Introduction
Mid-2022 was the end for the 87-year-old house that sat on the west side of Beulah Road’s 500 block in northeast Vienna (see Figures 1 through 3). When David and Dora Gheen sold the house in the mid-1970s, they had owned it for more than 30 years, longer than any other owner of the structure, so I will refer to the house as the former Gheen house. This article looks at the history of the house and the land upon which it sat back to the Colonia era. It also takes note of the previous owners of the land and the eventual house, in some cases providing biographical sketches of the owners, including the Gheens.
Colonial Era
Like all of Fairfax County, the land of our house of interest was part of the enormous Northern Neck land grant of the mid-17th century, which originated in the English Civil War and was eventually consolidated under the control of the Fairfax family.
In 1726, the Fairfax family granted 1120 acres from their holdings to Captain Charles Broadwater, according to “This Was Vienna, Virginia,” by Connie and Mayo Stuntz. Our parcel of interest would have been at the northern edge of this tract, judging from an analysis in the Stuntz book of the tract’s boundaries (p22) and a review of property deeds (see Figure 4). I direct you to this book for biographic information on the members of the Broadwater and Hunter families who owned the land until the mid-19th century. For an interpretation of the mid-18th-century extent of Broadwater family holdings in the Vienna area, see Beth Mitchell’s map of Fairfax County landholders as of 1760.
In 1733, Colonel Charles Broadwater inherited the land of his father, the elder Charles Broadwater, according to the Stuntzes.
In 1776, Charles Broadwater (the younger) and wife Ann Broadwater sold 195 acres of their land to their son-in-law, the Scottish immigrant John Hunter, according to the Stuntzes. The parcel eventually became known as the Ayr Hill tract.
Early 19th Century
In 1816, court-appointed commissioners partitioned the 195 acres among Hunter’s children and grandchildren, according to Fairfax County property records. George Washington Hunter’s allotment included a 52-acre portion of the Ayr Hill tract upon which our future house of interest would sit, judging from the plat and the accompanying deed (see Figure 5). At an undetermined point afterward, G.W. Hunter reconstituted the Ayr Hill tract by buying a separate lot from other family members and combining it with his portions of the 1816 partition, according to the Stuntz book.
In 1841, George Hunter and his wife, Mary, sold the 200-acre Ayr Hill tract to Lewis Johnson for $1500, according to Fairfax County property records. Lewis Johnson was born in Virginia circa 1814, judging from census data. Lewis’s wife, Amelia Ann McDaniel, was born in Virginia circa 1816. She was the daughter of Fairfax County’s Robert McDonal or McDaniel and Cassa Barns, judging from Robert’s will. Amelia’s parents weren’t married, judging from how Robert’s will characterizes his relationship with Cassa: “Cassa Barns, who I have lived with in the habits of intimacy.” Nonetheless, he declares in the will that Cassa is the “mother of my children,” including Amelia, “all of whom I claim and have good cause to believe my issue.” The marriage record for Amelia and Lewis indicates that she went by “Milly.” This record doesn’t provide the year of the marriage, but based on the age of the Johnsons’ oldest daughter, they were married by 1838, when they were in their early 20s. The Johnsons had at least three children, all of them daughters, according to census records. Two of the daughters probably died in adulthood before their parents.
The Johnson’s were in their late 40’s during the Civil War, and we have evidence of at least one instance of the war’s effect on them. In 1863, after Confederate John Mosby embarrassed Union forces with a raid on Fairfax County Courthouse, a Lewis Johnson was among a dozen Fairfax County men arrested in the aftermath. Federal authorities arrested him at home, charged him with providing information to the Confederates, and jailed him in the Old Capitol Prison, according to the Alexandria Gazette and a retrospective by Historic Fairfax City, Inc. Johnson apparently was freed after taking a loyalty oath to the United States. After the war, Mosby claimed that he hadn’t received any information from locals in connection with his raid, which, if true, would exonerate Johnson.
The Johnson’s appear to have enjoyed some prosperity, despite the Civil War. They purchased multiple parcels over the years, at least one with even more acreage than the Ayr Hill tract. This parcel is described in the Stuntz book as the eastern part of John Follin’s property. The value of their real estate holdings doubled between 1850 and 1860 from the original $2,000 and grew across three censuses. Even after they sold Ayr Hill, they retained an adjoining 20-acre parcel that was part of a separate acquisition and today is east of Beulah Road between Creek Crossing Road and Nelson Drive (see Figure 6).
Lewis Johnson died of “dropsy” in 1879 “near Vienna,” according to the Virginia Register of Deaths for that year. Dropsy today is referred to as edema, the swelling from excess fluid in body tissue. Since the mid-1800s, medical authorities have considered edema, aka dropsy, a symptom of heart, liver, or kidney disease. After Lewis’s death, Amelia lived in a household with her brother, her widowed daughter, her widowed son-in-law, and a grandson, according to the 1880 census. The household was somewhere in the Vienna area, judging from the identity of other people on the census form. I am unable to determine when Amelia died, other than it was after the 1880 census.
In 1850, Lewis and Amelia Johnson sold the Ayr Hill tract to Isaac C. Fenton of Fairfax County and Josiah B. Bowman of Otsego County, New York for $2313. At the time of the 1850 sale, the tract had a house but no other improvements, according to Bowman’s recollection in the early 1870s.
Isaac Charles Fenton was born west of Saratoga Springs, New York in 1823, according to the Edwards/Adams Family Tree on Ancestry.com, which attributes the information to a family bible (see Figure 7). In 1845, he married Margaret Jennet Ramsey. Margaret was born in 1821 in Lawyersville, New York, which is between Albany and Cooperstown. As of the 1850 census, Isaac was a farmer, he and Margaret were living in Fairfax County, and they had a four-year-old daughter. This daughter was herself born in New York in mid-1846, indicating that the Fentons had moved to Virginia sometime after her birth in 1846 but before the 1850 Vienna purchase.
As for presence of the Fentons in Vienna, Isaac and Margaret co-owned the Ayr Hill property for a short time, until 1852. That same year, they bought a parcel in the vicinity of today’s Oakton Shopping Center and the intersection of 123 and Courthouse Road, according to Fairfax County property records. A year later, they appeared to be still living at this Oakton parcel, given that their second daughter was born at Flint Hill, Virginia in 1853, according to the McKeown Family Tree on Ancestry.com.
