Riverview House (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact spot where the house once stood. No visible remains exist. Isaac and Anna Snowden bought Riverview in 1885. Their daughter Elizabeth Eayre married Daniel D. Thompson of Hollin Hall in a Quaker ceremony at the home later that year. The couple purchased the property from her parents in 1915.


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Backyard Mount Vernon" blog written by Tammy Mannarino:

Wellington, Riverview, Andalusia, Arcturus and Collingwood: The Snowden Brothers and their Homes
Posted on January 9, 2019 by Tammy Mannarino:

Once upon a time, there were three brothers: Isaac, William and Stacey Snowden. They lived on a farm in New Jersey with their Mother, Rhoda Hazelton Snowden, brother John, and two sisters, Abigail and Mary Jane. The Snowdens were Quakers and likely heard about opportunities in the Mount Vernon area through the Mullica Hill Friends Meeting where they were members. In the late 1840’s, Quaker families from New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia migrated to Virginia to purchase inexpensive farm and timber lands and to work with the free black community that existed in the area around Mount Vernon. They wanted to show that slavery was not necessary for financial success. In 1859, two years before the Civil War started, the brothers left home. While it is unclear whether Isaac, William and Stacey were previously acquainted with others that moved into the Mount Vernon area, they certainly worked in concert once they were neighbors.

As they left the Quaker enclave in Harrison Township, they couldn’t have imagined the lasting impact they would have on their new home. They purchased large tracts of land that had previously been part of George Washington’s River Farm and helped forge a community that would, for a time, carry their name (Snowden, VA). Their homes would be central to the development of roads, schools, churches, postal delivery, social and business organizations, recreation, and rail and steamboat travel between Washington DC and Mount Vernon. While there are no known Snowden descendants still living in the area, evidence of their residence in our community from 1859-1949, is easily seen. Communities, roads and properties still bear their names or the names of their homes.

The Snowdens lived in at least five homes along the Potomac. Isaac and his wife Anna lived at Wellington, now the home of the American Horticultural Society. They later moved to an adjacent home, Riverview. William and his wife Elizabeth lived at Arcturus which became the guest house for a larger home, Andalusia. Stacey and his wife Sarah lived at Collingwood, which current residents of the community probably remember for its library, museum and sledding hill, open to the public until 2016. While Riverview, Andalusia and Arcturus were demolished in the later part of the twentieth century to make room for more modern homes, Wellington and Collingwood still stand. These two homes were built before the Snowdens arrived and have rich histories before and after brothers’ ownership. While both homes are listed on the Fairfax County Inventory of Historic Sites, that distinction does not limit or restrict what a homeowner can do with their property. The current owners of Collingwood have applied for a permit to regrade the property which would involve demolition of the mansion.


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Backyard Mount Vernon" blog:

The Snowden School on Fort Hunt Road: a School Built by a Community and a Community Built by a School
Posted on February 22, 2019 by Tammy Mannarino

On the morning of Tuesday, February 18, 1941, The Snowden School, located at the intersection of Fort Hunt Road and Chadwick Avenue was burning. High winds whipped the flames as firefighters from Franconia and Alexandria fought in vain to save the building. The loss of the two-room school house was mourned by adults and children as it represented approximately 70 years of community cooperation.

The origin story of the Snowden School is similar to many others in Fairfax County. In 1870, the Virginia General Assembly passed the Public Free Schools Act as part of the Underwood Constitution setting up publicly funded schools with mandatory attendance. Richard L. Nevitt was charged with dividing Fairfax County into the six townships each operating as a separate school district. He also served as one of the 3 initial Trustees of the Mount Vernon District School Board with E.E. Mason and F.F. Triplett. Unfortunately, very few records of the Mount Vernon District School Board remain.

The Snowden School began at Wellington on River Farm (now home of the American Horticultural Society). In the early 1870s, the home was owned by Valentine Baker, a Quaker from New York. From 1872-1878 the school was operated out of the Baker home and served children from neighboring farms. Attendance records from the time period listed the following family names: Thompson, Baker, Frost, Ballinger, Boughton, Graw, Hunter, Snowden and Eckhart. Valentine’s daughter, Josephine was in her early 20s and was the school’s first teacher. We don’t know the exact date of construction for the Snowden School building, but it appears on the Hopkins map published in 1879.

