In honor of Women's History Month, let’s talk about the early years of Alexandria. Looming large in the seaport’s beginnings were the Fairfax, Carlyle, West and Washington family members. A half century before the “cave dweller” set established themselves in the nation’s new Federal city, these northern Virginia families made up six of the eleven original town trustees. Their riverside mansions reflected the continued prosperity of the colony and were the epicenters of high society.
One of the town founders was Colonel William Fairfax (1691-1757). London-born, he was a cousin of and land agent for Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, the proprietor who owned the rights to the Fairfax Grant, all of the land that is now the Northern Neck and northern Virginia. In the early 1740s, Colonel Fairfax built Belvoir, a brick Georgian beauty where George Washington learned a thing or two about social circles.
Colonel Fairfax’s wife was Sarah Walker Fairfax (1700-1731). She came into the world in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. Dr. Sandra Patton-Imani, professor of American Studies, tells us Sarah was the daughter of a British Officer and Sarah Alice, “reported to be a free Black woman.”
Colonel Fairfax and Sarah Walker had four children. Thomas (1726-1746) was killed while serving in the Royal Navy.
The other three were George, Sarah, and Anne. George William Fairfax (1724-1787), the eldest and a close friend of George Washington, married Sarah “Sally” Cary (1730-1811). In their time, the Cary’s in Virginia turned a head or two.
Sarah Fairfax (1730-1761) married John Carlyle (1719-1780), Alexandria’s famed merchant who knew a thing or two about shipping (no known image of her). In the heart of the new seaport town, Carlyle built a handsome hipped roof counterpart to Belvoir, a Georgian beauty made of stone. It was arguably the most impressive structure in Alexandria then and still is today.
Anne Fairfax (1728-1761) married Lawrence Washington, a distinguished Naval officer, leader of the Ohio Company of Virginia, half brother of George Washington, and early owner and namer of Mount Vernon.
These three unions were pillars of early Alexandria society. Two other marriages increased the social capital of this short-lived dynasty. After Sarah Fairfax Carlyle passed away in 1761, Carlyle wed Cybil West. Their brick manor home overlooked the town from a riverside perch just south of Great Hunting Creek. In his terrific paper on the family, historian Jim Bish convincingly argues that the West family stands firmly alongside the Fairfaxes, the Washingtons, Masons, Alexanders and Carlyles.
After Lawrence drew his final breathe in 1752, the widowed Anne married George Lee (1714-1761). While not as famous as others of the Lee family, George Lee is the answer to the question - Who collected rent for Mount Vernon from George Washington until 1761?
Living just a few eagle cries away from Belvoir, George Washington became close with the Fairfax family. George knew them all — Thomas, Sixth Ford Fairfax, Colonel Fairfax and his three children with Sarah — as well as Deborah (second wife of Colonel Fairfax), Bryan, who would become Eighth Lord Fairfax and also built a mansion south of Alexandria, William Henry, also killed in battle, and Hannah, who married Warner Washington, George’s cousin.
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In order to get people to pay attention, story tellers often need to think outside the box. Recently, one such bold move was made by the creators of “Bridgerton.” Roberta and I recently binged watched the series on Netflix. The alternate history drama takes place in London during the Regency era (1810s).
As we were watching, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be interesting if someone could produce a similar series with characters of color having central roles? With this approach, an opportunity exists to tell some of the stories of early Alexandria in a “What If?” point of view.
Sadly, Sarah Walker Fairfax died in 1731 (There are no known images of her. The one we show has been used on the web. The source is unknown). Nevertheless, a series based in Alexandria could focus on her children and the families they married into in Alexandria.
Or, how about this?
Sarah arrives in Alexandria, let’s say in 1753. As she walks up the hill from a wharf, she sees a large mansion home at the corner of Fairfax and Cameron. Approaching the home in the dark, she looks through a window and sees a gathering of people.
As the guests shift around in the large room, Sarah leans in for a closer look. Suddenly, she gasps.
“Dear God, that’s my dear William.”
