Arlington Public Library

Web Editor

Want to March in the Washington Nationals Victory Parade?

Saturday, Nov. 2, 2 p.m.

Open to all families with kids and teens. Participants will be chosen through a random drawing.

Timeline:

  • Application closes at 2:00 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1
  • Selected attendees will be notified by Friday, Nov. 1 at 6 p.m.
  • Staging for the parade begins at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 2.

Rules:

  • Only family groups with children age 18 and under are eligible to apply.
  • Children under 18 must have parental permission to apply and attend.
  • Kids under age 16 must have an adult chaperone.
  • Only one entry per family/person.

Visit the Library website to apply.

Rediscover Haunted Arlington

Four stories to keep you up at night this October...

The Spirits at Overlee

Have you met the ghost of Margaret Febrey?

Febrey-Kincheloe House, from Poolside, 1997

In 2012 construction workers at the Overlee Community Center pool site reported that they were not alone - they would often see a little girl in Victorian clothing climbing through the debris and walking the site.

The construction site was on the grounds of a former historic mansion, known most recently as the Febrey-Kincheloe House, which stood for more than a century. Ernest Febrey constructed the grand home in the 1890s, where he raised his daughter, Margaret.

The Kincheloe family eventually bought the house from the Febrey family. When Mr. Kincheloe suddenly died, Mrs. Kincheloe converted the house into a rest home for Washington dignitaries called the Crestwood Sanitarium in 1947. In 1957 the house was converted into a community center clubhouse, and a pool was installed for the neighbors to enjoy. For many years clubhouse caretakers reported hearing music and laughing late into the night, but when they would investigate the noises, the sounds immediately ceased. The caretakers attributed the unseen source of the noises to the home's time as a sanitarium.

Young Margaret died in January of 1913 of a tubercular infection of the spine called Pott’s disease, and rumors are that the Febrey family abandoned the home soon after she passed away. But unlike the unseen clubhouse spirits, Margaret is not shy. Not only has she been seen around the property often, many people have reported speaking to her. Before the sale of the Febrey-Kincheloe House, contractors and realtors spoke of seeing a strangely dressed girl in the house standing by the basement stairs, and demolition workers spoke to her when they were razing the house in 2012. She’s been seen poolside and swimmers have reported speaking to a girl in a grey Victorian dress.

Children, if you meet Margaret at the pool, don’t be afraid. It’s said she likes to make friends with the children she meets.

Old Post Chapel

Fort Myer, now Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, has always had a storied history...

Old Post Chapel and New Gate at the Arlington National Cemetery

In 1864 the United States government began converting what had been the Lee Family’s estate into a burial ground for Union Army dead, housing for freed slaves and land for various military purposes. In 1861 Fort Ramsey, later renamed Fort Cass, was built on part of the land. However, after the end of the Civil War, it was abandoned.

In 1862 the Army built Fort Whipple a short distance southeast of Fort Cass. Its fortifications likewise were abandoned after the war ended, but its grounds were converted into the Signal School of Instruction for Army and Navy Officers in 1869. In 1881 it was renamed Fort Myer after Brigadier General Albert J. Myer, who had led the Signal School until his death in 1880.

In 1908 Fort Myer was the site of the first aviation fatality during one of Orville Wright’s first exhibition flights. And it was the location of the “Three Sisters” radio towers, which were the first to broadcast a voice across the United States and eventually over the Atlantic.

The Old Post Chapel, the only chapel on the grounds of the former Fort Whipple, holds the most claims of paranormal presences.

The Old Post Chapel was commissioned by Major George Patton Jr. in 1933 when he toured the chapels on the grounds of the Walter Reed Hospital. Patton told Post Commander Colonel Kenyon Joyce that the new chapel should combine the functions of a principal chapel with those of a mortuary chapel in one building.

Workers broke ground in February 1934, and the chapel was officially dedicated on April 21, 1935, where it was known for its attractive spire and intricate stained-glass windows. The chapel serves as a place of worship for the community, a wedding chapel, and a place of final honors for those laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Many fallen service members have lain in wait in the Old Post Chapel for their final trip, and it has allowed family members to grieve in private.

