christmas was the great time for the negroes. Ordinarily, they were not allowed in the streets after the town bell rang at nine o'clock at night, but at Christmas this restriction was removed, and as midnight approached, bands of them would go through the streets singing hymns and carols before the houses of their white friends.

The next morning the leader of the band called at the house and received a token of appreciation in the way of small coin.

On May Day there was a parade of the negro drivers; many drove carts, drays and wagons, for on that day they had holiday, and paraded with wagons and horses adorned with ribbons, flowers and bright papers, the drivers wearing long white ap.r.o.ns, and headed by a band. They would then go to the woods and feast, dance and sing.

At the southeast corner of Dumbarton Avenue and Greene (29th) Street, the four little yellow houses made into one make the home of Drew Pearson, the widely-known columnist and commentator--co-author with Robert S. Allen of the original "Washington Merry-Go-Round."

A block west, on the southeast corner of Washington (30th) Street is a fine old house where Mrs. James Ca.s.sin lived as a wealthy widow during the 1850's. She was Tabitha Ann Deakins, of that old family so prominent in the making of the town.

James Ca.s.sin had come from Ireland to the City of Baltimore when he was about twenty years of age, on account of religious troubles, the motive which sent so many emigrants to the new country. He then moved over to this thriving seaport, married and settled, leaving his wife a very young widow with three sons. One of them, John, went far from home to live, and his mother's letters to him contain a great deal of interesting gossip. In one she tells that Margaret McVean has gone to Baltimore to buy her wedding dress, and, horror of horrors, has allowed the groom, Dr. Louis Mackall, to accompany her. Of course a chaperone was in the party, but what an indelicate thing for the groom to know anything about the wedding clothes! She ends with, "What are the young people coming to?" How often have we heard those same words in recent years. Of course in those days, a bride went into deep retirement for a week before the fateful day, not going out into the street at all, and as for seeing the groom on the day until she met him at the altar, that was simply unthinkable!

Margaret McVean was the daughter of the Reverend James McVean, who was born near Johnstown, New York, in 1796. He was a graduate of Union College in 1813, and of Princeton in 1819. It was said that he spoke seven languages with fluency and that the chair of Greek at Princeton was always open to him. He came to Georgetown about 1820 and married Jane Maffitt Whann in 1828. For twenty years he was the princ.i.p.al of a cla.s.sical seminary for boys in Georgetown, the same one founded by Dr.

David Wiley. There a large number of young men were prepared for college, who afterwards attained distinction in various professions or government positions of trust and honor. He was for twenty-five years superintendent of the Presbyterian Sabbath School. He died July 8, 1847, and as a testimonial of respect, the Board of Common Council and Aldermen, of which he was a member, suspended business for eight days, and crepe was worn on the arm for thirty days.

Another of these letters of Mrs. Ca.s.sin's tells that her son, William Deakins Ca.s.sin, has just become engaged to "that harumscarum Mittie Tyler." She fears for their future. Mittie (Mary) Tyler was the daughter of dear old Dr. Tyler across the street.

The mother-in-law's fears certainly did not materialize, for Mrs.

Ca.s.sin, junior, lived a long and honored life. I remember her faintly when she was about eighty years old, with hair parted in the middle and combed down over each ear as "coal black as a raven's wing," as the old saying goes.

They all seemed to marry their neighbors in those days, for Sue, another daughter of Dr. Tyler's married Granville Hyde across the street.

The Hyde's house was next door to the Ca.s.sin's on the south. One can see that it is quite old, and it seems that it was built about 1798 by Charles Beatty, one of our old friends of the early days of George Town.

He ran one of the ferries across the river to the Virginia sh.o.r.e. About 1806 he had sold the house to Nicholas Hedges; then it went to James Belt in 1822, and to Joshua Stuart in 1832. Later, it was bought by Mr.

Thomas Hyde, one of the early merchants of Georgetown. His son, Anthony continued to live there and was for many years secretary to Mr. W. W.

Corcoran. Anthony Hyde was very musical and was part of the orchestra which furnished the music in Christ Church before it had an organ. Here grew up Mr. Thomas Hyde, who was very prominent in Riggs Bank and an early president of the Chevy Chase Club. He was a very distinguished looking man to the day of his death.

On the northeast corner of Washington (30th) and Gay (N) Streets is where tradition says Ninian Beall built his hunting cabin when he landed here. That could be borne out by the fact that a very fine spring of water was on that property. Many, many years later the family of Judge Dunlop at 3014 N Street used to send for pitchers of water from that spring, as they had an inherited right to do so.

The long, red building there, now the Colonial Apartments, is still spoken of as The Seminary. It was there that Miss Lydia English conducted her fashionable school for young ladies for many years before the Civil War. This was the school to which Andrew Johnson, while senator from Tennessee, sent his daughter. Years after, when he was being criticized for his defense of Roman Catholics, his enemies brought against him the fact that he had sent his daughter to a "convent" in Georgetown. They had confused the Visitation Convent with Miss English's Seminary. It is said that the roster of the patrons of this school in those _ante-bellum_ days included the names of the most famous men in the country.

Among those names was that of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, nicknamed "Old Bullion," on account of his opposition to paper currency.

He was one of the supporters of President Andrew Jackson in his war on the United States Bank. One of the pupils at the Seminary was his daughter, Jessie Benton, who afterwards became the wife of General C.

Fremont, known as "The Pathfinder of the Rocky Mountains."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MISS LYDIA ENGLISH]

Miss English had large means of her own, which enabled her to keep her school going in spite of "ups and downs." But, when in need of advice, she would always turn to her near neighbor, James Ca.s.sin.

At one time she had nine teachers besides herself. In 1835 she had 130 pupils. It is said she was a stern headmistress, but she stood for all that was fine, and meant a great deal to Georgetown.

There is a story told of old "Aunt Abby," whose business it was to sit behind the parlor door whenever the young ladies had gentlemen callers, and how rea.s.suring was the sound of her deep snores. Another story goes that the young bloods of Georgetown used to gather on the opposite corner where there was a pump and pretend to be getting a drink of water, while they were really serenading the hidden charmers, and that sometimes billet-doux and sweetmeats were drawn up in baskets unbeknownst to the "powers that were."

In 1859, Miss Harrover took over the school. The catalogue for that year calls it the Georgetown Female Seminary, and in the front is printed the following letter from Miss English:

To my former Pupils and their Parents, and to other Friends:

At the request of Miss Harrover, who, for two years past, has satisfactorily conducted the Inst.i.tution, over which I so long presided, and the care of which I relinquished, only because the condition of my health and hearing made it imperatively necessary. I would state, that my interest in its prosperity is undiminished, that I earnestly desire to see it flourish, and that as far as I have it in my power, it is my wish to extend its usefulness.

In renting the Seminary, I retain my own suite of apartments, and have never withdrawn my residence from it. So far as I have influence, and opportunities, I endeavor to promote the improvement and comfort of the inmates of this establishment. I can not but feel a special interest in the children and other relatives of those who in former years were under my care and instruction, and it affords me much pleasure to see them pursuing their education within the same establishment. I shall rejoice to see the number of these, in the coming year greatly increased.