Chapter 3
[209-211 North Fairfax Street. Owner: Mrs. Herbert E. Marshburn.]
When the new town of Alexandria was laid out, John Dalton purchased, on July 13, 1749, the first lot put up for sale (No. 36) for the sum of nineteen pistoles. The lot faced the Potomac River and was bounded by Water (now Lee) Street, Fairfax Street and lot No. 37. When the latter lot, which lay on Cameron and Fairfax, was put up later in the day, it was purchased by Dalton for sixteen pistoles.
Within three years Dalton had finished a small frame-and-brick cottage, neatly paneled, in which he is purported to have lived and died. The house faced on Cameron Street, standing about the middle of lot No. 37, with an extensive garden running the depth of the premises to the river, surrounded by outbuildings, orchards, wells, and so on, as was the custom of the times. His will mentioned the fact that he lived on this lot and left to his daughter, Jenny Dalton (later Mrs. Thomas Herbert), his new brick building on the corner of Fairfax and Cameron. His will further stated that the house must be finished out of his estate. To his daughter, Catherine (later Mrs. William Bird), he left the remainder of the lot which included his dwelling and another house on that same lot, at the time occupied by John Page.
On February 27, 1750, John Dalton succeeded Richard Osborn as a trustee of the town. His appointment was the first after the original selection of trustees by the assembly in Williamsburg.
John Dalton was a partner of John Carlyle in the firm of Carlyle & Dalton, which for many years acted as agent for the Mount Vernon produce. He was a pew owner with George Washington at Christ Church, which he served as vestryman. With his wife and daughter, he was a frequent visitor at Mount Vernon and a later chronicler has asserted that he barely missed becoming the General's father-in-law. A fox-hunter and horse-lover, in a company of Alexandria gentlemen or alone, he hunted with Washington and bred his mares to the blooded Mount Vernon stud.