DRAWINGS BY WORTH BAILEY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY WALTER WILCOX
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF VIRGINIA
CHARLOTTESVILLE
The University Press of Virginia
Copyright © 1949 by The Rector and the Visitors of
the University of Virginia
Second printing 1972
SBN: 0-8139-0183-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-188711
Printed in the United States of America
TO MY HUSBAND
CHARLES BEATTY MOORE
TOGETHER WE HAVE DELVED INTO WHAT RECORDS
WE COULD FIND THAT MIGHT THROW UPON THE
SCREEN SOME SHADOW OF THOSE WHO BUILT
AND LIVED IN THE OLD HOUSES IN
ALEXANDRIA
PREFACE
Twenty years ago on a hot and sultry July afternoon, my husband and I started to Mount Vernon to spend the day. On our return to Washington, we lazily drove through the old and historic town of Alexandria—and bought a house!
The town at once became of vital interest to us. We spent months and years going through every vacant building into which we could force an entrance. Our setter dogs could point an empty doorway as well as a covey of quail, and seemed as curious about the interiors as we were ourselves. I became obsessed with a desire to know the age of these buildings and something of those early Alexandrians who had lived in them.
Old maps and records littered my desk. Out of the past appeared clerks on high stools wielding quill pens and inscribing beautiful script for me to transpose into the story of one of America's most romantic and historic towns. It has been impossible to write about every house in Alexandria—even about every historic house. I tried to recall the old town as a whole. A succession of hatters, joiners, ships' carpenters, silversmiths, peruke makers, brewers, bakers, sea captains, merchants, doctors and gentlemen, schoolteachers, dentists, artisans, artists and actors, began to fill my empty houses. Ships, sail lofts, ropewalks, horses, pigs, and fire engines took their proper places, and the town lived again as of yore—in my imagination.