So it is unsurprising that many active duty service members have reported hearing disembodied voices and footsteps in the chapel when they have been alone.

Locked doors have unlocked themselves and opened on their own. K9 units patrolling with service people will refuse to go into the building, and balk at the door, especially at night. And visitors describe a young grief-stricken woman dressed in white who waits for her sweetheart; rumors are that she threw herself from the bell tower, which remains locked to this day.

Wakefield High School

Phantom of the Theater

Wakefield High School in 1996

Who knows where the Wakefield High School ghost has chosen to perform since the school theater it used to haunt was demolished in 2013...

Students and staff said that if you sat very quietly in the balcony seats of the theater, you might see and hear things you could not explain. The piano would begin to play even though no one was sitting at the keyboard. The lights would operate even though no one was in the lighting booth. And the light fixtures themselves would turn to impossible angles, sometimes coming to rest on the person in the balcony or the lone audience member.

Who was the ghost? Rumors say a crew member fell from the catwalk and died in the early 1960s, and was sometimes seen high up on the catwalk, once again reliving his last moments.

Arlington Hall

Who was that woman?

Arlington Hall Girls off for Sight-Seeing Trip - Washington, D.C.

The stately building near the intersection of Arlington Boulevard and South George Mason Drive may no longer be home to military codebreakers, but it's still a place of mystery.

In 1927 Dr. William Martin founded the Arlington Hall Junior College for Women. The rolling 100-acre campus included an award-winning riding club, and the stately Arlington Hall itself was home to many enviable social events including dinners, teas, balls, and formal dances.

In 1942 the Arlington Hall Junior College for Women quietly became the secret headquarters for the Signal Intelligence Service, a department dedicated to breaking German and Russian codes. Unbeknownst to the men and women working to end the war, the KGB had already infiltrated the center, spying via a long-time analyst who had defected to the U.S.S.R. After the Signal Intelligence Service expanded and transferred its headquarters, the building began its third life as a research center, and then as a satellite office for the State Department in 1989.

The building still holds its secrets - not only the unexploded Civil War-era rifle shell found sitting precariously under the hall during an excavation in 2008, but the unexplained noises that occupants hear in the quietest hours.

It is said that if you are downstairs when it is silent, and you know you are alone, you will hear footsteps above you, walking across the hard floor and then stepping onto the carpet and continuing their journey. If you go upstairs to investigate, you’ll see a young woman in a floral dress walking into and out of the women’s powder room on the way to a party. She stops to check her make-up in the mirror before she turns and vanishes...

"Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington" is a partnership between the Arlington Public Library and the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

Preservation Today: Rediscovering Arlington
Stories from Arlington’s Historic Preservation Program

Arlington’s heritage is a diverse fabric, where people, places, and moments are knitted together into the physical and social landscape of the County.

Arlington County’s Historic Preservation Program is dedicated to protecting this heritage and inspiring placemaking by uncovering and recognizing all these elements in Arlington’s history.

To learn more about historic sites in Arlington, visit the Arlington County Historic Preservation Program.

2020 LEGO Exhibit: Submissions Closed

Exibit Dates: January 2 through 31, 2020

Lego creation by Jackson Shapiro 2018

Example created by Jackson Shapiro for 2018 LEGO exhibit.

We want to see your LEGO creativity!

This exhibit is open to LEGO builders age 18 and under, as well as teams that include at least one member under 18.

Submission Deadline: Monday, Dec. 16, 2019.

Rules:

  • Your creation must be ORIGINAL WORK. (Instructions found in a book or online may be followed, but no entries built from commercial kits will be accepted.)
  • Your entry must fit on a 10" x 10" base.
  • You must be able to deliver your creation to the assigned Library location for the exhibit.

Submissions Now Closed

Ghost Stories, Thrillers and True Crime, Oh My!

There’s no better way to get in the Halloween spirit than with a spooky read. From ghost stories to thrillers to true crime, pick one of these up when you want to hide under the covers with a good book.

Celebrate Halloween at the Library

Want to create something booo-tiful, listen to spooky poetry performed, or watch a silly movie?

We’ve got fun Halloween events all month for kids, teens and adults!

