The neighborhood of Mount Zephyr is uniquely connected to the extraordinary beginnings of our nation. In 1674 Lord Culpeper granted 5,000 acres along the Potomac river, including Mt. Zephyr to Nicholas Spencer and John Washington, the great, great grandfather of George Washington. The 2,500 acres belonging to the Washington family were passed from father to son until George took possession in 1752. Mt. Zephyr farm existed at that time and when Washington re-surveyed the land, he included portions of Mt. Zephyr Farm in the Muddy Hole Farm lands and a portion in Union Farm. The Mt. Zephyr Farm became a segment between these two creations of Washington but always remained autonomous. Mt. Zephyr Farm contained 648 acres with boundaries from Old Mill Road to the south, to Buckman Road to the west, east to Mt. Vernon Highway and north to Gum Springs.

George Washington began his farming career on land that was in poor condition thanks to years of nutrient-depleting tobacco crops. He revived the soil using the
rotation method, fencing off areas for cattle and their beneficial manure, and rotating plantings. His land was meticulously cared for with manicured hedgerows, healthy livestock and well-built barns. Mt. Zephyr was sectioned into various plots, which included fields for wheat and corn, an orchard, pastureland and timberland for building and firewood.

AFFAIRS OF THE WASHINGTON HEIRS

After Washington’s death in 1799, his holdings passed to his wife, Martha. After her death in 1802, Washington’s nephew, Bushrod Washington, Sr, inherited much of his uncle’s land, including the Mansion House and Union Farm including Mt. Zephyr. Bushrod was an intellectual with little interest or time for farming. He had been appointed to the Supreme Court by Thomas Jefferson in 1798 and spent most of his time in Philadelphia. Bushrod also suffered from conflicting sympathies about the necessity of slave labor to maintain his farms. During his ownership of Mount Vernon, he emancipated a number of slaves. Unrest and jealousy among the poor souls who remained in bondage made it virtually impossible to manage a productive and successful farm.

The time that Bushrod spent at Mt. Vernon was quiet, interrupted just once during the war of 1812. The Mansion House stood completely exposed to a fleet of passing warships when it was shaken by the firing of ammunition. No damage was done and the home’s occupants soon learned that the guns had not been pointed in their direction. The ship’s Captain had ordered a volley of cannon fire as a salutation to George Washington when passing Mount Vernon. The impromptu ceremony concluded and the fleet continued its journey to wreck havoc on Fort Washington and later, the City of Alexandria.

In 1829 Bushrod and his wife died within days of each other. The couple had no children, so the Mount Vernon Estate was passed down to his adult nephews and a niece. Union Farm was divided between brothers, George C. and Bushrod Jr, Washington. By this time, the lands that were once the pride of America’s first president had fallen into a sorry state. Fields were overgrown and saplings were quickly making new forests of the original owner’s pastures and fields. Older brother, George C., enjoyed a comfortable life in Georgetown as an agriculturist and politician. Bushrod Jr. and his large family lived on Mount Zephyr Farm in a house that was located in the area of Washington Avenue and Woodley Drive near Little Dogue Creek. Court records show that Bushrod Jr. was often in debt and had to be bailed out by his uncle on different occasions. His financial woes may be the reason that his more responsible brother, George C., was appointed trustee for the Mount Zephyr tract that Bushrod Jr. had inherited. Bushrod Jr's debt might have been the result of poor growing conditions or simply poor judgment and skill. The soil of Mount Vernon and its surrounding area is marine clay, created eons ago when the area was completely submerged under a body of water. Soil improvement was a major concern for George Washington and it remains the same way today. Ask any good gardener today what his or her secrets are and you'll likely get a lesson in soil amendment and additives.

MOUNT ZEPHYR PASSES TO NEW OWERS

George C. apparently felt no sentimental attachments about owning a piece of the first president's land because he unloaded his portion of Union Farm within two years to a Georgetown neighbor named Samuel Whiteall for $3,000. Bushrod Jr. continued farming Mt. Zephyr until 1840 when a lawsuit forced him to sell his portion. Samuel Whiteall won the final bid at $3 per acre when that second auction took place on the courthouse steps. Samuel Whiteall's family consisted of fourteen family members and three servants. He rented a luxurious mansion house in Georgetown with land for farming and gardening but still needed more to support them all. He sent his oldest daughter, her husband and five young children to live at Union Farm and start a dairy business. They occupied a house once owned by George Washington's overseer, the Overlooker's House and a brick barn located to the south of Mt. Zephyr Farm. The two family units were never able to make ends meet and accrued an impressive list of debts that included food merchants, lumber and hardware dealers and loans at two banks. Eight creditors filed a joint lawsuit against him in 1848. A portion of Union Farm was placed on the auction block. The Alexandria Gazette advertised the sale to be held August 21st. 1848 at the Fairfax Courthouse and described the property "of good quality and well located."

