Cool Spring Plantation House (Site)

These coordinates mark the estimated location where the house used to be. No remains are visible here.


<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>
<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>

Here follows an excerpt from "The Story of Ravensworth" website as prepared by John Browne:

William Marbury Fitzhugh’s residence on land he inherited in about 1857 (Parcel 1.1.4.5), is known through only a few sources. His daughter Mary A. (Dollie) Fitzhugh wrote in a March 1878 letter that the family was having financial problems and was preparing Cool Spring to take in boarders.1 Research in the Fairfax County Public Library found mention of Cool Spring in two sources:

In 1956 Charles W. Stetson wrote: “Mr. Egbert Watt, who has spent most of his life in the neighborhood, recalls that Miss ‘Dolly’ Fitzhugh, daughter of William Fitzhugh of Cool Spring, used to visit his family at Oak Hill, and she told him that it was built about 1780 for an eighteen year old Fitzhugh bride. He did not remember her name…. Cool Spring, another old Fitzhugh house built some distance west of Oak Hill, is no longer standing.”

Twelve years later, Jean Geddes had found little more to add to the record in stating: “Besides these great homes there was still another called Cool Spring, of which only the old foundation and a spring remain today…. But little information is available today regarding its past.”

If Dollie Fitzhugh’s information as told by Edgar Watt is correct in its key details, there are two plausible candidates in timing and age – brides of Fitzhugh men who inherited shares of Ravensworth and came to live there.

Sarah Ashton was born in 1769 and married Nicholas Fitzhugh in 1788, when she was about 18 years old. We know that Nicholas was living on Ravensworth by 1789, as he is listed in the Fairfax County tax rolls for that year. Most sources have Nicholas as the builder of Ossian Hall c. 1783 and the first Fitzhugh to live on Ravensworth.

Weaker evidence points to Susannah Meade, bride of Richard Fitzhugh in 1790. Her birth year is unknown (some estimate c. 1775), but she likely was younger than Sarah. Their home, Oak Hill, is estimated to have been built about 1790. Susannah was Dollie’s great grandmother. It seems likely Dollie would have mentioned that important point, if she was the bride in question. Perhaps Dollie did and Mr. Watt forgot that detail. If Richard was living on Ravensworth in 1789, he had no slaves or other taxable property reported by the county tax assessor, which would have been unlikely.

In either case Cool Spring might have been built as a temporary home until the manor house was ready. It was about 3/4 mile distant from Oak Hill on land Richard would later inherit, and more than two miles from Ossian Hall.

The author determined the location of Cool Spring near today’s Eddystone Street by georeferencing the survey plat that divided the property among William Marbury Fitzhugh’s heirs under a court decree in June 1900.4 In a further division of the property in 1905, the heirs sold 105 acres including the house to Lyman E. Sweet.5 Neither the deed of sale nor the earlier court papers refer to the house as Cool Spring.

With the question of Cool Spring’s location answered, another remains: Who was the eighteen year old bride it was built for?

Fitzhugh, William Marbury (1817-1878)
Role in Ravensworth – owner Parcel 1.1.4.5

William Marbury Fitzhugh was the only child of Richard Henry and Mary Ann (Marbury) Fitzhugh. He was born on May 20, 1817 in the Georgetown community of Washington, DC, where his father was a merchant. In 1820, his father admitted having forged several bank notes and fled to Kentucky. By October 1829, either his father had died or his parent’s marriage had ended. For on October 21 1829, Mary Ann married James S. Morsell.

The 1850 federal census is the earliest record found with further information about William’s life. That census identified Kentucky as William’s residence as well as the birth place of his wife, Elizabeth McConnell (1819-1896), and their then four children aged 10 and under. It’s unknown whether William grew up in Kentucky, moved there after his mother died in 1831, or moved there even later as an adult.

William and Elizabeth had at least nine children by 1860:

1. Mary A. Fitzhugh (1840-1920)
2. Harry M. Fitzhugh (abt.1844-unknown)
3. Ellen L. Fitzhugh (abt.1846-unknown)
4. Robert Fitzhugh (abt.1849-bfr.1860)
5. Samuel M. Fitzhugh (1851-1924)
6. Elizabeth McConnell Fitzhugh (1854-1920), married (1881) Sandford M. Hutchison, son of Sandford and Frances (Fitzhugh) Hutchison
7. William M. Fitzhugh, Jr. (1857-1932), married (May 27, 1886) Fannie Gates of Montgomery County, MD in Washington, DC1
8. Sally M. Fitzhugh (abt.1859-unknown)
9. Sarah E. Fitzhugh (abt.1860-unknown), married (1887) Cook F. Slade, son of William and Juliana (Fitzhugh) Slade

Return From Kentucky and a Federal Job:
By 1853 William had returned with his family to his birthplace, Washington, DC. The Washington and Georgetown Directory listed his residence as the Union Hotel at Bridge and Washington streets in Georgetown (today M and 30th streets, NW). His daughter Elizabeth was born in the city in 1854.

In April 1854 he was listed as one of eight initial directors of the newly chartered Georgetown Gas Light Company. This may have been a temporary position to help start the company, which needed to raise money by selling stock. He does not appear in later lists of elected directors chosen from the ranks of stockholders, as do several other initial directors.

