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Time Marches On

The ruins of Abingdon Plantation sit on a hill by a roadway in busy Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The property began as a 6000 acre land grant to Robert Howson in 1669, which was traded to John Alexander for 6000 hogsheads of tobacco. A member of the Alexander family built the first part of the plantation house in 1746.

Abingdon Plantation was purchased in 1778 by John Parke Custis, stepson of George Washington, who wished to locate his young family close to Mount Vernon. The Custis family’s plans were cut short when John Custis died from camp fever at Yorktown in 1781. His widow, Eleanor Calvert Custis, married Dr. David Stuart, an Alexandria physician in 1783 and had 13 more children. The two oldest Custis girls, Elizabeth and Martha, resided with the Stuarts, while Nellie and George Washington Parke Custis grew up at Mount Vernon. The Stuarts returned the Abingdon Plantation to the Alexander family in 1792.

In the years following Abingdon Plantation was occupied by Union troops during the Civil War. The plantation’s productivity was hampered by the nearby development of several brick manufacturing companies and the region’s growing transportation needs, with the Washington Alexandria and Mount Vernon electric railway, the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad and the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway (later GW Parkway) cutting into the land.

A fire destroyed the abandoned and deteriorating Abingdon home on March 5, 1930. In 1938 President Roosevelt selected the site for National Airport which opened in 1940. Today, the airport’s parking area surrounds the ruins of the main house, which can be seen by the nearby metro line. Visitors can see artifacts from the Abingdon house site in a special exhibit hall inside the airport, and the site is open to the public.

What About You?
Have you visited the Abingdon Plantation site? Let us hear from you!

From Mann to Huske, Arlington butterflies better

Before Arlington's Torri Huske took home gold for the 2024 Paris Olympics 100-meter butterfly, local celebrity Shelley Mann was the first to do so in the same event.

This article was originally written in 2008 and has been updated by Center for Local History staff in celebration of the 2024 Olympics.

Shelley Mann moved to Arlington as a preschooler with her parents, Hamilton and Isabel Mann. She started swimming at age 11 when her parents enrolled her at summer camp to get her involved with other children. Shelley excelled and enjoyed it so much she joined the swim club at Walter Reed Hospital, where Hamilton Mann was stationed.

Shelley Mann poses at the pool, circa 1950s.

While at Walter Reed, the team won American Athletic Union indoor and outdoor championships from 1953 to 1956. The AAU was a national network of sports teams that produced dozens of Olympic athletes during the middle of the twentieth century.

Though training for several hours a day, Shelley was still an ordinary, though popular, teenager. She attended Thomas Jefferson Junior High and graduated from Washington-Lee High School in 1955.

Shelley Mann meets with then-vice president Richard Nixon circa 1955 on an Olympic-related visit.

Cover from an April 27, 1958, issue of the Syracuse Post-Standard featuring Shelley Mann, who had retired to enroll at Cornell University.

While a student, Shelley sang in the choir, was a member of the social group the Sub Deb Club, and attended dances, football, and basketball games, and went out to eat with her friends. However, as Shelley's trophies and awards mounted, she became a local celebrity.

In the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, Shelley Mann won the gold medal in the 100-meter butterfly, the first year the butterfly stroke was part of the Olympic program. She was also part of the silver medal-winning 4x100 meter freestyle relay team. Her gold was the only one brought home by an American woman, and one of only two gold medals won by the entire US swim team.

Once Shelley returned to the US, she was a national sensation and claimed as Arlington's own. On December 17, 1956, only home for a few days, Shelley received the key to Washington, DC, and was feted at Washington-Lee High School by Arlington's county board and citizens.

Page from the Olympic Trials program. This was the first year butterfly was included as a swim event, and Shelley Mann is listed here as a record holder. 

What About You?

Do you remember Shelley Mann and her swimming exploits? Did you know her? Let us hear from you!