The Fenton’s third daughter was born in Vermont in 1856, indicating that sometime between 1853 and 1856 the family left Virginia and returned to the northeast. The Fentons were blessed that each of their four children—all daughters—survived them by at least a few years, judging from Isaac’s will and Ancestry.com family trees. In the Northeast, Isaac made a living as a Methodist clergyman rather than as a farmer, judging from census records. As part of his clerical duties, Isaac officiated at the Vermont wedding of one of his daughters, according to marriage records. For the rest of their lives after the Fenton’s moved back to the Northeast, Isaac and Margaret often changed residences, presumably reflecting the practices of a 19th century Methodist preacher. Various US and state censuses between 1870 and 1900 place them at different locations in New York during the period.
Isaac C. Fenton, 75, died in 1900 near Schenectady, with heart failure as one of the causes. Margaret survived him by some 18 months, dying of a heart issue in 1901 at age 80 in Westchester County. The couple is buried near Albany.
The Bowman Ownership
When Isaac and Margaret Fenton sold the Ayr Hill tract in 1852, the purchasers were Josiah B. Bowman, their co-owner from the 1850 acquisition, and Mary Bowman. The Bowmans paid $1600 for the Fenton’s share of Ayr Hill, according to the deed. The transaction accounted for 192.5 acres, with another 1.5 acres in dispute with G.W. Hunter, the Charles Broadwater heirs, and an unspecified member of the Gunnell family. Josiah’s name is on the 1850 deed, but Bowman’s father, Charles, may have financed Josiah’s portion of the transaction or even represented himself as Josiah, judging from Josiah’s testimony two decades later. “My father bought the place in the spring of 1850,” Bowman testified to U.S. government officials in 1873 regarding the Ayr Hill tract. Another anomaly from the original Bowman acquisitions is Mary Bowman’s role on the 1852 deed as a co-purchaser. This presumably is a reference to Josiah’s mother, whose name was Mary Bowman, judging from the 1850 and 1860 censuses. The 1860 census indicates that Mary was living at Josiah and Fannie’s Ayr Hill residence as of 1860.
Josiah Bowman was born in 1827 and died in 1904. His place of birth was Ames, New York, according to the death certificate of daughter Mary Elizabeth Staats. Ames is in the same general area of the state from where the Fentons hailed (see Figure 7). This may help to explain how Bowman ended up buying Ayr Hill in partnership with Isaac Fenton. Regardless, Bowman’s New York origins indicate that he was part of the wave of upstate New Yorkers who migrated to Fairfax County in the two decades before the Civil War. In 1846, before he moved to Virginia, Bowman attended the Whitestown Seminary in Oneida County, New York, according to a catalog for the school.
To get a more comprehensive sense of Josiah Bowman’s adventures during the Civil War itself, I direct readers to the Connie and Mayo Stuntz book and Bowman’s postwar testimony to the Southern Claims Commission. Among Bowman’s activities: the Stuntzes provide an account of his service to Union dead after the June, 1861 skirmish in Vienna between Union and Confederate forces (pp128-9). For this article, I’ve posted the 1861 testimonial from a Union general on behalf of Bowman as a “good reliable union man” for his service in Vienna (see Figure 8). Among Bowman’s other activities during the Civil War: in 1862, he joined the Union Home Guard of Fairfax County, a militia of local unionists, according to the newsletter of Historic Fairfax City, Inc. A Washington, DC draft registration in 1863 for a Josiah Bowman, possibly our Josiah Bowman, indicates that he was serving at the time as a sutler, which was a civilian merchant who traveled with military forces to sell supplies to the soldiers. And in early 1863, he was wounded by rebel gunfire at Occoquan, according to witness Enos Richmond.
We have a better than usual sense of Bowman’s mid-19th-century activities and of the property because in the early 1870s, he requested payment from the U.S. Government under an 1871 law to compensate loyal southerners for the Union Army’s wartime confiscation or use of their property. Bowman’s testimony and that of his witnesses address his loyalty to the United States during the Civil War and the identity of valuable items associated with his property, as discussed below, in addition to details of wartime service to the Union, which is outside the scope of this article.
Loyalty:
To establish his loyalty, a prerequisite for reimbursement, Bowman testified that he had voted for the area’s Union delegate to the 1861 convention in Richmond. This convention was to determine if Virginia would secede from the United States. Bowman explained that he himself didn’t vote on the issue of the ordinance for secession because of threats from the secessionists. To justify his caution he cited the purported approval of “Mr. Seward,” presumably William H. Seward, the New York senator who became President Lincoln’s secretary of state. Soon after secession, Bowman temporarily fled from his Vienna home to Washington in response to rumors of Confederate conscription, according to his testimony.
Bowman returned to Vienna after the First Battle of Bull Run in mid-1861, but sought to keep a low profile because Confederate cavalry controlled the area. In August 1861, however, Confederate officers “called me out from my house and asked me if my name was Bowman. I said it was,” Bowman testified, “and they took me to the Provost Marshal’s office” and then a brigade headquarters. From there, “they took me back to the Rail Road, in front of my house, and put me in a woodshed under a guard.” The Confederate army evacuated Bowman to a tobacco warehouse in Richmond, where he helped to care for sick Union prisoners of war until he himself became ill. Through a subterfuge, Bowman in early 1862 had himself included in an exchange Union soldiers help prisoner by the Confederacy for Confederate soldiers held prisoner by the Union army. Referring to the domestic effects of all his absences from home early in the war, Bowman recalled that for 1862, “[m]y wife was the farmer that year.”
Bowman’s witnesses supported his claim of loyalty. Abram Lydecker, the man who with his wife established what would become the Freeman Store, testified on Bowman’s behalf. Bowman “was not secessionist in any shape or manner; he was opposed to it,” according to Lydecker. John Bartley of Falls Church indicated that in the course of his work to support the Union war effort he had entrusted Bowman with his fate. “My life was in his hands and if he had betrayed me I would have lost my life no doubt.”
The Property
In his testimony, Bowman described the Ayr Hill property as it was circa 1860, which provides detail that helps somebody today to envision the property as it looked then (see Figure 9).
