Sunday, April 26, 2009
Step Back in Time to the Ball-Sellers Place
It is not right that you have to do it by car, but that is the only good choice to get across the big road, these days. You can’t even turn left most places on Arlington Blvd. without having some busy commuter drive up your tailpipe. If you were to walk it, as the crow flies from Buckingham, I would allow about ten or fifteen minutes and a couple hundred years. No problem, really, and, if you let yourself, you might just imagine the smell of frying salt pork from an old farm stove for much of the distance.
When the Colonists began to settle this part of Virginia, they did not look east and west. They looked up from the big brown Potomac, and to the valleys carved by the water coming down the fall line. Four Mile Run is one of the more prominent valleys near Buckingham, and that is how settlers would have come up the trail from Alexandria.
In the mid 18th century, yeoman farmer John Ball built a one-room log cabin in what was the adjoining farm to the west, on the other side of the junction of Lubber and Four Mile runs.
He lived in the Colony of Virginia, in British North America. The land that he settled belonged to Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. That in itself is a story, since upon succeeding to his title and to the family’s Northern Neck Proprietary land grant, he became Lord of all the land from the Tidewater to the headwaters of the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers. He lived out in the Shenandoah Valley until his death at the ripe old age of 92. He heard about the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. His Lordship lived much better than John Ball, though everyone likes to fix things up. Ball later added a lean-to and covered the structure with clapboard. I was astonished to find that the rude structure survives today. The cabin is a rare example of how people lived here in simpler times, and it is the oldest house in Arlington. Ball obtained a 166-acre land grant along Four Mile Run from Lord Fairfax in 1742. He then set about clearing the land, and building the cabin from the hewn logs. He notched them and stacked them and chinked the cracks with mud plaster. If you walk over to see it, you can see the original logs with the daubing, as well as the wide plank floors. The rare oak clapboard roof is among the few board roofs preserved in the nation.
John, his wife Elizabeth, and their five daughters lived in this little house above Four Mile Run. The rushing water provided free power for a mill, the grindstones of which are still on the property. They raised wheat and corn and provided milling services for their neighbors. John Ball died in 1766, the year of the Declaratory Act passed in London. Through it, Parliament asserted the right to make laws for the colonies in all matters, including the settlement of estates and the sale of land. That was going to mean trouble, sooner or later. When Ball’s meager estate was settled, a tailor named William Carlin bought the spread. His clients included notables George Washington and George Mason, and his hands would have measured the inseams of the Founding Fathers. Three generations of the Carlin family owned the property for the next century, through the Revolution and the occupation by the Union Army in the Civil War. The Yankee army chewed through the structures of what was then bucolic Alexandria County, like locusts, for firewood and shelter, but the cabin survived. The third generation of the Carlins, brother and sister Andrew and Anne, ran a dairy farm and built the 1880 house that adjoins the Ball cabin in a neat little campus. The wisteria that grows behind the house is theirs. This was the placid heart of old Arlington. Cows and cash crops, and a lot of quiet. If it had not been for the great paroxysm of the Yankee occupation, you could say that nothing much happened here at all. When the Carlins sold the property in 1887, the land was subdivided into a community known today as Glencarlyn. It is the oldest subdivision in Arlington. It is composed of modest homes designed to accommodate modest people. They shoulder one another closely on streets narrower than is the custom now, though the grid is laid over the old farm that hugs the edge of the valley. Marian Rhinehart Sellers was the last private owner of the house. She gave the house to the Arlington Historical Society in 1975. It is open for viewing most weekends, if you care to see it. The house is located at what we call 5620 S. 3rd St., though it once was the center of a little universe. If you look it up on Google Earth, you can see exactly where the boundaries of the farm once were, just as Lord Fairfax would have known them. We have poured a lot of concrete since then, and now channel our automobiles in assertive straight lines across the valleys, east and west. But at the Ball-Sellers place, the earth abides. Vic is a retired spook who has an abiding interest in the people and places of Arlington. Originally from Michigan, he lives in the Buckingham neighborhood and works in Ballston. Vic is a retired spook who has an abiding interest in the people and places of Arlington. Originally from Michigan, he lives in the Buckingham neighborhood and works in Ballston. Photos and story Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra. Labels: arlington annex, arlington history, ball sellers, Socotra
Saturday, March 28, 2009
HeraldTrib Today: March 28, 2009
This story was updated Sunday evening, March 29. --ST
You may have already seen the email from Melanie Wilhelm, the K.W. Barrett Elementary School PTA president.
