Then at 3018 is Christ Church Rectory, where I happened to be born; it was not the rectory then.
Christ Church, as you recall, was founded in 1817 in Thomas Corcoran's house. The illustration shows the first church building of the three which have stood on this spot. It was begun May 6, 1818, and the first service held at sunrise on Christmas Day that same year, the rector being the Reverend Ruel Keith, who was Professor of Theology at the College of William and Mary, and later, in 1823, with Dr. Wilmer, founder of the Theological Seminary, near Alexandria.
Among the founders of Christ Church were Thomas Corcoran, William Morton, Clement Smith, Francis Scott Key, John Stoddert Haw, John Myers, Ulysses Ward, James A. Magruder, Thomas Henderson, and John Pickrell. The present building of Christ Church was erected about 1885. The windows which were made especially for it in Munich, Germany, are very beautiful. The big one in the north end was put there by W. W. Corcoran in memory of his father, Thomas Corcoran.
I have heard from the daughter of one of the belles of the fifties, whose family were Christ Church people, that in those days the beaux might join a lady after church and escort her home, but under no circumstances did they entertain callers on Sunday. All of the food for Sunday use was prepared on Saturday.
It was during the fifties that Dr. William Norwood was the rector of Christ Church. He was a Virginian and very outspoken in the expression of his political views in that day of heated opinions. So violent was the feeling that, although he had a brilliant mind and a saintly character, he was obliged to resign. He returned to his native State and was for many years the revered rector of St. Paul's, Richmond. I remember hearing that as a young man he had a classmate at college, Clement Moore, who one night came into his room, saying, "Norwood, I'd like to read you something I've written to see what you think of it." He sat down and read to him "The Night Before Christmas," that beloved old poem without which Christmas hardly seems like Christmas to me, even now.
Dr. Norwood was followed several years later by Reverend Albert Rhett Stuart, under whose leadership the present church was built. I remember the big basket which was carried around by a fine-looking, tall colored woman with articles for sale for the benefit of the Ladies' Aid Society of Christ Church.
The interesting white house over on the northeast corner was at one time the home of the Godeys, then of the Curtis family. When they lived there, "music filled the air," for a son and a chum of his used to sit out on the long, side gallery and play for hours on the violin and 'cello. It was for several years the home of Justice and Mrs. Owen J. Roberts.
Only two houses on this block are of any age. The little white cottage near the corner of Washington (30th) Street was the home of three Miss Tenneys and their sister, Mrs. Brown, who had a school for small boys and girls. Then the garden ran to the corner. The father of these ladies and of William H. Tenney had come to Georgetown from Newburyport, Massachusetts, in the early part of 1800.
Just across from it, the large yellow mansion was the home of Commodore Cassin, built by him, I think, in the early 1800's. In 1893 Mr. and Mrs. Beverley Randolph Mason, of Virginia, opened here their school, Gunston Hall, named, of course, for Mr. Mason's ancestral home, which continued in Washington as a flourishing boarding school for girls for fifty years. After that, this building housed the Epiphany School, an Episcopal institution.
The property along 30th Street here was all owned at one time by the Matthews family. Henry Cooksey Matthews came to Georgetown some years before 1820. He had been born in 1797 on the farm near Dentsville, in Charles County, Maryland, where his forbears had lived for four generations. He married his cousin, Lucinda Stoddert Haw, whose home, you remember, was on Gay (N) Street, and they built the large house on the southeast corner of Washington (30th) and West (P) Streets.