A Portrait of Old George Town

by Grace Dunlop Peter

Samuel Hein had emigrated from Königsberg, Germany, as a young man, and had become an American citizen. He was fifty-six years in the Coast and Geodetic Survey, retiring as its disbursing officer. He was an ardent Union man, and during the four years of the Civil War kept the Stars and Stripes flying from one of his windows. All through the two terrible days after the Battle of Bull Run, when the Northern troops were streaming through Georgetown, Mr. Hein maintained a soup kitchen for the soldiers in his back yard. His wife was the daughter of John Simpson who lived on the corner of High Street (Wisconsin Avenue) and West (P) Streets. Her brother, James Alexander Simpson, was a rather well-known portrait painter. They were quite a musical and artistic family.

One son Charles Hein was an artist and had his studio in a little frame house still standing on 31st (Congress) behind another house, opposite the post office. There he took pupils. He was very picturesque in appearance, tall and dark, wore a drooping mustache, low collar with flowing black cravat and wide-brimmed black hat and cape.

Another son Col. O. L. Hein in an interesting book called Memories of Long Ago tells this story:

One day in the spring of 1861, as I was passing the residence of the pastor of St. John's Church, The Rev. Mr. Tillinghast, quite near our house, I was attracted by the sight of a dashing young Cavalry officer, who was showing off the paces of his handsome black charger to the Minister. I lingered nearby, greatly enjoying the equestrian performance, and upon its conclusion I was informed by the clergyman, that the name of the young officer was William Orton Williams, and that he was the military secretary of Lt. General Winfield Scott.

In the following year I was shocked to read in a local newspaper the account of the trial and conviction of Williams and his cousin, Lt. W. G. Peter (resident of Georgetown) as spies under the assumed names of General W. C. Auton and Major Dunlop, of the Union Army, by a drumhead Court Martial, and their conviction and execution by hanging. In recent years I was informed by my wife's mother, Mrs. Ross, that she remembered Williams quite well, and that he was engaged to Miss Anne Lee, the daughter of General R. E. Lee; but that she died, on the outbreak of the Civil War. Mrs. Ross was a cousin of General Lee, and a freqeunt visitor at Arlington before the secession of Virginia.

Williams was of distinguished ancestry, the son of Capt. William G. Williams, a graduate of West Point of the class of 1822, who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Monterey, Mexico, while serving on the staff of General Zachary Taylor, and his mother, America Peter was the daughter of Thomas Peter, a prominent citizen of Georgetown, whose wife Martha Parke Custis was the granddaughter of Mrs. George Washington and an aunt of Mary Custis the wife of General R. E. Lee.

Just next door to this house is the site where, even before 1780, stood the Columbian Academy of which Mr. Rogers was the principal and of which Dr. Balch became the head in 1781. It was a large, two-story frame building, having a high entrance porch, where hung the bell. It stood on a hill which commanded a fine view of the river from the study rooms upstairs. Adjacent to the schoolroom was a large garden in the middle of which was a jessamine arbor. Two of General Washington's nephews were students of the school and lived with the principal.

Here was housed the Columbian Library which was opened in 1803. In later years the present building was erected but having a very different appearance. Here lived Hugh Caperton a well known lawyer.

I myself lived here as a very small child when I was two or three years old and one of my very first memories is being dared by my brothers and sisters to jump off the stone wall fronting the street, about four feet high. I felt as if I had to jump from the Washington Monument, but I did it, with no ill effects.

It was after that the home, for many years, of the Barbers. Old Mrs. Barber moved there with her grandchildren when she sold her home where the United States Naval Observatory now stands. She was the daughter of Major Adlum whose home was The Vineyard where the Bureau of Standards is now. His place was well named for he was a great horticulturist, the first to domesticate the Catawba grape. It grew wild in North Carolina.