She wrote:
“Specifically, the plan calls for changing a long-established rule that once an elementary school’s enrollment exceeds 500, five key positions are upgraded from part-time to full time positions. The proposed budget raises the threshold for this upgrade from 500 to 550. This change means that Barrett, along with seven other schools, will not get the increased staffing despite exceeding 500 students next year. The five positions are:
1. Assistant Principal
2. Principals’ Assistant
3. Gifted and Talented Specialist
4. Reading Specialist
5. Library Assistant”
Principal Terry Bratt brought this to my attention. She said she has been talking with the public schools, and told the superintendent how much she dislikes this change, given that she knew the school would reach 500 students and would get the additional staff.
Part of her worry is that Barrett is close to the 550 mark, but is projected to stay under that. In the past, programming has not been adjusted after the fact, she said. That is, if the school is projected to be 544, it does not get the additional staffing even if the real number is 550 in September. It is unclear if this would continue to be the case. One major argument of the Elementary Crowding and Capacity Committee last school year was that the APS estimates were notoriously inaccurate. (The ECCC was a countywide parents group looking at relieving overcrowding in some north Arlington elementary schools). APS has underestimated Barrett’s enrollment over the last three years. I did make one phone call to APS yesterday, but it was not returned. I'll get back to them next week. CHANGE TO THE ORIGINAL STORY (Updated Sunday March 29, evening): At some point on Friday, the superintendent's office posted changes to the proposed budget (find them here). The memo states that state, federal and local decisions have given APS another $6.8 million to work with, allowing the superintendent to reinstate some programs that had been cut or reduced. This includes the 500-student enrollment level that triggers additional staff. That and other changes are here:
Initiative. This will not require any additional local funding in the Operating Fund.
The county tried earlier this decade to make cuts to the Lubber Run Amphitheatre summer programming, and the county manager’s current proposed budget puts it back on the block, saving the county about $16,000, the budget says.
Last time, people rallied to get the programming back, but I’ll admit I’ve heard and seen very little about this in the ‘hood. Other similar proposed cuts have generated facebook pages and everything. I have not seen that here, but maybe I’ve missed it.
I don’t know if this is because people see a need to cut somewhere, or if people just don’t know about it. I doubt that people don’t care, but I’m just not sure. Tell me what you think.
Proposed reductions also affecting the parks countywide: restroom cleaning, trash collection, grass mowing and “general upkeep of park facilities." The county also is looking at relying on in-house staff and volunteers to manage invasive plant removal.
I am really happy to announce the start of a new partnership with Buckinghamster Vic Socotra. He has a Web site with daily updates that cover history and a fun, quirky look at his life.
He has agreed to start supplying the HeraldTrib with a pieces called Arlington Annex on a regular basis, though we haven't figured out exactly what "regular basis" means.
What I like about him is that he's a Buckinghamster through-and-through with his writing. He knows the neighborhood, and its history, and is no stranger to the Virginia Room at Central Library when he's looking for something more. I can't wait to see what else he'll be writing about, but his piece on Columbia Gardens' spooky residents is a great first entry.
Scroll down to check it out below, or click here to read his Arlington Annex column.
Saturday April 4, 5:30p.m. 4347 Arlington Blvd (Northeast corner of Arlington Blvd. and George Mason Drive. ) Limited parking at the Red Cross on N. Trenton Street at Arlington Blvd. All are welcome.