A Day at the Beach


Arlington Beach and Amusement Park opened May 30, 1923, on the Potomac River in the vicinity of the Long Bridge (the old Fourteenth Street Bridge).

The beach flourished until 1929 when it was bought by the Washington Airport Corporation to provide additional landing space.

In addition to a sandy beach, there were bath houses, a dance pavilion, merry-go-round, Ferris wheel, and many other amusement park features. The park also touted excellent parking facilities. Dancing was advertised as one of the chief attractions in the opening season.

Unfortunately, due to its location next to the airport, visitors to the beach were all too often witnesses to airplane accidents and fatalities. Aviation was in its early days and was a largely unregulated industry so such accidents were not uncommon.

The beach also served as a recreational site for many organizations holding annual picnics, etc. At one such event it was decided, as a “lark,” to “burn” someone at the stake. When the fire got out of hand, and the seat of the victim’s pants actually caught on fire, he was quickly untied and beat a hasty retreat to the river where he doused himself to put out the flames. In spite of this incident it was later reported in the newspaper that all had a very good time!

 

What About You?

Do you remember Arlington Beach? What other things did you do during the summer in Arlington? Let us hear from you!

 

Everything Under the Sun

Ayers’ Variety & Hardware in Westover is a unique store; their specialty is everything. From screws to toys to lawn decorations to fishing line, if you need it, you can probably find it at Ayers’.

Ayers’ Hardware, as it is known to locals, was established by John W. Ayers, a World War II veteran from Georgia. He relocated to the Washington area while working for Woolworth’s in 1924, but opened up J. W. Ayers Five and Ten Cents Store in 1948. Ayers was known as the Mayor of Westover, handing out candy to neighborhood children, providing materials to classrooms in nearby elementary and middle schools, and becoming active in several civic groups in Arlington such as the Kiwanis Club and the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. He was active in the community by working for sidewalks and streetlights, and overseeing the Westover Christmas tree, Halloween dances and “Westover Days.” Ayers was a lynchpin of the community even after he turned over the store to his 32 employees in a profit-sharing plan in 1968.

Many were worried when Ayers died in 1976 that the store would disappear and the community spirit of Westover would fade. However, the Kaplan family bought Ayers Variety & Hardware in 1977 from the Ayers estate and has continued to stock it’s shelves with quirky and practical items at good prices. It still serves as an anchor for the small stretch of stores on Washington Boulevard near Walter Reed school, and is a distinctive part of the Arlington business landscape.

What About You?
What do you remember about J. W. Ayers or his store? Let us hear from you!

Life During Wartime

On May 24, 1861, Union troops came over the river to Arlington. At the time, Alonzo Hayes, Jr., lived with his widowed mother, Malvina, his two attractive older sisters, Annie and Mary, and his brother, William, in a two-story house at Sunnyside Farm, two miles from Aqueduct Bridge.

Company L, Second New York Artillery, at Fort C. F. Smith in August, 1865.

Sunnyside farm was adjacent to six Union forts protecting Washington and was occupied by a succession of Union troops. Fences and timber were removed to build forts and corduroy roads and for firewood. A stable with over 1,000 horses was built on their property and Union soldiers boarded in their home.

According to a 1975 Oral History interview by his granddaughter Mrs. Janet Hayes Baldwin, twelve-year-old Alonzo was hit in the heel by a stray shell from a Union fort across the river and limped for the rest of his days. Alonzo also caught smallpox from the troops but survived with no scarring. The family would entertain soldier visitors who were well-behaved but seemed to be homesick, but the widowed mother would sometimes send her daughters upstairs during those visits.

The site of Sunnyside Farm is now the Arlington Science Focus School and children still play on the lawn of Emily Hayes Park, which was donated to Arlington County by Janet Baldwin’s maiden aunt Emily Hayes.

The photograph above was marked for publication, and shows Company L, Second New York Artillery, at Fort C. F. Smith in August, 1865. The original is owned by the Library of Congress.