Bowman testified that his property was “very well fenced,” a characterization echoed by several witnesses, with all but 30 acres enclosed. The fencing was in good condition when the war began and its rails were made of chestnut. The fences had an average height of “[n]ine rails. That is what we call a lawful fence,” according to Bowman. The enclosed area was fenced off into 17 fields, lots, pastures, and a yard. Lydecker described Bowman’s fencing as worm fences, which zigzag along their course (see Figure 10).
The commission evaluating Bowman’s request for compensation appears to have been taken aback by the scale of his claim for timber: one commissioner referred to “an immense lot of wood” as part of the Bowman claim. Bowman explained that two-fifths of his acreage was wooded, which matches the proportion that former owner Lewis Johnson swore to in his statement to the commission. Johnson also noted that most of the timber was oak and chestnut. The oak is still common to our area today, of course, but the chestnut is “functionally extinct” after a 50-year scourge of blight in the 20th century. Bowman and a witness indicated that in 1860, land in timber was more valuable per acre than improved land. Bowman said that the high value was “because the railroad went through and [railroad] ties was the great object,” referring to the construction of the Alexandria, Loudon & Hampshire Railroad, later known as the Washington & Old Dominion. Bowman agreed when a questioner postulated that the Vienna area had been “heavily timbered country.” According to Bowman, a military survey at war’s end determined that the Union Army had cleared 75 acres of timber on his property. By Bowman’s account, he was left with just five acres of small pines. Lydecker testified that almost all the timber on Bowman’s land was cut during the war, to the extent that in 1873, what was left were “a few scattering trees standing.” The Union Army had used the timber to build abatis, a Civil-War-era battlefield obstacle; a stockade and stables for a fort; and an encampment on his property for two cavalry regiments (see Figures 11 and 12).
Bowman alluded in his testimony to where the woodland was on the property. He recounted that cordwood was cut on the boundary with the railroad and the Thornton property; that is, the western edge of his property. The timber for which he sought separate compensation did not include this cordwood and instead “was cut above that.” I assume “above” points us either to the northwest as the property boundary extends in that direction or upslope towards the east- northeast.
Bowman also asked the government to reimburse him for lumber that was lost to the Union Army. Just before the war, he had acquired lumber in the form of joists, siding, and scantling to build a house on his property. The lumber had been “sawed at a steam mill between Herndon and Guilford [presumably the Guilford in Sterling]. I was interested in running it at the time,” Bowman said. One of his witnesses, John Marks, had apparently sawed the material. Bowman estimated that he had 10,000 feet of lumber, of which the Union Army had used 5,000 feet. The army used the lumber to build quarters for a cavalry commander, according to Bowman.
Bowman and his wife, Fannie, cultivated more than just timber on the Ayr Hill property. Bowman estimated that in 1861, wheat was growing on fifteen acres, ten of which he lost. Union forces “had driven right into the field and fed their horses and the soldiers used it for sleeping purposes, and it was scattered helter skelter and trampled over so that I never saved it.” Bowman indicated that the untouched five acres were across a gully that ran through the lower end of his wheat field. Perhaps Bowman was alluding to one of the east-west folds of lower ground between the spurs that extend from where Beulah Road now runs. For instance, the low ground in the vicinity of today’s Glyndon Park tennis court that runs to the southwest and Jean Place and then west to Albea Court and eventually Piney Branch. In contrast, I suspect that “gully” doesn’t fit well as a characterization of Piney Branch.
In 1862, Fannie “had 10 or 12 acres of land broken up for buckwheat, and she came to Washington, and bought half a ton of guano and put on it and sowed the buckwheat, and it was looking fine when I left home, and when I returned, it was gone.” Bowman also claimed damages to pasture land—the farm had two or three “milch cows”—and for losing corn in 1861 and 1862. He also billed the government for 25 tons of hay. Bowman had drawn the hay from multiple properties, including his own and “Dr. Hendrick’s place,” probably referring to the Peter Hendrick property to the southwest of Ayr Hill. Union quartermasters had “taken [the hay] right out of my meadow” and used it for fodder during the first Union advance of the war, out to First Bull Run. Bowman also described this meadow as a “new bottom meadow,” which may indicate that the meadow was located on the western side of the property near Piney Branch and its low ground.
After the war, Bowman operated a grocery and dry goods store across from the Freeman House and served two stints as Vienna’s postmaster, according to the Stuntzes. For much of his life, however, his primary occupation apparently was as a farmer. In the 1860 census, immediately before the war, he was a farmer; he was the same on the 1880 census; and he is listed as a farmer in 1895 in the marriage register for his second marriage. Despite the disruptions of the Civil War, the value of his real estate increased from $4000 in 1860 to $13,500 in 1880, based on the figures he provided for the census. In the same period, the value of his personal property increased 15-fold.
Fannie Hannah was Bowman’s first wife. She was born circa 1830 in Ostego County, New York to parents who had emigrated from England. Fannie and Josiah married and moved to Vienna sometime between the 1850 census and the birth of their first daughter in 1852. They appear to have had six children between 1852 and 1867, with one dying in childhood and with a seven-year gap after the first four ending around 1865 with the close of the Civil War, judging from census records. At different points his mother and her father lived with the couple in Vienna. Fannie must have run the store or helped to run it; the 1880 census records her occupation as a retired merchant. Fannie died in 1889 and is buried in Flint Hill Cemetery with Josiah and son George, according to Findagrave.com (see Figure 13).
In 1891, two years after Fannie’s death, Josiah sold the Ayr Hill farm to O.E. Hine for $14,200, according to Fairfax County property records. The parcel contained 142 acres, including the land upon which our house of interest would later sit. The remainder of the original Ayr Hill tract, which Bowman had augmented by retaining portions of an 1854 purchase from Benjamin Thornton, is accounted for in Josiah and Fannie’s previous transfers to David Wiley and son-in-law Abraham C. Staats, as well as smaller parcels for the Vienna Presbyterian Church, a lime kiln, and a mill.
It is unclear to me where widower Josiah resided in the first few years after he sold Ayr Hill. I assume he lived with his daughter, Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Staats and her husband, “Abram.” As of 1895, with his second marriage, Josiah must have lived on the property of his second wife, Hannah Taber. They married in 1895 when he was 66 and she was 46, according to the Virginia Register of Marriages for Fairfax County. Hannah Taber Rumsey was born in Fairfax Court House, Virginia in 1848. When she was 12, her father’s tract covered 363 acres in today’s Fairfax City, in the vicinity of today’s Lee Highway and the Little River Turnpike and stretching from Jermantown Road in the west to Railroad Avenue in the east. For her entire life, Hannah lived on this parcel or its residue with her parents and her siblings, judging from census records. In the 1900 census, she is listed as a farmer heading a household with four siblings, a laborer, and her husband, Josiah, in what was then known as the Town of Fairfax. It was on Hannah’s property that Josiah was presumably residing at the time of this death in 1904.