Six months later, on October 27, 1854, the following was announced in the Alexandria Gazette:

Yesterday, Mr. William M. Fitzhugh, of Georgetown, D.C., was appointed to a second class ($1,400) clerkship in the General Land Office, in place of R. L. Roam, resigned.

A federal job 30 years before the Civil Service Reform Act would have been a patronage appointment. It likely was given on the recommendation of a person with connections in the Democratic administration of President Franklin Pierce. Perhaps a member of the Marbury family or his mother’s second husband, Judge Morsell.

The Fitzhugh’s next born children William (abt. 1857) and Sally (abt. 1859) were born in Fairfax County, and the 1860 census located the family’s residence in the county. Because census takers move from door to door in their work, it is possible to deduce where William’s family may have been then living from the names of property owners listed before (Jane Cockerille) and after (John Cornwell, Eibeck Birch) Fitzhugh’s in the census list.

Their properties were located on Leesburg Pike and Seminary Road at Bailey’s Crossroads, just south of their intersection with Columbia Pike on the border with Arlington County. The census identified Cornwell and Birch as wheelwrights and their neighbor George Mortimer as a blacksmith – appropriate trades for a busy crossroads.

Ravensworth Landowner and Part-time Farmer:
William M. Fitzhugh did not own property in Bailey’s Crossroads where the census seems to have located his family in 1860, and county circuit court Historical Records Finding Aids show no lease in his name with any of the area property owners. However, Fitzhugh did own land – 399 acres of Ravensworth (Parcel 1.1.4.5) that he inherited from his grandparents, Richard and Susannah Fitzhugh in 1857.

William M. Fitzhugh was a slave owner. According to Slave Census information in Edith Sprouse’s Fairfax County in 1860: A Collective Biography, he owned four slaves in 1860: three males ages 45, 40 and 15 and a seven year old female.7 The 1860 census lists only the 45-year-old at the Bailey’s Crossroads residence.

Sprouse also reports Fitzhugh’s property holdings from the 1860 Agricultural Census:

Real estate: 400 acres, 100 acres improved and 300 acres unimproved, valued at $5,000.
Livestock valued at $700, including five horses, five milk cows, two oxen, four cattle and 20 hogs.
Bushels of wheat (64), indian corn (500), oats (160), Ir. potatoes (25), buckwheat (75), plus 250 pounds of butter and 10 tons of hay.

Farming was not William’s principal work, as the 1860 census listed his occupation as “Clerk in Pub. Dept.” Living in Bailey’s Crossroads would have been an easier commute to his Public Lands Office job in the Treasury Building in Washington, DC. His Ravensworth land was more than twice as far from the city and served by poorer roads.

Civil War and Reconstruction:

Only those who signed an oath of loyalty to the United States could hold public office.

During the Civil War and until 1870, Fairfax County was under the administration of the Restored Virginia Government headed by Governor Francis Pierpont.

Local elections were held in May 1862. However, until 1863, local institutions barely functioned if they functioned at all, as Union and Confederate forces contested to control the area. With the Fairfax Courthouse area unsafe, the court moved to the village of West End near Alexandria in December 1862 and remained there until after the war ended.

Fitzhugh would have had to sign a loyalty oath to retain his federal position during the war. Later he served in other public positions after the war during reconstruction. The Fairfax County Court Minute Book for the July Court 1865, (volume 1863, page 191) recorded:

“William M. Fitzhugh and R. Makely who were duly elected and Commissioned Justice of the Peace for this County this day came into Court and took the several oaths prescribed by law.”
“William M. Fitzhugh was this day appointed Clerk Pro Tempore of this Court in the place of H. T. Brooks deceased, whereupon he took the oaths prescribed by law.”
And later on page 208 for a later court session: “Ordered that the Sheriff of this County pay to William M. Fitzhugh $32 for expenses in removing the records from West End to this CH…”

William’s temporary appointment led to a permanent appointment as Clerk of the Court from 1866 to 1867.

On January 2, 1867, he was nominated by President Andrew Johnson “…to be assessor of internal revenue of the 7th district of Virginia, he having been appointed during the recess of the Senate, in place of Josiah Millard…” The Senate confirmed Firzhugh but, on the motion of Senator George Edmunds (Vermont), a few days later asked the president to return the nomination, which he did. On the second consideration, the Senate voted to reject the nomination. The Senate record doesn’t reveal why Fitzhugh was opposed. Apparently, Fitzhugh remained on the job in the same or a related position, as he is listed as “assessor of internal revenue, Fairfax Court-house, Virginia” in May 1868.

Later Years
In May 1873, William was elected to the six-member Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which had been created in 1870 under the new Virginia constitution. Elected as a Conservative Party candidate, he served a single, one-year term as Lee Township’s representative.

In March 1878, six weeks before William died, a letter signed “Dollie Fitzhugh” indicated the family was in difficult financial straits and preparing their house, which she called Cool Spring, to take in boarders. The letter is credited to the oldest daughter Mary. It asked the administrator of David Fitzhugh’s estate if money remaining from a legacy left to William by his great uncle could be paid. Thomas R. Love replied that William’s creditors had obtained judgement against him and would receive all the remaining money.

William M. Fitzhugh died on May 9, 1878. He, Elizabeth and several immediate and extended family members are buried in the Fairfax City Cemetery. William’s middle name is spelled “Mauberry” on his and Elizabeth’s marker, which appears to have been placed decades after their deaths.