A Portrait of Old George Town

by Grace Dunlop Peter

Robert Peter's house stood on High Street (Wisconsin Avenue), about where Grace Church now stands. He owned the whole block between Congress (31st) Street and High Street (Wisconsin Avenue), up to Bridge (M) Street. It was called Peter's Square. At the age of forty, after he had lived nearly fifteen years in George Town, he married Elizabeth Scott, the daughter of George Scott, High Sheriff of Prince George County. They had eight children.

Their eldest son, Thomas, was married in 1795 to Martha Parke Custis, the second granddaughter of Mrs. Washington. The bride was sixteen, the groom twenty-seven. The wedding took place at Hope Park near Fairfax Court House, where Martha's mother, the former Eleanor Calvert (Mrs. John Parke Custis), had been living since she became the wife of David Stuart, one of the Commissioners laying out the City of Washington. Soon after their marriage, Mr. Peter gave to Thomas and his wife one of the six houses he had built for his sons on lots across Rock Creek in the new city. The one he gave them was 2618 K Street, and is still standing. It was there that General Washington stayed with the young couple so often. Martha was very lovely in appearance, and very devoted to her step-grandfather, and he, apparently, to her.

Robert Peter's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was married in 1787 to her cousin, James Dunlop. Mr. Peter's mother had been Jean Dunlop of Garnkirke. To this couple, the father also gave a house situated not far from his own, a block away, up High Street (Wisconsin Avenue). There they reared a large family.

No more interesting figure looms out of the mists of early George Town than the Reverend Stephen Bloomer Balch, the founder and first pastor of the Presbyterian Church. But, far more than that, he seems to have been pastor, "Parson," as he was affectionately called, for the entire community. It was in his church edifice that each denomination met until they procured their own.

Born on his parents' place in the Susquehanna region, graduated from Princeton in the same class with Aaron Burr, Dr. Balch went to Lower Marlboro, Calvert County, Maryland, to take charge of a classical academy in October, 1775. For two years he taught, drilled the students in military training, and studied theology on the side. His books were borrowed from the Reverend Thomas Clagett, who afterwards became the first Episcopal Bishop of Maryland, and now lies buried in the Washington Cathedral, not very far from his pupil in Oak Hill Cemetery.

Not very long after Dr. Balch was licensed as a preacher, he came to George Town, about 1778, the only place of worship at that time being the Lutherans' small building, where their new church now stands on the corner of the present Q Street and Wisconsin Avenue. The lot was given in 1769 by Colonel Charles Beatty. Dr. Balch preached there on Thursday night and again on Sunday. He did not remain at that time, but, a year or so later, asked to come back, and at first used a little frame house on the north side of Bridge (M) Street, which was occupied on week days by a school. Just about this time he was made principal of the Columbian Academy, and the next year he married Elizabeth Beall, the daughter of George Beall. I wonder if he had, by any chance, met her on his first visit, and the memory of her bright eyes had followed him on his journeys down into the Carolines and lured him back.

At the wedding of Dr. and Mrs. Balch in 1782, tea was served in cups not much larger than thimbles. The ladies of George Town would not drink tea at all during the Revolution, and it was still not plentiful.

He was of a susceptible nature, for, after his wife's death in 1827, he was married the next year, when he was eighty-two, to another Elizabeth, one of the King family. She lived only eighteen days, and a little more than a year later, he again embarked on the sea of matrimony, this time with a widow, Mrs. Jane Parrott. By his first wife he had eleven children, the usual number in those days.

In 1783, one year after his first marriage, he built his home on Duck Lane (33rd Street), which he called "Mamre," from the Old Testament. After Abraham and Lot had separated, Abraham giving Lot the first choice of location, "the Lord told Abraham to look over the whole land which He would give to him and his seed forever, and Abraham moved his tent and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, and built there an altar unto the Lord."

In 1799, when a street was graded through, it completely ruined his property and he was obliged to take refuge with neighbors. One of his neighbors was James Calder, who was a trustee of his church, and Mr. Crookshanks lived near by. Dr. Balch had an island on the river called "Patmos." This time he went to the New Testament and named it for Saint John's abode, where he wrote the Book of Revelations. This island supplied wood for his fires. He had, also, a little way out of town, a farm of ten acres.