Benjamin Mackall was a brother of Leonard Mackall. Their father owned large estates in Calvert and Prince Georges Counties in Maryland, and his products were sent to the Georgetown market; so it happened that his sons met the daughters of Brooke Beall, one of the important merchants shipping grain and tobacco to England.
This land was part of the Rock of Dumbarton, and Benjamin's wife was named Christiana. I wonder if by any chance they could have given her that name in commemoration of another Christiana who is spoken of in an old, old surveyor's book thus:
Surveyed for George Beall 18 January, 1720. Beginning at the bounded Red Oak standing at the end of N. N. W. tract of land called Rock of Dunbarton on the south side of a hill near the place where Christiana Gun was killed by the Indians.
The Old Mackall House
Louis Mackall, their son, was born in this house and inherited the place in 1839. He was a well-known physician, but a large part of his life was spent at the old country home of the Mackalls, Mattaponi, in Prince Georges County, and there his son, Louis, was born in 1831. His father brought him to Georgetown when he was under ten years of age, and entered him in Mr. Abbott's school, from whence he went to Georgetown College and Maryland Medical University. He established a large practice in Georgetown and married Margaret McVean. Their home was not here but on Dumbarton Avenue and Congress (31st) Street, and they had a son, again Louis, who also went into the medical profession.
This house was vacant when I was a girl and I remember very distinctly going to a dance there one heavenly moonlight night in June when it was loaned to the O. T. That was a little club of boys about my own age—"Only Ten"—but the meaning of the name was a secret then. During the next two years they followed the example of the I. K. T. by giving dances in Linthicum Hall during the Christmas holidays.
The I. K. T. was a group of boys two or three years older than the O. T. My brother was one of them, and when I asked him a year or two ago what the letters meant he said he couldn't tell; it was still a secret, like a fraternity. They had a pin somewhat like a fraternity pin. I still have the engraved invitations that both clubs sent out for their dances, with the names of the members underneath.
After having been vacant for years this place was bought by Mr. Hermann Hollerith in the early 1900's. He did not make his home here but built a house farther down on Greene (29th) Street, where his family still live. They continue to rent the old house. Hermann Hollerith was the inventor of the tabulating machine which is used by the International Business Machine Corporation, and his work was done in a little house down on Thomas Jefferson Street. His wife was Miss Lucia Talcott.