Chapter VI
Below Bridge Street
NEARLY all of the business, and most of the social life, up until 1800 took place below Bridge (M) Street. The island in the river below George Town, which was called, variously, Analostan, Mason's Island, My Lord's Island, and Barbadoes, was almost a part of George Town in those days. It belonged to the great plantation of George Mason, of Gunston, the brilliant statesman and author of the Bill of Rights.
His son, General Mason, had there an estate where he entertained in fine style. Louis Philippe of France, while a visitor in George Town, was feted there and said he had never seen a more elegant entertainment. Twenty-three kinds of fish were caught in the river in those days, besides terrapin and snapping turtles, so perhaps they helped to embellish the occasion.
The island was rich in forest trees, foliage, flowering and aromatic shrubs, orchards of cherry, apple, and peach trees. Cotton was grown there which was the color of nankeen; it was spun, woven, and used in its natural color, without being dyed. Also, there was grown a variety of maize of deep purple color, used as a dye.
John Mason had also a town house which we shall mention later. He, like most of the men in this community, was engaged in the business of shipping tobacco. The majority of his trade seems to have been with France, from letters of his father to him, in which the great George offered to help out his son in his shipments by letting him have some of the hogsheads he had on hand.
John Mason had been a general in the Revolution, and was at the head of the militia here, and also owned a ferry operating to the Virginia shore from the foot of High Street (Wisconsin Avenue). The ferry was worked by a great iron chain.
In 1835 Analostan Island was purchased by William A. Bradley, nephew of the Abraham Bradley who came to Washington with the Government in 1800 as Assistant Postmaster General. For many years it was a wilderness, with only traces showing of its once famous house, but not long ago it was purchased by the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association.