Seconds later, Sarah is startled by an approaching woman.
“May I help you?”
Sarah’s fears fall away. The dark-skinned woman is kind-hearted. Sarah asks her about the gathering of people in the room.
The man standing by the fire is Colonel William Fairfax. Beside him, the one with curly hair is George William, his son. The lady is Sally, wife of George William. In the other room are Anne Fairfax and Sarah Fairfax. Sarah is married to Mr. Carlyle, who owns this home.
And the tall man over there?
“George Washington.”
The next day Sarah is reunited with her family at Belvoir. Word slowly spreads of her story. Colonel Fairfax, who has not remarried, had been told by the authorities in Nassau that she had drowned in a boating accident.
In an upstairs room at Belvoir, Sarah tells her long lost husband that she was kidnapped and enslaved. For twenty years she worked for money on the side and self-emancipated. Paying off a captain in Nassau, she boarded a tall ship bound for Virginia.
After twenty years of being apart, Sarah and Colonel Fairfax embrace. They are together again, eager to restart their life. But as the story unfolds, many in Alexandria are not sure what to think after they learn about an idea Sarah has suggested to her husband.
Sarah is not sure how her plan would work, but she convinces Colonel Fairfax to offer some sort of conditional form of freedom to a select number of his enslaved humans. As long as they paid a rent, they could live and work on nearby rural lands or in Alexandria. Perhaps some who are semi-skilled could work in town.
Needless to say, the news of “The Fairfax plan,” hits the seaport like a storm. But some are not quick to dismiss the idea. A growing tension has risen in Alexandria and slave owners are on edge. Several “servants” had escaped on an outgoing ship. There are rumors of a slave revolt. The new urban environment had given the enslaved new resistance opportunities not possible on the plantations and farms.
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A possible filming site for such a series?
Flames and shells leveled Belvoir, so it’s out. The Carlyle House and its spaces, however, are an appealing possibility. They even have an historical marker titled, “Living and Working in 1700s Alexandria,” with a subtitle of “People Not Property.” It says:
One enslaved worker, Penny, was purchased from a nearby plantation when she was just a young teenager. She lived and worked here her entire life. If we could hear her, what would she say?
William Fairfax purchased the land and selected the site for his home “Belvoir” overlooking the Potomac in the late 1730s, within a year or two of moving into the Northern Neck to take the job of Customs Collector for the South Potomac and, more importantly, to act as land agent for his cousin Lord Fairfax. His lordship thought it best to place a family member in charge of selling land and collecting rents after learning of the shocking amount of money and land amassed by his previous agent, Robert “King” Carter. Their Belvoir brick mansion was completed in 1741 and the Fairfax family moved in that year (as testified by Mrs. Deborah Fairfax in 1745.) Future son-in-law Lawrence Washington appears to have lived, temporarily, with the Fairfax family in the late winter/early spring 1743, which is how he became engaged to young (age 14 or 15) Anne Fairfax and married her that summer. Lawrence was NOT a naval officer. He was commissioned as a captain in the British Army and served two years in the Caribbean, 1740-42. Upon his return to Virginia at the end of 1742, Lawrence applied for, and was appointed, to the [then vacant] position of Adjutant of the Virginia militia at the rank of major. While stationed in the Caribbean, Lawrence had served aboard Admiral Edward Vernon’s flagship, “Princess Caroline” (80 guns), as acting captain of the Marines: Vernon’s squadron having deployed from England without Marines. Lawrence’s only surviving portrait, displayed in George Washington’s library/office at Mount Vernon, shows him wearing an iconic redcoat of a British Army officer, paired with a gold-braided hat signifying his role as militia commander. Lawrence was the third and last Virginia Adjutant. After his death and the arrival of a new governor, Robert Dinwiddie, a decision was made to divide command between four regional officers (of whom George Washington was one; Within a few years Washington was given command of the entire Virginia militia.)
Posted by: Richard Gamble | March 08, 2021 at 09:05 PM