This post script I am endeavoring to practice.
F. Dodge. 1847.
Act well your part, there all the honor lies,
Read, heed!
The above attended to with strict economy, industry and like, will carry you through this life with honor and credit.
The education of the two oldest sons, Francis, junior, and Alexander Hamilton, seems to have been planned to fit them specially for commercial life, to succeed their father in his well-established business. Francis was sent to Georgetown College and Alexander to Princeton—he graduated in 1835. Robert Perley Dodge graduated from Princeton in two years, standing fifth in a class of seventy-six. He then entered a school of engineering in Kentucky. In six months he completed a major course. He rated so high that he was offered a professorship in mathematics, but declined, and became a civil engineer.
The Sons of Francis Dodge, 1878
William and Allen Dodge received special practical training in agriculture and animal industry at the Maryland Agricultural College. Mr. Dodge bought William a farm near Hagerstown, and for Allen one near Bladensburg, but, due to the Civil War and the abolition of slaves, both of these highly developed ventures failed, and the farms were sold. Charles, the youngest, attended Georgetown College, and took up commercial and export business. In 1862 he was offered command of a Confederate regiment but declined, being a Unionist. He accepted, instead, the rank of major and paymaster in the Federal Army and served throughout the war. For a time he was interested in gold mining in Maryland, and in 1889 succeeded his brother Frank (then deceased) as collector of customs of the District of Columbia.
On the twelfth of June, 1849, a remarkable event took place in this old house—a wedding ceremony at four o'clock in the morning of four of the children of Mr. and Mrs. Dodge. Adeline was married to Charles Lanman; Virginia to Ben Perley Poore, a well-known correspondent of Harper's Weekly in those days; Allen Dodge to Miss Mary Ellen Berry, and Charles Dodge to Miss Eliza G. Davidson of Evermay. The weddings were celebrated at this unusual hour so that the bridal couples could take the regular stage leaving Georgetown for Baltimore at five o'clock. At least it was a cool time of day for the celebration, and how beautiful it must have been with the dew lying on the box and the roses, and the birds twittering their sunrise notes. What a jolly time these four couples must have had, starting off together. Let us hope their spirits were not too much dampened by the fact that their father would not witness the ceremony, as it was at variance with his religious scruples that it was not conducted in a church. Reverend N. P. Tillinghast, then the rector of St. John's Church, must have officiated, as the Dodges were always ardent supporters of St. John's.