I am inviting anyone with community announcements to send them to me. I will do my best to post them. --ST
The Week’s Headlines…
As always, you can scroll down to see all the recent stories, or simply click the links below (if the link doesn't work, scroll down to find the story, and email to tell me what's busted: heraldtrib@gmail.com --Steve Thurston).
Headlines from Earlier in the Week:
Labels: aps, Barrett, budget, schools, Socotra
Friday, March 27, 2009
Columbia Gardens Has All Kinds of Spooks
This week, I'm welcoming Vic Socotra as a guest columnist. His "Arlington Annex" will appear regularly. --ST
Columbia Gardens Cemetery buttresses the eastern end of Buckingham, where the little houses of Ashton Heights end and the garden apartments begin. It’s real Arlington, family-owned and operated since 1917. In those days, the gently-rolling 38 acres were surrounded by small farms.
In the spring, before the leaves erupt on the mature trees, you can see the stately colonial lines of the main building of the George Schultz Foreign Training Center across the four lanes of concrete of Route 50.
Back in the day, Route 50 was a two lane road, and there were traffic lights at the intersections with Glebe Road and with George Mason Drive, the formal entrance to the Buckingham Neighborhood. Pedestrians could walk to work at Arlington Hall Station without a mad scramble across fifty yards of high-speed desolation.
The State Department was not always the tenant of the former Arlington Hall Junior College for Women on the south side of Route 50. It was once home to the most secret installation in the United States Government. Unlike massive Arlington National Cemetery to the east, Columbia Gardens is a thoroughly civilian place. But there is a secret story at Columbia Gardens, if you choose to dig around a bit. There were some wild and futuristic sample monuments near the sales office of the Thomas & Thomas Monument Company. They have a clear fashion sense in the funerary market, having operated out of the Gardens since 1964. The artisans of the Thomas Company are graduates of the Elberton Granite Institute in Georgia, and specialize in both the latest technology and reverence for tradition. They are the only memorial company in the area that specializes in the art of “hand-cut, V-tooled lettering,” with on-site diamond etching. Their handiwork is clearly evident in the newer memorials at Columbia Gardens. The older graves, from an agrarian Arlington, are inscribed with rugged Anglo-Saxon names. Towards the back are Germans and Hungarians, and then a wild mixture of South Asian, Muslim, Vietnamese and Ethiopian graves that register the waves of immigration. 
There are some notables in the Gardens, including Francis Eugene Worley (1908-1974), born at Lone Wolf, Okla. He served as the member of Congress for the 18th district of Texas, 1941-50, He resigned abruptly for reasons lost to stone, and died in Naples, Fla. The other Congressman present is Charles Noel Crosby (1876-1951), who represented Pennsylvania's 29th District in the years the Buckingham Neighborhood was under construction. If you walk toward the western end, there is an odd monument, a boulder, really, rough-hewn. It has a ledge knocked into one end as a seat, and the name “Flynn” carved on the side. Small letters on the ledge say “Sit down, Let's talk.”
If you do so, you can see a number of Japanese graves, with the characters in Kanji. The dates on the stones—in western numbers—are just right for their owners to have been alive during the big Japanese language project at Arlington Hall, 1942-45, when the Imperial Japanese military codes were cracked. There are many stones with Russian names inscribed in Cyrillic, since that was the target of the work at Arlington Hall after World War II. They must have worked on many other projects at the Hall that required the skills of native Russian speakers. This section of the cemetery is populated with Spooks, left behind when their living comrades moved to Fort Meade. Vic is a retired spook who has an abiding interest in the people and places of Arlington. Originally from Michigan, he lives in the Buckingham neighborhood and works in Ballston. Labels: arlington annex, columbia gardens, Socotra
Photos and story Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
Monday, November 05, 2007
Read the Daily Socotra
Labels: Buckingham, Chatham, Socotra