What About You?
Do you know about Civil War events in Arlington? Is there evidence of the war on your property? Let us hear from you!

Arlington Analog Technology

Ellis Radio and Television

Cleffie L. Ellis was born in Warren County, N.C. and moved to the Washington area in the 1930s, where he attended the old Capital Institute of Radio and Technology.

In 1937 he established Ellis Radio, later Ellis Radio and Television, in the Cherrydale section of Arlington. The shop also carried large household appliances.

Customers would come to view the new medium of television as well as attend demonstrations of household products. Mr. Ellis operated his store until 1988. In 1960 he founded Arlington Electronic Wholesalers.

What About You?

Do you have memories of Ellis Radio and Television or other early Arlington businesses? Please let us know!

 

Changing Times

As an example of Arlington’s gradual change from a rural to an urban county, a milk can is used to collect coins from parking meters in the 1950’s.

What About You?

Do you have memories about Arlington’s change from a rural to an urban county? Please let us know!

 

 

Stormy Weather

Georgetown waterfront

The photo above is of an unidentified industrial area of Arlington flooded by the Potomac River.

If you look carefully, you can see the Washington Monument in the distance. The photograph is dated from the mid-20th century, and the Virginia Room is looking for more information about this photograph.

We have an answer! Alert readers emailed the Virginia Room to let us know that this area is in fact Georgetown, near the Key Bridge. The silos belong to the Washington Flour Company. Thank you for your help!

 

What About You?

Do you know anything about this area of Arlington? Do you remember the Potomac flooding? What about other floods in Arlington? Please let us know!

 

Boy Scouts – Still Doing Good Turns

Excerpt from Oral History with Walter DeGroot

 

Boy Scouts today are still working on merit badges, and Eagle projects, doing community service such as food drives, and enjoying camping and outdoor adventures.

Walter DeGroot’s Oral History in the Virginia Room describes Scouting in the 1940’s.

For Truman’s 1946 inauguration:

“We marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and whatever that street is in front of the White House and then from there we dispersed. And I was so proud of myself. And it was cold that day. It was cold.”

Camping on the Columbia Pike farm and greenhouse property owned by the father of a fellow scout, Jimmy Goings, from the Arlington Methodist Church Boy Scout troop:

“It was a kind of a neat place to go camping. The boys would get on the AB&W; bus, and get off at Mr. Going’s, and drag our tents and the sort up the hill. We camped up there a lot. Behind that there was a very large stone quarry. It was more like a gravel pit. That’s about where Hechinger’s used to have a big store on Route 7 there. And of course Route 7 was the Bailey’s Crossroads Airport. I think we boys used to hike…just to get the cold water from the [Carlin] spring, and then go back over to the camp.”

What About You?

Do you have photos and recollections of Boy Scouts in Arlington? Please let us know!

 

Arlington Spring Resort

 

The first outdoor recreation area in Arlington was developed at Arlington Spring on the banks of the Potomac near Arlington House.

George Washington Parke Custis, the father-in-law of Robert E. Lee, was a hospitable man who kept many artifacts in Arlington House and dedicated his life to the preservation of the memory of his step- grandfather and adoptive father, George Washington.

Arlington Spring was initially used as a place to entertain family and friends, but in 1824 Custis opened it to the public in for a Fourth of July celebration. Arlington Spring contained a kitchen, dining hall and dancing pavilion, and up to 200 visitors a day came by boats, canal boats and later steam excursion boats to attend sheep shearing contests, political speeches or for recreation. Field tents used by George Washington during the Revolution were used on special occasions such as the Revolutionary war hero Marquis de Lafayette’s visit to Arlington in October 1824. It was reported that 2,000 people attended the Fourth of July celebration at Arlington Spring in 1848.

This Arlington Spring illustration is from an 1853 drawing in Harper’s magazine by Benson Lossing.

What About You?

Do you have memories of favorite outdoor recreations in Arlington and on the Potomac? Please let us know!

 



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