This Week in 19th Amendment History: National Woman’s Rights Convention

October 23, 1850

Celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment with stories about the people and events that led to the passage of women’s suffrage in the United States.

On October 23, 1850, the first National Woman’s Rights Convention began in Worcester, Massachusetts. Amidst the ringing fervor of the mid-19th-century clarion call for expanding women’s rights – with the right to vote as its central tenet – this day would emerge as a significant step in solidifying the goals and action plan of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States.

Lucy Stone, one of the Convention’s lead organizers and a speaker at the event.

Held over two days in Worcester, Massachusetts, the 1850 Woman’s Rights Convention was planned by members of the Anti-Slavery Society, among them Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster, Paulina Wright Davis and Harriot Kezia Hunt.

Davis – a New York suffrage advocate who helped petition for the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act of 1848 – would later be elected president of the convention during the event’s proceedings.

More than 1,000 delegates from 11 states gathered in Worcester’s Brinley Hall for numerous speeches on topics ranging from the right to vote, owning property, and women’s admittance to the fields of higher education, medicine, and the ministry.

Brinley Hall, Worcester, MA, where the National Woman’s Convention was held in 1850 and 1851. Photo from the Massachusetts State Library.

Among the convention’s attendees were Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth. Truth and many other prominent suffragists, including Ernestine Rose, Antoinette Brown and Lucretia Mott, delivered speeches over the course of the convention.

The press was largely derisive in its reporting on the convention. The New York Herald, for instance, attacked the speakers’ appearances and portrayed the attendees' demands as ridiculous, framing the convention in their headlines as an “Awful combination of socialism, abolitionism and infidelity. The Pantalettes striking for the Pantaloons. Bible and Constitution Repudiated.”

In a satirical take, the newspaper reported that the Woman’s Rights Convention organizers aimed to:

  1. abolish the Bible
  2. abolish the constitution and the laws of the land
  3. reorganize society upon a social platform of perfect equality in all things, of sexes and colors
  4. establish the most free and miscellaneous amalgamation of sexes and colors
  5. elect Abby Kelley Foster President of the United States and Lucretia Mott Commander-in-chief-of the Army
  6. cut throats ad libitum
  7. abolish the gallows

In some ways, this condescending portrayal helped expand the notoriety and message of the convention. The convention’s proceedings were recorded and sold after the event as pamphlets, gaining international readers and recognition.

Womans convention 1

The Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Convention, held at Worcester, October 23d & 24th, 1850. Boston: Prentiss & Sawyer, 1851. Source: NAWSA Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (014.00.00)

The British writer and women’s rights advocate Harriet Taylor Mill was significantly inspired by the events of the convention, referencing the organizer’s work in her 1851 piece “The Enfranchisement of Women.”

The 1850 convention would be the first of many national events that would occur annually from this point forward for about a decade, setting a precedent for national suffrage organizing.

The twelfth and final Woman’s Rights Convention would be held in 1869 in Washington, D.C. This would be the last meeting of an organized suffrage front: later in 1869, the movement would split into two groups, divided by the issue of suffrage for other disenfranchised populations.

Under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the National Woman Suffrage Association directly opposed the 14th and 15th Amendments that would have allowed for African-American men to vote. Lucy Stone and others would go on to form the American Woman Suffrage Association, which supported the 15th Amendment. The suffrage movement would not see widespread unification again until 1890 with the establishment of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, bringing together Stanton, Anthony, Stone, Howe and other suffrage leaders, including Alice Paul and Mary Church Terrell. The group would hold its first convention in 1890 in Washington, D.C.

The 1850 National Woman’s Suffrage Convention represents a historic moment in the suffrage cause, on both scale and in terms of what resulted from the meeting. Although large suffrage conventions had been held in the past – most notably, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York -- this was the first time a convention of its sort was held on a national level.

This event set an organizing precedent within the suffrage movement for decades to come.

Learn more in “Women’s Suffrage in America: An Eyewitness History” by Elizabeth Frost-Knappman and Kathryn Cullen-DuPont, available at the Library.

2020 marked the centennial of women’s suffrage in the United States. 



Download the Library App