Mary Margaret Thompson was born in 1873 to Joseph Thompson, a farmer, and Mary Margaret Oliver Thompson, according to the younger Mary’s death certificate. Mary, or Mollie as she was known, was in the middle of the Thompson’s eight children, according to the 1880 census. She most likely grew up on a property inherited by her mother and located in the vicinity of the intersection of the Leesburg Pike and Towlston Road, judging from Fairfax County property records and census information. Mollie’s mother died in 1880 during childbirth, according to Virginia death records. Later that year, Mollie gained a step-mother when her father remarried. As a young adult, Mollie was a member of the nearby Bethel Church, according to the Fairfax Herald. Mollie’s formal education extended through one year of college, according to census information.
In the partition of the Hezekiah Peacock estate in 1855, Hezekiah’s surviving daughter, Leah Peacock, received Lot 2. Lot 2 was an 83-acre parcel that included the 70-acre area bounded in orange above, according to Fairfax County property records (W3:327) and Beth Mitchell’smap of Fairfax County property owners in 1860. In 1870, the unmarried Leah sold the 70 acres for $900 to a member of the nearby Oliver family, the elder Mary Margaret Thompson, nee Oliver (M4:52). The sale included buildings and improvements, suggesting that a residence was on the property, although Leah herself may not have lived on the property, judging from census records. The elder Mary Margaret Thompson gave birth in 1873 to the younger Mary Margret Thompson, aka Mollie. Mollie probably grew up on the 70-acre parcel, judging from her mother’s ownership and Mollie’s involvement with nearby Bethel Church. The orange numbers correspond to boundary features visible on the aerial photo below.The base map is from Fairfax County’s Map Wizard and shows today’s subdivisions and parcels in the area.This aerial photo is from 1937, more than 35 years after Mollie Thompson probably lived on the land and almost 70 years after her mother acquired her parcel in the area. Nonetheless, evidence of the boundaries of her mother’s parcel remain in the form of natural and manmade terrain features and are identified with orange numbers, corresponding to the same numbers on the. For instance, the creek path at 5-6-7-8; fence or other boundary lines at 4, 9, 10, and 11; and the segments of outlet road at 1 and 2, and turn of the boundary to the northeast at 3. The base photo is from Fairfax County’s Historical Imagery Viewer.
As of 1900, Mollie was a teacher, according to the census, presumably at the Clarke School. At the time, Mollie was living in the household of her father, Joseph, and step-mother, Delilah Peacock Thompson. Altogether, she taught two or three terms at the Clarke School at an unspecified time, according to a letter to the editor of the Fairfax Herald in 1912.
In 1903 in Sterling, Mollie married John Moore Smith, a Vienna-area farmer, according to Virginia marriage records. The year before, the heirs of John’s late mother partitioned her property north of the road to Clarks Crossing. John’s allotment included a 30-acre parcel that was east of the railroad and included the house and farm buildings, according to county property records. This is where Mollie and John established their home.
In 1902, Mollie Thompson’s future husband, John M. Smith, received Lot 1 in the partition of the property belonging to his late mother, Mary Virginia Gunnell Smith. John was the youngest of Wethers and Mary Smith’s ten children, according to the 1900 census. John’s 30 acre parcel was bounded to the south by Clark’s Crossing Road, on the righthand side of the plat. The plat by Fairfax County Surveyor Joseph Berry is oriented with the east at the top.This graphic reorients the plat so that north is at the top, to better allow comparison to the 1937 aerial photo below. Note that the Clarke School, represented by the “X” notation towards the lower right, was just across Clarks Crossing Road from Lot 1, the parcel where Mollie and John Smith’s house was located. In 1907, four years after John and Mollie married, John acquired Lots 2 and 3 from siblings Sam and Fannie Smith. Finally, to further orient you, Lots 5 and 6 (which remained in the hands of others), are where the soccer field is at today’s Clarks Crossing Park on the west side of the W&OD bike trail.Mollie Thompson Smith’s house near the Clarke School, as represented on a 1915 contour map. The base map is from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Historical Topographic Map Explorer.When this aerial photo was taken in 1937, Mollie and John Smith continued to live at their house among the cluster of buildings at the left-center of Lot 1. The Smiths owned the property for five additional years. In early 1942, they sold 2.2 acres near the southwest corner of the original Lot 2 to John’s nephew, Alfred T. Smith (393:219). Months later, John died, and in late 1942, Mollie sold the remainder of the property. From the mid-1950s until the late 1980s, Lots 1 and 2 constituted Full Cry Farm and the Junior Equitation School under the noted local equestrian, Jane Dillon (1310:463, 7474:1418). The former Smith property now is largely the Full Cry Farm, Saddlebrook Farms, and Rayburn Property subdivisions.
Mollie and John Smith did not have any children of their own. However, one of Mollie’s brothers died when his son was still a child, and it appears from the 1901 census that the boy lived part-time at his widowed mothers’ and part time with Mollie and John. As a young man working for the government, he also resided at Mollie and John’s property, according to the 1920 census. In the 1930s, the couple also raised a girl from another family that had encountered difficult circumstances.
Mollie’s husband, John, died in 1942 of a stroke from overexertion, according to his death certificate. At some point before 1942, Mollie herself suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed. Mollie’s death certificate indicates that before her passing in the mid-1950s, a stroke had left her partially paralyzed; John’s death certificate from 1942 indicates that Mollie was the informant, but in place of her signature there’s a notation of, “Information from wife who is paralyzed.” In what most likely would have been the early 1950s, Mollie may have been living in a nursing home in Arlington. The daughter of the woman who was raised by Mollie recalls fondly that Mollie always had a dime to give her during visits to the nursing home. Circa 1955, Mollie took up residence at Vienna’s Ayr Hill Nursing Home, according to her death certificate. In 1957, Mary Margaret Smith, 80, died of heart failure. She is buried in Andrew Chapel Cemetery.