The Hines & the Van Riswick Heirs
Enough details remain available in the historical record to devote an entire article to the life of O.E. Hine. This article will stick with a one-paragraph overview. Like Josiah Bowman, Orrin Eugene Hine was a native New Yorker. He was born near Binghamton in 1836. Although Hine came to Virginia before the Civil War, according to his obituary, he didn’t settle in Virginia until after the war, in 1866, according to the Town of Vienna website. He had been an officer in an engineer unit that spent much of the war supporting the Army of the Potomac (see Figure Hine photo). In the late 1860s, Hine played a key role in establishing and administering the Freedmen Bureau’s schools for formerly enslaved African-Americans, according to the websites of the Fairfax County Public Schools and novahistory.org. In addition to being an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Hine had been a Radical Republican—the most anti-slavery faction of the party—as well as a farmer, public education advocate, and, in 1890, Vienna’s first mayor, according to the Town’s website. He was also a real estate agent and by the mid-1880s was a major landowner himself, according to the Town. O.E. Hine died in 1899 of a longstanding kidney problem, according to his obituary. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
With O.E. Hine’s death in 1899, his widow, Alma Delano Hine, inherited his real estate holdings, including those portions of the Ayr Hill tract not already sold. Alma was born in Maine, New York in 1845 to Marshall Delano and Lydia Gibson, according to her death certificate. She died of a heart ailment at age 89 in 1932. Alma is buried with her husband at Arlington.
In 1901, Alma Hine swapped about 9.5 acres on the northwestern side of the reduced Ayr Hill tract for an equivalent acreage from the property owners to the north, the daughters and heirs of Washington’s John and Mary Van Riswick, according to county property records. “[T]he boundary lines between the land of the two parties…are unsatisfactory by reason of being oblique to the general direction of the streets and roads in the Village of Vienna…and of causing an unnecessary amount of fencing,” according to the deed (see Figure 15). With this transaction, our future parcel of interest was in the hands of the Van Riswick sisters and their husbands. But only for five years, and then it went back to Alama Hine. In 1906, the Van Riswick heirs sold to Alma Hine 65 acres between Beulah Road and the W&OD Railroad and just inside the northern border of the town, including property from the swap. The price was $3250 (see Figure 16).
Berry & Cockrell
Within weeks, Alma Hine sold 56 acres from the Van Riswick purchase to Fairfax County Surveyor Joseph Berry. Two parcels constituted the transfer, one of which, at about 41.5 acres, included the land of the future house of interest (see Figure 16).
In 1922, Joseph and Annette G. Berry sold a three-acre portion of this parcel to Charles M. Cockrell (see Figure 17). The three acres stretched from Beulah Road to Glyndon Street (see Figure 18). Charles Millican Cockrell was born in 1900 to Jeremiah W. “Jeff” Cockrell and Florence Rosetta Pearson. As a young child, Charles lived at the house that still stands today at the northwest corner of Beulah Road and today’s Sideling Court, immediately adjacent to the Vienna town line. At age 13, Charles lost his mother when she died from a post-partum hemorrhage.
When Charles registered for the WWI-era draft in 1918 or 1919, he was a farmer employed by J.W. Pearson. Pearson’s farm included the land upon which Wolftrap Elementary School now sits. In 1923, the year after Charles bought the parcel from the Berrys, he married Josephine Harriet Retzer of Maryland (see Figure 19). Josephine was born in 1903. Whereas Charles was a farm laborer at the time of the 1930 census, by 1940 he was a mechanic and welder for the US government. Charles and Josephine had one son and four daughters, judging from the 1940 census. As of 1950, Josephine was a file clerk in the US government for the Department of Agriculture. Charles and Josephine divorced, apparently in 1961. In 1962, Charles married the widowed Isabelle Delli Finisecy Gatti, a nurse. They divorced in 1971. Charles died in Florida in 1979. Josephine died in Florida in 1990. Charles and Josephine are buried in Andrew Chapel Cemetery.
Before the recently demolished house was built in 1935, there must have been a house on the Cockrell’s three-acre parcel, because it’s clear that Charles and Josephine lived on the parcel. In the 1930 census, they are listed as living on Beulah Road in a house that they own rather than rent. This earlier house was presumably more modest than others in the area, because its $3000 value, as recorded in the census, was less than almost all others that were nearby on Beulah Road, Church Street, and Maple Avenue. This earlier house was probably the first on these particular three acres, given what we know about the larger Ayr Hill tract through the Bowman ownership and about the residency of the subsequent owners preceding the Cockrells.
Another Bowman, Ownership Churn, and the House Is Built
In 1933, the Cockrells sold the three acres to Isaac A. and Mary V. Bowman. Isaac Ashby Bowman was born in West Virginia in 1895 (see Figure 20). He was the oldest of seven children, judging from census records. He was not related to Josiah Bowman, as far as I can determine. Isaac served in the US Army as a private first-class during World War One, according to his gravestone. He returned to West Virginia by 1920, according to the US census. In the 1920s, he began his career as a White House policeman, although the details are confusing about exactly when. A newspaper account of his retirement in 1950 gives his term of service as 24 years, which indicates that he started in 1926. The same account, as well as his obituary, also claims that he had helped to guard Woodrow Wilson. However, Wilson, left office in 1921 and died in 1924.
We do know that Isaac was in Washington DC by 1921, because that is when he married Mary in the District. In late 1921, Isaac and Mary V. Bowman bought a house at 105 E. St. NW. In 1924, Isaac sold his house on E St. NW and he and Mary purchased a newly built house at 2112 North Capitol St. in DC, according to the Washington Evening Star. As of 1930, the couple still lived at the house, which was valued at $10,000. In 1934, Isaac and Mary separated. In 1935, they sold the three acres in Vienna. They divorced in January, 1937. The Bowmans did not have children. At the time of the divorce, Isaac was living on Pershing Drive in Arlington and Mary was living on Georgia Avenue in DC. I have not uncovered anything to indicate that the couple lived on the Vienna property in the short period of their ownership. Given that Isaac later lived in Fairfax County, perhaps he and Mary had planned to live at the Vienna property when they bought it in 1933. I also have been unable to discover much about Mary, including her maiden name.
