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 sturdy 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.
Virginia Training School. Miss M. Gundry, Principal.
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, space 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.