QUAKER FARMER REVIVES WASHINGTON'S DREAM

Aaron Leggett, a Quaker from New York City, bought the 603 acre tract for only $2 an acre. The sale brought only temporary relief to the financially strapped Whiteall. A second lawsuit resulted in a court order to sell the remainder of Union Farm in 1852 that now included the rest of Mt. Zephyr. Aaron Leggett once again snapped up the property but this time paid considerably more at $16.56 per acre for the remaining 107 acre tract. Leggett was a New York city businessman who longed to escape the "rat race" and retreat to the peace and quiet of country living. He was acquainted with the area through the network of Quakers who were already in the area west of Union Farm. Northern Quakers saw rural Virginia as a profitable site for harvesting second-growth timbers for the shipbuilding boom. Accotink Creek was the site of a number of Quaker businesses including a saw mill, gristmill and a shipbuilding yard. The Friends Meeting House was the center of their community and still stands today at Fort Belvoir. Leggett, a die-hard bachelor, came from a successful family that owned businesses ranging from dry goods stores to a company that brought gas lighting to New York City.
He had solid Quaker values and like his fellow Quaker Friends, he abhorred slavery. Among the “chattel” included in Leggett's purchase of Union Farm and Mt. Zephyr was a slave woman named Daphne Kelley. She was from Prince William County and had a husband, children and grandchildren living in that area. She remained at Mount Zephyr as a member of the household until his death in 1860. Leggett’s will ordered the emancipation of Daphne and designated funds to buy the rest of her family to win their freedom. Leggett set up housekeeping in the Mount Zephyr house and then turned to the business of farming. If there was ever a barn near the house, it was no longer useful. He envisioned a new Pennsylvania style barn made of stone and wood, and large enough to hold the bounty he hoped his land would produce. He contracted his nephew, John Griffin, to build the structure and include a stable for the sum of $550. The dimensions measured 107 by 43 feet at its base with a seven-foot overshoot on the second floor. In 1853, the landscape of Mount Zephyr was marked by a high ridge that ran along the eastern side of Washington Avenue. Leggett nestled the stone foundation of his barn into the ridge’s earth bank. It was located at the northern corner of Washington Avenue and Woodley Drive where the foundation footstones still exist today. Leggett enjoyed his time at Mount Zephyr and was a successful and happy farmer. By his 63rd birthday his enthusiasm still bubbled over. In a letter he wrote to a friend in September of 1855, he gushed,"...Here I am and I think on a first rate farm, wanting only a good and first-rate manager to make it a princely place and happy, healthy residence as well as very profitable..." He went on to tell his friend about his barn and his plans to buy steers, oxen and sheep. An ad in the July 19th, 1858 edition of the Alexandria Gazette advertised "400 Fine Wool Merino Sheep for Sale." Eventually, Leggett quit the farming life and moved back to New York where he died at age seventy. Leggett had remained a bachelor all his life and had no suitable heirs to continue the farm. Mount Zephyr and Union Farm was divided up into parcels and sold as farmettes to various buyers for $10 per acre.

CIVIL WAR ERA AT MT ZEPHYR

The civil War found Mt. Zephyr in a state of uneasy quiet. The area was a "no man's land" between Federal troops that occupied Alexandria City and Confederate Armies gathered near Mt. Zephyr. The Quaker families living in this buffer zone became targets of hostility from their neighbors who had loyalties to the slaveholding South. Soldiers from both sides often swooped in to ransack the farms and homes for food and supplies. After Leggett's death, the Mount Zephyr land was sold to Hugh Whitton, a Delaware resident who never lived on the land, but mysteriously disappeared behind Confederate lines during the war. The land passed to his daughter, Elizabeth Briscoe of Philadelphia. After the Briscoes moved to Mount Zephyr, they petitioned to restore an old road that had been closed by George Washington. That road is known today as the Mount Vernon Highway. The Briscoes farmed their land and prospered until 1875 when Mrs. Briscoe sold the farm and moved back to Philadelphia.

