A Virginia Village Part 5

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 Washington, 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 Washington 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 Washington worshipped there. It served as a recruiting station for patriots of the Revolution, then abandoned as a house of worship 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 Washington 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 Washington. 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 Washington, 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.

Washington 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 ship 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 Washington 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 Washington in the distance, persuaded them to make their homes in this ideal place. At that time the railroad facilities to Washington 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 Washington.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Virginia Training School. Miss M. Gundry, Princ.i.p.al.]

Of all those who followed Messrs. Buxton and Kinsley to Falls Church, who built homes and made the little straggling settlement at the cross-roads the beautiful village it is to-day, s.p.a.ce will not permit even a brief mention. But there are a number of well-known citizens still residing here who formed the nucleus of that "department colony"

of thirty years ago, and through whose influence in great measure this village has become a settlement of government employees. Most prominent among these settlers of the 70's who are connected with the executive departments in Washington are Messrs. G. A. L. Merrifield and M. S.

Roberts of the Pension Bureau, Albert P. Eastman of the War Department and George F. Rollins of the Treasury Department.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dr. J. B. Gould]

The rate of taxation levied by the town government is 60 cents on the hundred dollars, 30 cents of which is for school purposes and 30 cents for all expenses of the corporation. To this must be added the taxes collected by the county of Fairfax, 75 cents on the hundred dollars, making a total tax on property holders in the town of $1.35 on each one hundred dollars of the a.s.sessed valuation. Property within the corporation is exempt from county road tax and district school tax.

Property in that part of the village lying within Alexandria County is a.s.sessed in like manner by the town and the authorities of the latter county. The tax rate for Alexandria County for the year 1903 on the one hundred dollars of a.s.sessed valuation of personal and real property was: State tax, 35 cents; county levy, 40 cents, and for court-house purposes, 10 cents--a total of 85 cents chargeable to the property owners of East Falls Church, the section of the village in this county.

An additional tax of 50 cents for road purposes and 40 cents for the district school is levied against taxable property in this county outside of East Falls Church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. W. H. Nowlan]

When scarcely ent.i.tled to be designated by the name of village, the little settlement on the Leesburg turnpike known as Falls Church was, by an act of the General a.s.sembly of Virginia, incorporated as a town. The act in question was approved March 30, 1875, and on April 13 following the new town began its career with the following officials duly installed: Mayor, Dr. J. J. Moran; Clerk, H. J. England; Town Sergeant, E. F. Crocker; Councilmen, Dr. J. J. Moran, George B. Ives, J. E. Birch, T. T. Fowler, Isaac Crossman, J. J. Carter, Dr. L. E. Gott.

The act of incorporation was successively amended by the State Legislature in 1879, 1890 and 1894. Sections 1 and 2 of the act of incorporation as amended, approved March 2, 1894, read as follows:

SECTION 1. So much of the territories in the counties of Fairfax and Alexandria, together with all the improvements and appurtenances thereunto belonging, as is contained in the following boundaries, to-wit: Beginning at the corner of Alexandria and Fairfax counties, on J. C. DePutron's farm; thence to the corner of J. C. Nicholson and W. S.

Patton, in Mistress Ellen Gordon's line; thence to the corner of Sewell and L. S. Abbott on the new cut road; thence to the corner of A. A.

Freeman and Mrs. Henry J. England on the Falls Church and Fairfax Court House road; thence along centre of said road to centre of bridge over Holmes Run; thence easterly in a straight line to the northwest corner of the colored Methodist church on the road leading to Annandale; thence easterly to the crossing of the Alexandria and Georgetown roads at Taylor's corner; thence along the north line of said Georgetown road to the corner of T. M. Talbott and Emma Taylor's estate; thence to a pin oak tree near Dr. L. E. Gott's spring; thence to a stone on the property of J. A. and Mrs. J. H. C. Brown, formerly the northeast corner of John Brown's barn; thence to the crossing of Isaac Grossman's and Bowen's line on the chain bridge road; thence to the place of beginning, is and shall continue forever to be a body politic and corporate under the name and style of the town of Falls Church, and shall possess and exercise the rights and powers conferred on towns by the general laws of this State and shall be subject to the restrictions and limitations imposed by said law in so far as the provisions thereof are not in conflict with the provisions of this act.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. G. W. Poole]

SEC. 2. Be it further enacted. That the government of said town shall be vested in a council of nine qualified voters, who shall be elected by ballot on the fourth Thursday in May, eighteen hundred and ninety-four; three of whom shall hold that office for one year, three for two years and three for three years respectively, the same to be determined by lot. The successors of the three whose terms expire each year shall be elected annually on the fourth Thursday in May and shall hold their offices for three years, or until their successors are duly elected and qualified. The terms of office of all councilmen shall begin on the first day of July of each year succeeding their election. Any person ent.i.tled to vote in the magisterial districts of Falls Church or Providence, in Fairfax County, or Washington magisterial district in Alexandria County, and residing in said corporation and duly registered by the town clerk, shall be ent.i.tled to vote at all elections for councilmen. The town clerk and two members of the council whose terms of office do not expire with that year, and who shall be designated by the mayor, shall conduct such election between the hours of one and seven, post meridian, and shall make return of the same to the mayor who shall issue certificates, countersigned by the clerk, to those elected. Tie votes shall be decided by lot, and contests shall be decided by the council under the law governing contests for the county offices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. G. F. McInturff]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. M. E. Church]

Section five provides that the council shall annually levy and collect necessary taxes for roads, streets, school and corporation purposes, which tax for all purposes shall not exceed sixty cents on one hundred dollars without the consent of two-thirds of the resident freeholders of the corporation. An amendment gives the council the privilege of levying an additional tax of ten cents on the hundred dollars for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a high school course in Jefferson Inst.i.tute, the public school, whenever requested by the town school board.

Section eight provides that the "town sergeant shall be the executive officer of the council, and shall have the authority, jurisdiction and fees of a constable of Fairfax and Alexandria counties within and one mile beyond the corporate limits. He shall, unless otherwise provided, be the town treasurer and as such shall collect all taxes, fines and licenses, and disburse the same upon the warrant of the council, signed by the mayor and clerk."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. J. W. Brown, Store and Residence]

The same section makes the sergeant overseer of roads and streets, giving him the same powers as overseers of roads under the special road laws of Fairfax and Alexandria counties, his compensation to be fixed by the council.

Section nine provides that no district school tax and no district road tax shall be a.s.sessed and collected, except by the council, on any property within the corporation limits.

The last important section of the act of incorporation, which a.s.sures the peace and quiet of this village, is the restriction placed upon the liquor traffic. It reads as follows:

SEC. 10. That any person applying to the county of Fairfax or the county of Alexandria for a license to sell liquors of any kind, either as a keeper of an ordinary or eating house, or as a merchant, within the corporate limits of the town of Falls Church in the said counties, or within one mile beyond the limits of the said corporation shall produce before the courts or boards having control of the issuance of licenses for the sale of liquor of said counties a certificate of said council of said town to the effect that the applicant is a suitable person and that no good reason is known to said council why said license should not be granted. And the courts of said counties or boards having authority shall not grant the said license to sell liquors within the limits above prescribed until and unless such a certificate be given. And under no circ.u.mstances and in no event whatever shall the sale of liquors be licensed in any part of the corporation where license for the sale thereof has been prohibited under the provisions of chapter twenty-five of the Code of Virginia, known as the local option law.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Geo. L. Erwin]

The town is divided into three wards and each ward is represented by three councilmen.