A Portrait of Old George Town

by Grace Dunlop Peter

A Long and Interesting Life

Mrs. Britannia Wellington Kennon, who died at Tudor Place, her historic home in Georgetown, on the 26th instant, and who will be buried today, was for many years a most interesting figure in the social life of Washington. She was the last in her generation of the descendants of Mrs. Martha Washington. John Parke Custis, Mrs. Washington's son, left four children. One of his daughters, Martha, married Thomas Peter, and Mrs. Kennon was their daughter. She married Commodore Beverley Kennon, of the United States Navy, whose father was General Richard Kennon, of Washington's staff, a charter member of the Society of the Cincinnati, and a grandson of Sir William Skipwith. Commodore Kennon was killed in 1844 by the explosion on the U. S. S. Princeton, so Mrs. Kennon was a widow for more than sixty-six years.

Tudor Place, Mrs. Kennon's home, was famous for the distinguished guests that were entertained there, among them being General Lafayette, who visited there in 1824. She was the center of an intellectual and cultivated society, and was always in touch with the progress of events in the world.

Mrs. Kennon was born three weeks after the Battle of New Orleans, and several months before the Battle of Waterloo. Her life spanned the period of the great advance in the appliances of civilization in this and the last century. It was very important that the news of the battle of Waterloo should reach London without delay, and yet with every appliance and speed then known, it took three days for the news to reach England. Indeed, when Mrs. Kennon was thirty-two years of age, it required eight months to travel from New England to Oregon. At the age of fifteen she could have been a passenger on the first passenger railroad train that was ever run; until she was five years old, there was no such thing as an iron plow in all the world, and until she was grown up, the people were dependent on tinder boxes and sun glasses to light their fires. She had reached the age of twenty-three years when steam communication between Europe and America was established, and when the first telegram ever sent passed between Baltimore and Washington she was still a young woman. If all the advances in civilization which took place during the lifetime of this remarkable lady were catalogued, they would make a singularly interesting list.

Mrs. Kennon was left a widow when less than thirty years of age, with her one child, Martha Custis Kennon. To Mrs. Kennon and her daughter Mrs. Thomas Peter bequeathed Tudor Place, having long survived her husband, and her other children having received their inheritance. Martha Custis Kennon married her cousin, Dr. Armistead Peter, the son of Major George Peter, and so the original surname came back to the place, which has never been out of the one family.

Until the death of Mrs. Kennon when they were, of course, divided, there was at Tudor Place a very large and valuable collection of Washington relics, fascinating things, among them Mrs. Washington's seed-pearl wedding jewelry and dress, a set of china made for and presented to General Washington by the French government, the bowl given him by the Order of the Cincinnati, and numberless other interesting things. In a corner of the central room, the saloon, as it is called, was the small camp trunk always used by the General. The room on the east, off of which opens the conservatory, is the drawing room; that to the west, the parlor. The saloon opens out onto the temple, the round porch on the south. The two large rooms at each side have lovely cornices, beautiful marble mantels and handsome crystal chandeliers; long group windows to the floor and very unusual doors of curly maple. At the debut tea of Mrs. Kennon's granddaughter, I was helping to serve, when, seeing two dear old ladies, one very short, the other very tall, both dressed in simple black with big bonnets and long veils, looking about in the crowd as if they were trying to see something particular, I went up and asked them if I could bring them some refreshments. They said, "No, thank you, we really don't want anything, we are just trying to see if there are the same ornaments on the table as when Britannia was married." I found out afterward that the ornaments were three beautiful alabaster groups of classic figures. The two old ladies were Miss Mary and Miss Rosa Nourse, of The Highlands.

Britannia Peter was a first cousin of Mary Custis, of Arlington, and was one of the bridesmaids at the wedding there which united the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis to the handsome United States army officer, Robert Edward Lee. The friendship was an enduring one, and General Lee visited Tudor Place when he paid his last visit to Washington City in 1869.

Britannia Peter was bridesmaid for another first cousin, Helen Dunlop, when she was married at Hayes to William Laird.

From the descendant of another one of those bridesmaids at that famous wedding at Arlington who, as a young girl, paid long visits to Mary Custis, I heard this delicious story: "There being no telephones, when the girls at Arlington and at Tudor Place wanted to get together they had a series of signals. Hanging a red flannel petticoat out of the window meant 'come on over'. A white one had another meaning. This method was not popular with the owners of the two mansions, but persisted, nevertheless." To prove this, not long ago I went to Arlington with the person who told me the story. The room there used by the girls of those days does look toward Georgetown. There is a forest of tall trees there now but trees can grow very tall in a hundred years.

When my father built his house at the foot of Mrs. Kennon's place, she told him she was so glad to have him near by, but chided him for cutting off her view of the river.