In August 1937, Isaac remarried. His second wife was Grace Maude Swift Grassl, also divorced. The couple married in Fredericksburg. From 1932 to 1942, Grace worked for the Veterans Administration and the General Accounting Office, according to her obituary. A heart attack caused her to retire in 1942. Meanwhile, during World War II, Isaac and Grace housed several families in their home, rent-free, according to the Washington Evening Star. A wartime boom in government employment had induced a housing shortage in the DC area, prompting charity like that provided by the Bowmans. The house was probably on Great Falls Street in East Falls Church, judging from the 1950 census.
In 1950, Isaac Bowman retired as a police captain. During his career he had guarded Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, in addition to Woodrow Wilson, according to the Washington Post. (If Bowman had indeed protected Wilson, then another mystery from this account: what about President Harding, who served between Wilson and Coolidge? But if Bowman only protected presidents from 1924 on, then Harding’s omission makes sense, because he died in office in 1923.) About the people he guarded, the Post quotes Bowman:
Of the presidents: “As far as personality goes, you couldn’t beat Roosevelt. He always had a friendly, good word for everyone.”
As for the First Ladies, Bowman singled out Mrs. Coolidge: “She was always jolly and sociable.”
In 1957, Isaac and Grace were partly packed for a move to Florida when Grace died of a heart attack. Isaac lived to age 90, dying of pneumonia in 1985 at Powhatan Nursing Home in Falls Church. Isaac and Grace are buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland.
From 1935, the three-acre property underwent an unusual amount of turnover. The Bowman’s sale in April 1935 was the first of three transfers of the property over the course of four months that year, with two more in 1936 and another in 1937. The Bowmans sold to Anne W. Davidge, unmarried, of Washington, DC, according to Fairfax County property records. Davidge took out a $1200 note in conjunction with the purchase.
Anna W. Davidge was born in 1898 in Prince William County, according to the 1900 census. She was one of three children of William Fendall Davidge and Estelle Courtenay Davidge. Anne was the aunt of actor Lee Marvin, whose mother was Anne’s sister, according to findagrave.com. She was also a great-great granddaughter of the founder of the University of Maryland, judging from a Washington Evening Star article about an uncle. Anne completed three years of college, according to the 1940 census. At age 21, she was working as a government clerk and living with her parents and younger brother on Harvard Street in DC, according to the 1920 census. In 1925, she lived at 3106 18th Street, NW, according to a DC city directory. By 1928, she was living on Baltimore Street in Washington. That September, she traveled with her sister on what was apparently a cruise to Jamaica and Cuba, judging from immigration records. As of 1935, Anne worked as a stenographer for the DC law firm, Mason Spaulding & McAtee, according to a city directory. In 1937, she had the sad duty of being the death-certificate informant for her younger brother, who died from an accidental fall from a railroad trestle in Prince William County, according to the certificate and newspaper accounts of the incident. By 1940, Anne was paying a monthly rent of $48 to live at 1701 Massachusetts Avenue in DC in the Bay State apartment building. The Bay State was built in 1939 and is an art deco landmark between Dupont and Scott Circles. From 1941 to 1950, Anne served as the Special Assistant to Commissioner Guy Mason on the DC Board of Commissioners, according to the Washington Evening Star. The three-member board of presidential appointees had legislative and executive authority over the District. In 1949, Anne drew an annual salary of $4651 for her position, according to a US government registry of civil servants. Among her duties in her job was to serve on a special committee in 1943 to look into “[c]harges of filth, mismanagement, and insanitary conditions in the tuberculosis wing” of a District hospital, according to the Washington Post. In a summary written with another investigator, Anne concluded:
“Generally speaking, there is some justification for the complaints regarding the dietary, cleanliness, and service at the hospital. This is due to a large extent to the shortage of help, rationed food products, and other factors incident to the war.” The summary also noted that “[t]he transfer of bodies on stretchers within sight of the patients was a bad feature.”
Anna W. Davidge died in December, 1977, according to Social Security records. As of the 1950 census, she had never married, and nothing in her obituary indicates that she ever did. The obituary in the Washington Post noted that she was the “beloved aunt of Robert and Lee Marvin.” Anne was buried in January 1978 in an unmarked grave near other family members in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, according to findagrave.com.
One month after she bought the three acres in Vienna, Anne Davidge sold the property to Allene F. Sager of Washington DC. This was in May 1935. Dessie Allene Foster was born in North Carolina in 1905, according to her death certificate. Her father died when she was 11. Allene completed one year of high school and by 1920 she and her mother may have moved to Washington, judging from the US census, a city directory, and the Stewart Family Tree on Ancestry.com. In 1923, she married 21-year-old Charles Edwin Warfield in the District, according to DC marriage records. The couple divorced in 1926, without children. At the time of the divorce, Allene was living on Harrison Street in Cherrydale in Arlington, according to the divorce record.
Circa 1927, Allene married Gustav M. Sager. Augustine Michael Sager was born in 1902 in Queens, New York to a policeman father who had emigrated from Germany and a mother who had emigrated from Northern Ireland. Gustav received a formal education through the eighth grade and as of 1920, at age 17, he was a machinist for the government, according to census records. Circa 1928, the couple had a son. As of 1929, the family lived in an apartment at 1006 Webster St. NW in Washington and Gustav was a railroad switchman, according to a city directory. The 1930 census indicates that the Sagers owned a radio. In addition, as of 1930, Gustav was working as a railroad linesman. In the early ‘30s, the couple had their second child, a daughter.
It’s a mystery to me how the couple came to own the Vienna property, and for just a matter of months at that. But by 1940 Allene and Gustav owned a house at 5128 North Capitol Street in the District. In 1940, Gustav was an assistant train director for an unspecified steam railroad, according to the census. He was working 48 hours per week and earning $2400 annually. As of 1942, Gustav was about six feet tall, weighed 165 pounds, and was bald, according to information from his draft registration. His employer was the Washington Terminal Company and he worked out of the Union Station Tower. By 1950, Gustav was a train director for the railroad and working a 40-hr week, according to the census. Allene was a homemaker during the marriage, judging from census and death records. Gustav was still living in the District when he died in 1977, according to his obituary. The family asked that any donations go to the American Heart Association, an indication that his death was related to a heart ailment. A decade later, Allene died of gastro-intestinal problems at the Manor Care Nursing Home on South Carlins Spring Road in Arlington, according to her death certificate. The North Capitol Street house was still her home of record at the time of her death. Allene and Gustav Sager are buried in the George Washington Cemetery in Adelphi, Maryland, according to findagrave.com.
