A Portrait of Old George Town

by Grace Dunlop Peter

During the Civil War, Mr. Redin was a Union sympathizer, and when President Lincoln removed Judge Dunlop from the bench, he offered the Justiceship to Mr. Redin, but he refused to take the office of his old friend and neighbor across the street. In 1863, he was made the first Auditor of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia.

One of his married daughters was living, during the Civil War, not far from Culpeper, Virginia, almost on the battlefield. She died when only thirty-seven, from the fact that no medicines could be gotten for her; nor could a minister be found to bury her, so her eldest daughter, seventeen, read the burial service over her mother.

There were seven of these motherless children left—the eldest three all very pretty girls. It was quite impossible for them to remain in their home, so their grandfather got permission for them to come to Washington. They came, wearing sunbonnets, and traveling all day long in a box-car from Culpeper to Alexandria, a distance of only fifty miles. There they had to spend the night at a hotel until they could pass through the lines. The Union officer in charge of them slept outside their door that night.

Not very long after their arrival, Martha Kennon, of Tudor Place, came to see the eldest girl. They had been at school together a few years before, at Miss Harrover's. She suggested that they should go "over to the city" together. On the way down to Bridge (M) Street to take the omnibus, they found they had no small change to pay their fare, so Martha said: "Never mind, I have a cousin in a store near here. He will change our money or lend us some." They went to him and she introduced my father to my mother!

This was the old Vanderwerken omnibus that ran along Bridge (M) Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, which became the Capital Traction Company, and now the Capital Transit Company.

I have often heard my mother tell of how the Southern girls would not walk under the Stars and Stripes hanging out from the hospital in the Seminary. They would cross to the other side of the street, and when the Union officers passed, they held aside their skirts. She has also described to me how the city was hung with black when Abraham Lincoln was killed.

Mr. Redin bequeathed his house to his only unmarried daughter, Catherine. She married later, and sold the house in 1873 and regretted it bitterly, to such an extent that she went into melancholia and committed suicide by taking poison. For a while it was Miss Lipscomb's School for Young Ladies, then it was bought by John D. Smoot, and his family lived there many years.

In 1915 Colonel W. E. P. French purchased the property. He leased it during the World War I to Honorable Newton D. Baker, then Secretary of War. At that time Georgetown had hardly begun to be fashionable again, and on first coming to Washington and hunting for a house, Mrs. Baker told a friend she was discouraged trying to find one with a yard where her three children could play, and that she thought they would have to go to Fort Myer. The friend answered in a tone of deep commiseration, "Too bad! You will have to pass through Georgetown!"

Another anecdote of somewhat the same tone was told me by an old lady who has lived all her life in one of the loveliest old Georgetown houses. Many years ago, while the street cars were still drawn by horses, she was in a car sitting opposite two women, one of whom was pointing out the sights to the other. They passed Dupont Circle, where she showed the Leiter house, etc., and as they crossed P Street Bridge, she said, "Now we are coming into Georgetown where nobody lives but colored people and a few white people who can't get away."

On the next block east is a little house, entirely changed now, which used to be very quaint in its appearance when it was covered with white plaster and approached by a sort of causeway from the sidewalk. It had belonged to Henry Foxall, though, of course, he never lived there.