Salona, Fairfax County, Virginia

by Ellen L. Anderson

In the following spring of 1814, it (the war) came more home to us, as the British got into our southern waters, and in August came up to Washington and burnt all the public buildings.... As I lived about ten miles from Washington, Mrs. Madison and a number of city people took refuge at my home the night the British took Washington....

They watched the flames of the burning capital from Rokeby that night.[71]

Irving Brant, definitive biographer of Madison, writes of the departure of the Madisons from the capital:

The travels of President and Mrs. Madison after the battle have long been involved in obscurity and contradiction owing to the meagerness of early records (Dolley's letters about it were eaten by mice), uncertain memories and the derogatory stories circulated by political detractors. The facts bear little resemblance to the popular stories in which the Jones and Carroll families are nonexistent, Dolley wanders forlornly from house to house, while Madison, split in person rather than personality, simultaneously hides in a miserable hovel in the Virginia woods and flees in terror into the distant hills of Maryland.

Actually, a clear record was left by participants and observers. The original plan was for Madison to join Secretary Jones and their families at Bellevue and proceed by way of the Little Falls bridge to Wiley's Tavern on Difficult Run near the Great Falls. From there the President and cabinet members would cross the Potomac and join the army. Time growing short, Madison changed the rendezvous to Foxall's Foundry. With that route from the White House clogged by the militia's flight, he sent Tench Ringgold to the foundry with word that he was crossing at Mason's Ferry and would meet his wife and party at Salona, the home of the Reverend John [sic] Maffitt, three miles above the Little Falls bridge.... [72]

Madison, Rush and Mason rode to Wren's Tavern at Falls Church. Monroe and Ringgold took the Leesburg road, stopped briefly at Rokeby, the home of Richard Henry Love, two miles above Little Falls, and went on to Wiley's Tavern. From Wren's Tavern the President went to the Minor home and from there to Salona, where he spent the night with the Maffitts. But Mrs. Madison failed to come. She and her party had stopped only a mile away at Rokeby, with her young friend Matilda Lee Love, an occasional overnight guest at the White House....

The next morning, Madison went back to Wren's Tavern—looking for his wife, he told Colonel George Graham, who gave him a guard of two dragoons. Returning to Salona, the President learned that Mrs. Madison and the Jones and Carroll families had gone by on their way to Wiley's Tavern. He and Rush followed along the Old Dominion Road (Mason being detained for a time) and took refuge from the hurricane in a house at "The Crossroads" five miles from the Little Falls bridge. [73]

At midnight, the President went to the new Conn's Ferry above Great Falls, and at daybreak he crossed the river into Montgomery County, Maryland. Mrs. Madison stayed at Wiley's Tavern until the President sent her word that Washington was clear of the enemy.[74]

A more romantic but apocryphal story of the Madison's flight from Washington was written in 1914 by a columnist known as "The Rambler" for the Washington Star.[75] In this version, Dolley crossed the Potomac on "the Causeway Ferry," then passed Nelson's mill, went on to Falls Church, and finally drove up "to Salona Hall, the home of Parson Maffitt, and was welcomed by Mrs. Maffitt." He further recounts that Mrs. Madison was refused shelter at two country places before she reached Salona, though this did not seem reasonable. [76]