In July 1935, two months after they bought the Vienna property, the Sagers sold it to Margarette Motte, unmarried, according to Fairfax County property records. Margaret A. Drew was born in 1891, according to her gravestone. She was born in North Carolina, according to census records. Records variously render her name as Margurette, Margueritte, Marguerite, and Margaret. By 1920, she living on 14th Street NW in Washington, working as a stenographer in a private office in DC, according to the census. As of 1924 she was still a stenographer, living on Connecticut Avenue, according to a city directory. In 1925, she married North-Carolina-born Charles V. Motte in Washington. He was 11 years older and had been married at least once before. By 1930, the couple had moved to a rental in Steubenville, Ohio, where Charles worked as a salesman for Burroughs adding machines. Charles apparently died between 1930 and 1935, given that Margaret was unmarried when she bought the Vienna property and in the 1950 census was listed as widowed. From at least 1942, she lived on Mississippi Avenue in Takoma Park or Silver Spring, judging from her brother’s draft card, the 1950 census, and her obituary. As of 1950, she headed a household that also included her nephew’s family, according to the census. Marguerrite was working as a fiscal accounting clerk in the Navy Department at the time. Margurette D. Motte died in 1960 at the Washington Sanitarium. She’s buried in Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Brentwood, Maryland, according to findagrave.com.
Motte was the last of four sets of owners of the property in 1935, and 1935 was the year the recently demolished house was built. Thus one of these sets of owners—the Bowmans, Davidge, the Sagers, and Motte—were presumably responsible for initiating construction, although I don’t know which.
In February 1936, Frances R. Simpers purchased the three acres from Margarette Motte. Frances Rachel Simpers was born in 1899 in Gaithersburg, Maryland to a doctor and his wife. The family moved to San Diego at some point between the 1910 and 1920 censuses. As of 1930, Frances was a lodger on 16th Street in Washington and working as a stenographer in the real estate industry, judging from census information. Perhaps Frances’s work in real estate led her to the Vienna property, or perhaps she and Marguerette Motte knew each other in some capacity, given that they were both stenographers.
In 1957, Frances married James Russell Purvis in Richmond, according to a Virginia marriage record. He was divorced and retired. She was listed as Frances Rachel Rodden, a widow, married once previously. I have not been able to determine the name of her first husband, Mr. Rodden. She presumably married her first husband at some point after mid-1944. Frances was unmarried at the time of her purchase and sale of the Vienna parcel in 1936, according to property records, and at her mother’s death in June 1944, Frances was still identified with the Simpers last name.
At the time of her 1957 marriage to James Purvis, Frances was living on Mt. Pleasant Street in DC. Her occupation was as a telephone operator for a private branch exchange. This Frances is without a doubt Frances Simpers, because the marriage record identifies her doctor father and her place of birth as Gaithersburg, consistent with census records. However, her age in the marriage record is listed as 49, when instead in reality she was around 58, based on 1900 and 1910 census information. Frances Rachel Simpers Purvis died in 1961 and is buried in Mount Zion United Methodist Church Cemetery in Howard County, Maryland.
The Rives Brothers and Their Wives
In April 1936, two months after Frances had bought the Vienna property, she sold it to Roland R. and Gladys M. Rives. Roland Rudy Rives was born in 1896 in North Carolina, according to Arlington National Cemetery records and the US census. Roland received a formal education through the eighth grade, according to the census. In late August 1918, he was inducted into the U.S. Army. In October 1918, Roland left Camp Jackson, South Carolina and embarked for France and the World War on the transport Powhatan from Newport News, Virginia (see Figure 21). In 1919, after the war was over and he was on the verge of returning to the United States, he wrote to his aunt about the experience of sailing to France in wartime:
“I think I can enjoy the [return] voyage for there will be no submarines to fear and it wont be such a serious trip as coming over, and, too, that was my first trip on water and we had to come over in the dark at night. We were not allowed even to strike a match on the boat after sunset. So you can see we can have light and it will be a pleasure trip going back and—we will be going home! and not going to face death as it seemed coming over to France. I know that was the longest twelve days and nights I ever spent in my life. Just think of twelve long days and nights without seeing a bit of land. I didn’t get very seasick coming over, only a little dizzy for the first day or two. Then we were in a storm for a day and night and the sea was rough and I came very near feeding the fishes for I as pretty sick for just a little while; the old boat was rocking so you couldn’t stand unless you held to something.”
Roland served in Battery D of the 308th Field Artillery Regiment, part of the 78th Division. The war ended on 11 November, 1918 and in April 1919, Rives departed from Marseilles on the troop transport Pasadena to return to the United States, according to military records. Private Roland R. Reeves was demobilized in May 1919. The war had exposed the young North Carolina farm boy to the world outside the southern United States but apparently too late for him to experience the horrific violence of that terrible conflict. In his post-war letter to his Aunt, written before he redeployed to the United States, Roland compared his experiences in France to those back home. “We surely do have some strange weather over here–the sun will shine like April one day and then it will be snowing the next day,” he wrote, a contrast to the “beautiful spring days” that he imagined his aunt was experiencing back in North Carolina. He marveled at how French farmers “would like to hitch a horse and an ox together to plow[.] I see that one almost every day; it surely makes a funny team.” He also wrote, “You should see the French people dress a hog. They certainly have some strange ways of doing things,” and then added, “but perhaps our ways seem as strange to them,” a mature observation from the young man reflecting a broadening perspective. When he wrote the letter in March 1919, he clearly was homesick and done with his adventure. “This division is to sail for the good old U.S.A., God’s country, about the fifteenth of May….O, how I long for the day to come when I shall climb up that old gang plant to sail for the good old U.S.A!”
