Part 21 (1/2)

At 3131, at the home of his daughter, is where General Adolphus Greeley was living several years ago when a very interesting event took place one spring afternoon, in 1935. I was walking down 31st Street when I heard the strains of ”The Star-Spangled Banner.” I wondered if I was hearing a radio but when I reached the corner of O Street I noticed a policeman and an Army sergeant chatting in the middle of the street and coming up O Street was Justice of the Supreme Court, Owen J. Roberts, bareheaded, with a lady, to whom he said, ”They are probably saying, 'Some old geezer named Greeley'!” So I glanced west down O Street and there, drawn up along the southern sidewalk, was a company of U. S.

Cavalry, red and white guidon of Company F from Fort Myer. Then I realized that it was the day of days for General Greeley. At last, on his ninety-first birthday, he was being decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor. It had been many a year since his fateful expedition to the Arctic in search for the North Pole.

Just across the street from here now lives Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and a little farther on, the old house up on a low terrace is where the Lancastrian School was opened in November 1811 under Robert Ould. In a few weeks there were 340 boys and girls under tuition, and in 1812 an appropriation was asked for an addition to accommodate 250 more scholars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRIST CHURCH]

The Lancastrian School was sustained by private contributions and munic.i.p.al aid for thirty-two years. The name came from Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker, who started this system in England of coeducational schools, free to those who could not pay. Lancaster had a school of one thousand pupils in Southwark, but disagreements arising with some of the authorities, he emigrated to America in 1818. He died in New York in 1838.

About 1840, Samuel McKenney, whose house adjoined this property on the south, bought it and gave it to his daughter who had gone to southern Maryland to live, and so she came back to Georgetown. Her descendants, the Osbournes, lived there until just a few years ago when the ”cult”

for old houses in Georgetown began. When a garden was made there recently, some of the old foundations of the schoolroom were uncovered.

Almost next door is the Linthic.u.m Inst.i.tute, which still conducts its night school for white boys, and above it is the hall where the old Georgetown a.s.semblies are still held. Here also Mrs. s.h.i.+ppen has her Dancing Cla.s.ses, and here now my grandchildren are learning where I had my first lessons in the same art. The old hall looks just as it did in my day.

Then at 3018 is Christ Church Rectory, where I happened to be born; it was not the rectory then.

Christ Church, as you recall, was founded in 1817 in Thomas Corcoran's house. The ill.u.s.tration shows the first church building of the three which have stood on this spot. It was begun May 6, 1818, and the first service held at sunrise on Christmas Day that same year, the rector being the Reverend Ruel Keith, who was Professor of Theology at the College of William and Mary, and later, in 1823, with Dr. Wilmer, founder of the Theological Seminary, near Alexandria.

Among the founders of Christ Church were Thomas Corcoran, William Morton, Clement Smith, Francis Scott Key, John Stoddert Haw, John Myers, Ulysses Ward, James A. Magruder, Thomas Henderson, and John Pickrell.

The present building of Christ Church was erected about 1885. The windows which were made especially for it in Munich, Germany, are very beautiful. The big one in the north end was put there by W. W. Corcoran in memory of his father, Thomas Corcoran.

I have heard from the daughter of one of the belles of the fifties, whose family were Christ Church people, that in those days the beaux might join a lady after church and escort her home, but under no circ.u.mstances did they entertain callers on Sunday. All of the food for Sunday use was prepared on Sat.u.r.day.

It was during the fifties that Dr. William Norwood was the rector of Christ Church. He was a Virginian and very outspoken in the expression of his political views in that day of heated opinions. So violent was the feeling that, although he had a brilliant mind and a saintly character, he was obliged to resign. He returned to his native State and was for many years the revered rector of St. Paul's, Richmond. I remember hearing that as a young man he had a cla.s.smate at college, Clement Moore, who one night came into his room, saying, ”Norwood, I'd like to read you something I've written to see what you think of it.” He sat down and read to him ”The Night Before Christmas,” that beloved old poem without which Christmas hardly seems like Christmas to me, even now.

Dr. Norwood was followed several years later by Reverend Albert Rhett Stuart, under whose leaders.h.i.+p the present church was built. I remember the big basket which was carried around by a fine-looking, tall colored woman with articles for sale for the benefit of the Ladies' Aid Society of Christ Church.

The interesting white house over on the northeast corner was at one time the home of the G.o.deys, then of the Curtis family. When they lived there, ”music filled the air,” for a son and a chum of his used to sit out on the long, side gallery and play for hours on the violin and 'cello. It was for several years the home of Justice and Mrs. Owen J.

Roberts.

Only two houses on this block are of any age. The little white cottage near the corner of Was.h.i.+ngton (30th) Street was the home of three Miss Tenneys and their sister, Mrs. Brown, who had a school for small boys and girls. Then the garden ran to the corner. The father of these ladies and of William H. Tenney had come to Georgetown from Newburyport, Ma.s.sachusetts, in the early part of 1800.

Just across from it, the large yellow mansion was the home of Commodore Ca.s.sin, built by him, I think, in the early 1800's. In 1893 Mr. and Mrs.

Beverley Randolph Mason, of Virginia, opened here their school, Gunston Hall, named, of course, for Mr. Mason's ancestral home, which continued in Was.h.i.+ngton as a flouris.h.i.+ng boarding school for girls for fifty years. After that, this building housed the Epiphany School, an Episcopal inst.i.tution.

The property along 30th Street here was all owned at one time by the Matthews family. Henry Cooksey Matthews came to Georgetown some years before 1820. He had been born in 1797 on the farm near Dentsville, in Charles County, Maryland, where his forbears had lived for four generations. He married his cousin, Lucinda Stoddert Haw, whose home, you remember, was on Gay (N) Street, and they built the large house on the southeast corner of Was.h.i.+ngton (30th) and West (P) Streets.

Mr. Matthews and his wife were devoted members of Christ Church and named their son for one of its rectors, the Reverend Charles McIlvaine, who later became Bishop of Ohio. Mr. Matthews used to play the flute in the orchestra in Christ Church.

Mr. Charles M. Matthews also married his cousin, who was a daughter of Thomas Corcoran, junior, and niece of W. W. Corcoran. Mr. Matthews, until his death, managed the estate of Mr. Corcoran. He built his home on the southern part of his father's lot at the northeast corner of Was.h.i.+ngton (30th) and Beall (O) Streets.

Back in the eighties Miss Charlotte and Miss Margaret Lee came from Virginia and opened The West Was.h.i.+ngton School for Girls, sponsored by several of the gentlemen of Georgetown, in the old home of Henry C.

Matthews. There, in the last year of its existence, I learned the beginnings of the three R's.

Nearby, at number 3014 P Street, in the fifties and sixties, William R.

Abbott conducted a well-known school for boys. At that time it was only a one-story building. Mr. Abbott was the son of John Abbott, whose home was on Bridge (M) Street. The Abbotts lived in the house on the west next door to the school. In later years it was occupied by the Lyons, Hartleys, and Parris families.

In one of these houses was the school for boys founded by Dr. David Wiley and continued for twenty more years by Dr. James McVean.

There is a fine row of houses just beyond here where have lived, at various times, the Magruders, the Kenyons, the Yarnalls, and, long ago, in the early 1800's, Colonel Fowler, who came from Baltimore and whose wife was a sister of Dr. Riley's wife, made his home at number 3030 West (P) Street.

For many years this house was used as the rectory of Christ Church.

There lived Dr. Norwood and his large family of daughters, all of whom left their impression on the City of Richmond in after years. Also, Dr.