Edmund Jennings (Lee) was born at Alexandria, then in the District of Columbia, on the 3rd of May, 1797.... Mr. Lee received his earliest educational training at the school of the Rev. Mr. Maffitt in Fairfax, a school of high repute at that day. [59]
Unfortunately no dates or locations are given by the letter-writer or the biographer.
In his history of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House, William B. McGroarty described Maffitt in a footnote as "a Presbyterian minister who conducted a school for boys in Fairfax County near Alexandria." [60] Neither Chantilly nor Salona was very close to Alexandria.
A letter from A. C. Stuart to Elizabeth Collins Lee in 1805 states that:
Mr. Maffitt intended to leave the place where he now resides and purchase a small farm, that he, Frank (Francis Lightfoot Lee, Harriotte's youngest brother) intended to do the same, that they were to spend their time in the pursuit of agriculture, botany, and philosophy. [61]
Was this wish expressed because Chantilly was not Maffitt's property but that of his stepchildren, because Maffitt was lonely without Harriotte, or because he wanted to give up teaching for farming? Somehow, from the guardianship accounts, it seems likely that Maffitt did not farm the Turberville acres, but rented out whatever he could, while he busied himself otherwise.
Usually the Alexandria Gazette carried announcements of the openings of new schools, but no announcement of Maffitt's school ever seems to have appeared. Because Maffitt performed the marriage of Gazette publisher Samuel Snowden to Mary Longden on January 8, 1802,[62] such an announcement might have been expected. Neither did the Gazette report Maffitt's departure from the Alexandria area.
Probably Maffitt was still living at Chantilly when he married for the second time between 1807 and 1811 before William Maffitt, Jr., was born. His second wife was Ann Beale Carter Carter (1767-1852),[63] widow of Charles B. Carter. Ann, also known as Nancy, was the daughter of Robert Wormely Carter of Sabine Hall in Richmond County, and Winifred Beale.[64] William, Jr., the only child of this marriage, was born in November, 1811, and christened in the Presbyterian Meeting House in February 1812. [65]
In August 1812, Maffitt was appointed a trustee of an academy to be established in Haymarket. Among those serving with him were Ludwell Lee of Belmont, Francis Lightfoot Lee, then living at Sully, and William Fitzhugh of Ravensworth.[66]