Before he moved to Washington, D.C. in the ‘20s, Roland was living in Greensboro, North Carolina and working as the proprietor of the Rives Café, according to the 1925 Greensboro city directory. Two of his brothers were working with him. Roland moved to Washington in 1924, according to his obituary; presumably the Greensboro directory for 1925 wasn’t up-to-date. Roland worked as a waiter in DC, according to the 1930 census, taken during the first year of the Great Depression. In 1928, he married Gladys Mae White in North Carolina. Gladys was born in 1907 in North Carolina to a farming family, according to State of North Carolina data and the 1910 census. As of 1930, Roland and Gladys were renting on Kenyon Street in Washington, according to the census. In the early ‘30s, the couple had a son, their only child, judging from census information. In 1934, the family lived on California Street NW in the District.
The Rives family was living at the California Street residence when they bought the Vienna property in 1936, judging from the marginalia on the deed for their Oakton purchase in late 1936. In the Oakton purchase, they offered $2900 to buy a 1.7-acre property from the Vienna Trust Company at some point before early November 1936, when Vienna Trust authorized the sale. The transaction was finalized in December 1936. Roland and Gladys paid $2900 for the Oakton property, with $300 down and a $2600 loan from Vienna Trust, payable in $30 monthly installments. The property was at 2863 Hunter Mill Road. Today, 2863 Hunter Mill Road is the site of a nursing home behind the Oakton Giant. The current property is the product of a 1995 consolidation of two parcels, one of which is the former Rives property.
After the 1936 Oakton purchase, Roland lived at the Hunter Mill Road address for the rest of his life, according to his obituary in the Northern Virginia Sun. However, it seems that Roland and Gladys either waited a few years to move to their Oakton property or they temporarily left it circa 1940, because as of that year, they were renting on Belmont Street NW in DC, according to the US census. Meanwhile, by 1940, Roland was driving a taxi for the Diamond Cab company. He drove a cab for 20 years, before returning to the restaurant business, according to his obituary. This time he was the proprietor again, rather than a waiter: he bought a restaurant in Fairfax and operated it as Rives Tavern. The change in career occurred by 1950, when the census listed his occupation as a cafeteria owner. A late 1940s legal matter that involved the cab probably prompted the change in occupations, judging from newspaper reports.
Roland was 5’ 8’’ and 215 pounds at the time of his WWII draft registration. According to his obituary, he enjoyed gardening, growing vegetables and flowers on the Oakton property.
Poor health prompted Roland to retire from the restaurant business circa 1955. He died at Mt. Alto hospital in Washington in 1965 after a long illness, according to his obituary.
Meanwhile, Gladys was working outside the home as of 1950, when she had a supervisory position in the Department of Defense, according to the census. In 1973, she lost her son and only child, Jesse, to a heart ailment, according to his death certificate. He was 41 and a Korean war veteran. Gladys herself died in 1985. At the time, she was living in Chatham County, North Carolina, where she and Roland were both from and which is southwest of Raleigh-Durham. Roland and Gladys Rives are buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
In February 1937, two months after buying the Oakton property, Roland and Gladys Rives sold their three acres on Beulah Road to Rousseau F. and Madeline H. Rives, Roland’s younger brother and his wife. Rousseau Frey Rives was born in 1905, according to his death certificate, almost a decade after Roland and too late to serve in the First World War. He was youngest of his parents’ five children. Rousseau was five when his father died in 1911. Rousseau’s formal education was through the seventh grade, according to census records.
In 1927, Rousseau married Madeline Leonard in Washington, according to DC marriage records. They had the first of their three children in 1928. As of 1930, they were renting on B Street in Washington for $35.50 per month and Rousseau was working behind the counter at a restaurant, according to the census. By 1935 the family was living on 17th Street in Washington, where they remained as of 1940, according to the census. Like his brother, Rousseau in 1940 was a taxi driver, working 60 hours per week, according to his draft registration and the US census. Rousseau, age 34 at his registration, was 5’ 11’’, weighed 160 pounds, and had black hair and a light complexion. He and Madeline had three children by this point.
Rousseau, like his brother, eventually returned to the restaurant business. In 1942, Rousseau leased the tavern portion of one of the buildings at the Tysons Corner intersection of the Leesburg Pike (Route 7) and Chain Bridge Road (123), according to Connie and Mayo Stuntz in “This Was Tysons Corner, Virginia” (see Figure 22) This would have been in the building on the southernmost quadrant of the intersection, judging from a diagram of the intersection in the Stuntz book. According to the census, as of 1950, Rousseau was a “partner owner” in the restaurant business, a different occupation than in 1940 but still requiring 60 hours of work per week. The family was living a few lots southwest of the tavern at a location now within the cloverleaf of the Rt.7/123 intersection as it was modified in the 1960s, according to the Stuntz book on Tysons Corner, a Fairfax County plat, and a map with today’s property lines. Rousseau Rives, 69, died in 1974 of a heart attack, according to his death certificate. According to the death certificate, his residence at the time of his death was 200 Cedar Lane in Vienna.
Madeline Hyacinth Leonard was born in 1908 into a farming family in Loudon County. She ended up being the middle child of her parents’ five children, judging from the 1920 census. Madeline attended school through the seventh grade, according to the 1940 census. She and Rousseau may have lost their second child at age 13 in 1945, judging from information in the US census and from findagrave.com. As of 1950, she was working 48 hours per week as a waitress, according to the US census. Madeline died of heart disease in 1985, according to her death certificate. Her residence at the time of her death was still the house on Hunter Mill Road. Madeline and Rousseau are buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Falls Church.
The Gheens
In 1942, Rousseau and Madeline Rives sold the seven-year-old house on Beulah Road and its three acres to David and Dora Gheen, according to Fairfax County property records. As part of the transaction, the Gheen’s agreed to pay a $1200 deed of trust from Allene Sager’s 1935 purchase.
Ernest David Gheen was born in 1917 to Ernest W. Gheen, a farmer, and Amy E. Dennison, a homemaker, according to his death certificate. As of 1920, David lived with his parents, younger brother, and maternal grandfather at a residence on Lawyers Road in Vienna, judging from the US census. The residence was probably on the quarter-acre lot on the west side of Lawyers Road that had been in the Dennison family since David’s great-grandmother, Matilda Dennison, acquired it in 1880, according to Fairfax County property records (see Figure 23).
By 1930, David’s family had moved to a house on Beulah Road, where David was living with his parents and four siblings, according to the US census. The family had moved there sometime since 1923, when David’s mother, Amy, had inherited five acres from her father, Charles Dennison. These five acres were immediately to the south of the future property of David and Dora Gheen (see Figures 24 and 25).