The Snowden School is marked with concentric squares to the left of the label “Sch.Ho” along Fort Hunt Road (known then as the Neck Road) which moves from the bottom left to top right of this map excerpt. Snowden Lane (later Collingwood Road) is depicted as two dashed lines to the left and below the school. “B.S.S.” at the intersection of the two roads indicated Stacy Snowden’s Blacksmith Shop. Wellington Road is above and to the right of the schoolhouse. Both Wellington and Riverview served as temporary schools.

Kate Snowden, Stacy Snowden’s daughter-in-law, recounted that the one-room school house was “…erected by Theron Thompson, Sr. of Hollin Hall, Valentine Baker of Wellington, William Hunter of Cedar Hill and Stacy Snowden of Collingwood, on a piece of land donated by Snowden. The benches were crude and the only desks were boards around the sides of the room. Children worked facing the wall.” Stacy and Sarah Snowden’s gift to the community was formalized with a deed dated 1900.

After the tenure of Miss Baker, Alice Dove served as a teacher, likely in the 1890s. She was the daughter of Caroline Devers and James Tyler who had a farm in Franconia. (While the Devers and Tyler families found themselves on opposite sides during the Civil War they are buried in a joint cemetery that has been preserved in an office park at the intersection of Metropark drive and Beulah Rd.)

Funding and fluctuating population were continuing threats to the consistency of schooling in the county. Through the 1880s funding for public schools was a contentious issue tied to the repayment of Virginia’s post-Civil War debt. School taxes of 7 ½% on each hundred dollars of property were collected in each district. At a point, attendance could not be maintained at Snowden School. Daniel D. Thompson, who lived with his Father-in-Law Isaac Snowden at Riverview, took matters into his own hands. He “secured desks from the County and school was held in his home with Miss Alice Dove as teacher.”

Nellie Lee Nevitt also taught at Snowden. She was a descendant of the McCarty/Chichester family of Mount Air and Newington. Her family was very committed to education. Her Great Uncle, Richard L. Nevitt and her father Robert Guest Nevitt both served long terms on the Fairfax County School Board and many relatives were teachers. Nellie, herself, taught more than fifty years in the county. The Nevitts also had a long history with Pohick Church and are represented well in their cemetery.

Around the turn of the century, the original one-room building was destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt in the same location in 1903. It was described as having “a pot-bellied stove, oiled wood floors, a well and a ‘necessary’ outside.” News of the Snowden School appeared regularly in local newspapers reporting upkeep of the property (removal of fencing, digging of wells) as well as lists of Teachers working at the school. A second room was added to the building around 1918. In 1922, Fairfax County consolidated its assets and eliminated the District School Boards.

The changeover in control of the local schools may have resulted in some confusion as Mildred Lozano “Aggie” Finks, who began teaching at the Snowden School in the late 1920s, worked for two years without pay. Reportedly, the county school board was unaware that the school existed. In 1929, Aggie saw an opportunity to teach Sunday School classes out of the Snowden School. She and several other teachers were holding non-denominational Sunday School classes at Sherwood Hall on the Accotink Road (now Sherwood Hall Lane). In order to reduce the distance that children had to walk, she chose to begin again at Snowden, this time in the Episcopal faith. She worked with students from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria to lead the classes. Aggie Finks’ idea resulted in the founding of the first church on Fort Hunt Road, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.

What began as Sunday School classes soon grew to include worship services, baptisms and confirmations, all held at the Snowden School until 1933 when a brick chapel was completed on what is now the current site of St. Luke’s Church. Holding church services in a school was not without its difficulties. Bishop Marmion recounted “Since it was difficult for some of the women to slide out of the desks in which they sat…we stood only once during the service, and that was to recite the Apostle’s Creed.”

In 1933, work was completed on the third Groveton Elementary school building, this one at Route 1 and Memorial street. Students of the Snowden School were transferred to this larger brick school that boasted six classrooms and an auditorium. The Fairfax County School Board took steps to sell the Snowden School property. For whatever reason, the Snowden School continued operating, announcing new Teachers every year through 1936.

Both St. Luke’s and the Wellington Villa Association continued to use and repair the Snowden School for a variety of purposes. Vestry and Youth Group Meetings, Red Cross work, and even a surprise party for a young enlisted man headed to Camp Meade were held at the school within months of its demise by fire. The History of St. Luke’s Church reports that “the young people expressed great sorrow at the loss of their “Ark.” Kate Snowden memorialized the school in an editorial piece for the Alexandria Gazette entitled “The Passing of a Landmark.”