THE TRANSITION FROM FARM LAND TO HOME LAND

The eleven years that followed saw a whirlwind of various owners until it was finally bought in 1886 by Circuit Court Judge, the Honorable Park Agnew. He and his wife, Matilda, lived in the Mount Zephyr house with their three children. Unfortunately, only one son survived childhood. He inherited the land from his father and sold it to developer, George Beach, in 1938.

As a Washingtonian, Beach had a front row seat to observe the area's tremendous growth during the time between World Wars I and II. rural areas like Mount Zephyr were perfect for the kind of development he envisioned. He pictured a development of sturdy, modest, cape cod structures that would be economically viable to returning WWII veterans. A few modern homes already existed in the area of Halfe Street and Agnew Avenue in a gated community called Mt. Zephyr Park. The current child care center at the northern tip of Washington Avenue was the office of Houston and Associates, an architectural and surveying firm. Beach contracted the firm to lay out a subdivision plan of half-acre lots and filed it with Fairfax County in December,1940.

Houston’s original concept was that all the Mount Zephyr homes would look like the brick or stone cottages on Washington Avenue. The Tennessee Crab Orchard Stone was brought in truckloads from a quarry in Tennessee to Mount Zephyr where local stonemasons cut and assembled the exterior walls. The earliest stone-built homes have neatly stacked, square-cut stones, a practice that soon proved too costly and time consuming. Beach abandoned this technique for the easier method of puzzle-fitting rocks into place. This accounts for the two types of stone construction on these nearly identical cape cod homes. The first cape cod construction phase took place between 1941 and ’42 and started with the first house at the north tip of Washington Avenue. A family named Martin lived there and operated a hardware store that is now the NAPA parts store.

Beach continued his construction but few of his homes were actually finished and made habitable. WWII complicated the construction business by depleting the labor pool. Supplies were increasingly difficult to obtain and, for a time, not even plaster could be found to finish walls. Beach reluctantly filed bankruptcy and sold the Mount Zephyr tract to a team of four investors in 1946.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPS

The investment team formed a corporation and called themselves the Veteran’s Development Corporation (VDC). Their sales practices were unique and makes one wonder if they were trying to instill a sense of community in their new home buyers. Instead of providing their clients with deeds, the team issued stock shares--each plot was equal to one hundred shares. The VDC finished what Beach had been unable to complete. Twenty foundations had been poured before Beach stopped construction while other homes only had exterior walls. Mount Zephyr one again awakened to the sound of hammers and construction and by 1949, all of the homes that George Beach had started were now complete. The four members of the VDC eventually agreed to quit the business and divided up their remaining interests equally. As Mount Zephyr residents themselves, they endeavored to maintain a sense of community. Some of the VDC members continued to build houses in the neighborhood. While the cape cod cottages were nearly identical, the partners produced unique, custom-built homes. This accounts for the diversity of architectural styles, such as the brick ramblers with bay windows, split-levels and individual facades. The personal tastes of the different families helped Mount Zephyr avoid the cookie-cutter appearance that comes from having only one or two architectural themes.

Up until recent years, Mount Zephyr retained much of its historic appearance. Streets were narrow and lined with giant trees. One long-time resident remembers that a drive up Mount Zephyr streets was like riding through a tunnel with the trees arching over the shaded roadways. The area had its own water company near the corner of Jackson Place and Radford Avenue with a second pumping station on Mohawk and Richmond. The plant was in business as late as 1970 and supplied the entire neighborhood with what some remember as the "best artisan water you ever tasted." Even the bridge across Little Dogue Creek on Woodley Drive wasn't built until the 1970's. Mount Zephyr today comprises 125 acres of the original 648 acre farm and is a modern neighborhood with paved roads, sidewalks and city water. The first citizens association was begun in 1947 and was called the Mt. Zephyr Ladies Association. They had planned to build a clubhouse for the community in Section 1 north of the Business Park but the plans were never finalized. The second association was the first civic Mt. Zephyr Citizens Association established in 1953 and was active until 1960. The next generation association was begun in 1965, reorganized in 1985 and a new association was incorporated in 2005.

Traces of the past still connect the community to its historic beginnings. The close proximity to Mount Vernon is an obvious reminder of its roots. Closer to home, residents still unearth an occasional relic when digging in their gardens. The waters of Little Dogue Creek still meander quietly through Mt. Zephyr and down past George Washington's Grist Mill before spilling into the Potomac. The Mount Zephyr of today is a neighborhood that keeps pace with the times while still remembering and honoring its past.