David and Dora married in 1936 when he was 19 and she was 18, according to marriage records. When he was in his early 20s, David was tall and thin, judging from his 1940 draft registration, which put him at six feet and 148 pounds. He was an auto mechanic, according to the 1940 and 1950 censuses. As of 1940, David and Dora were living on Route 7 in Falls Church, where David had resided since at least 1935, according to the census. In 1939, his annual income was $800. As of 1940 he was working for Mount Vernon Motors in Alexandria, according to his draft registration. David’s involvement in the Vienna community included service as the president of the Vienna Council of the Order of Fraternal Americans in 1947, according to the Fairfax Herald.
As of 1950, David and Dora’s household included five children and his widower father, Ernest, according to the census. David’s father appears to have lived at the house with the family until the older man’s death in the early 1970s, judging from his death certificate. Altogether, David and Dora had seven children, according to David’s Washington Post obituary. Ernest David Gheen died in 2001. At the time of his death, he was living in Amissville, Virginia, which is west of Warrenton and in Rappahannock County. Three of the Gheen’s children lived in Amissville at the time, according to Dora’s obituary.
Dora Louise Cleveland was born in Bailey’s Crossroads in 1918 to William B. Cleveland, a carpenter, and Amanda Daniels, according to Dora’s marriage and birth certificates and her obituary. She was a charter member of St. Matthew’s Methodist Church in Annadale, according to her obituary. Dora, 82, died in Amissville in 2001, some seven months before David. At the time of her death, Dora had 14 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren, according to her obituary. Dora and David are buried in National Memorial Park in Falls Church.
David and Dora Gheen owned their house on Beulah Road for 32 years. During that period, they sold off portions of the three-acres. In 1946, they sold the two acres extending eastward from Glyndon Street, which was the western border of their original property (see Figure 26). In 1964, they sold almost half of their remaining acre to B&K Incorporated, again shaving off the western part of the already-abbreviated property. For the residual parcel, which held the house and which the Gheen’s retained, this transaction established the property lines in their current form. The transaction was the last of four by B&K to compose what would become the Maitard Estates subdivision along Edwin Lane, dedicated in 1965. B&K had also acquired portions of David and Dora’s previously sold parcel and of the parcel formerly owned by David’s parents.
After the Gheens and to the End
In 1974, the Gheens sold the house and its parcel to Joseph Benjamin Ducat and his wife, Gloria Dawn Vogan Ducat. At the time, the house was 39 years old and had 48 more years of life left. The sale to the Ducats was the first of eight in those remaining 48 years. Because most of the various owners in this period appear to be still with us, I am omitting biographical sketches.
The various transfers were:
In 1978, the Ducats sold the property to Mr. Edwards.
In 1980, Edwards sold the property to the Creagans.
In 1998, after an 18-year ownership, the second longest in the history of the house, the Creagans sold to the Quarnstroms.
In 2006, the Quarnstroms sold to Cendant Mobility Financial Corporation.
On the same day in 2006, Cendant sold the property to the Pohnerts.
In 2013, the Pohnerts sold to Ms. Bouri.
In May 2021, Bouri sold to the current owners of the parcel.
During the period of these transactions, there were two additional developments with the property worth noting. First, in 1975, the Ducats granted an easement to the County for a six-foot-wide bikeway across the front of the property (see Figure 27). This was one of a series of similar easements at the time along the west side of Beulah Road. Second, the property tax record for the house and a contemporaneous construction deed of trust indicate that a significant remodeling and addition took place in 2002. For the purposes of the tax record, this refreshed the house to the extent of generating a 1990 “Effective Year Built”, in contrast to the “Year Built” of 1935.
Finally, on 14 June 2022, the former Gheen house came down to make way for the new house under construction on the parcel as of early November 2022 (see Figure 28).
Thanks for the well researched article on the house. I also appreciate Anne Pohnert’s comments.
The house had a display of a multicolored “star shaped” display for the holidays for several years recently. Was this after Anne lived there, or did they start it?
Thank you for taking the time to review the history of the land and people who lived in and around 534 Beulah Road. My husband Steve and I enjoyed our 7 years in the house – while he worked for the US Patent and Trademark Office as a Patent Examiner for Genetic Tests. He used to commute to Alexandria by bicycle from Vienna along the W&OD and other trails – 17 miles each way. I am a Family Nurse Practitioner and worked as the manager for MinuteClinic at CVS Pharmacies – first in Montgomery Co, Maryland and then I opened all the MinuteClinics in Northern Virginia and served as the State Practice Manager for all of Virginia. I’m 2013, I became the Area Director of all MinuteClinics from Virginia to Maine and we relocated to Massachusetts just over the border from Rhode Island so I could work out of CVS Health headquarters in Woonsocket, RI. I am now the Director of Clinical Quality for the National MinuteClinic organization – over 1100 clinics in 36 states and DC. Steve is a senior Patent Examiner working remotely for the USPTO still.
My Dad and I built the built-in bookshelves in the Beulah Rd living rooms and repainted most of the rooms, and Steve and I had the kitchen cabinets replaced. The Quarnstroms had very creative and artistic visions for interior design and we appreciated their hand painted under the sea bathroom on the second floor and the Tuscan style stucco paint in the kitchen among other touches, like the Carpe Diem stenciled around the top of the walls in the front hall. They had also painted a large checker/chess board pattern on the back wooden patio. The property had a very large backyard and we had lovely and productive raised garden beds and even bee hives back in the day.
Many thanks for the background on you and your husband. Among other things, I would think the information helps readers to relate to the people in the article by connecting them to aspects of the community that remain prominent for us today, e.g. the CVS Minute Clinic on Maple Avenue and the W&OD bike trail. (Your husband might appreciate knowing that early last year, the W&OD opened a newly-built bridge over Lee Highway in Falls Church, eliminating what long been a safety trouble spot for trail users). I’m also grateful for the details about the interior of the house. That’s the kind of unique perspective we could only get from a former owner/resident. Finally, it’s also great to understand that your family and the Quarnstroms not only owned the house but also lived in it. From my research, it wasn’t always clear which owners may have resided on the property and which may have rented it out. Thank you again for chiming in, and best wishes to you and your husband!