Abingdon (also known as the Alexander-Custis Plantation) was an 18th- and 19th-century plantation owned by the prominent Alexander, Custis, Stuart, and Hunter families and worked at times by slaves and domesticated animals. The plantation's site is now located in Arlington County in the U.S. state of Virginia.
Abingdon is known as the birthplace of Eleanor "Nelly" Parke Custis Lewis (March 31, 1779 – July 15, 1852), a granddaughter of Martha Washington and a step-granddaughter of United States President George Washington.Snowden, p. 10. Published accounts have credited Abingdon as being the home to the progenitor of all weeping willows (Salix babylonica) living in the United States.Multiple sources:
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which occupies part of Abingdon's grounds, contains indoor and outdoor displays that commemorate the plantation's history..
History Alexander family The land that contains Abingdon was originally part of a larger holding granted in 1669 by letters patent to shipmaster Robert Howson for headrights for settlers that he had brought to the Colony of Virginia.Rose, pp. 26-32.Abbott, p. 37. Howson soon sold the patent to John Alexander for 6,000 pounds of tobacco...
Alexander was a descendant of the MacDonald clan of Scotland and was a son of the Earl of Stirling.Multiple sources:
. He immigrated to Virginia around 1653, settled in Stafford County and became a planter, surveyor and captain of the Stafford County militia..
When Alexander purchased the Howson patent, the patent covered an site (believed at the time of sale to contain only ) on the southwestern side of the Potomac River. The site was about wide and extended along the Potomac from Hunting Creek (the southern boundary of the present City of Alexandria) to the present northern boundary of Arlington National Cemetery.
After John Alexander's death in 1677, one of his sons, Robert Alexander, acquired the Howson patent by inheritance and by a gift from his brother, Phillip Alexander. In 1735, Gerrard Alexander, a grandson of Robert Alexander, inherited the northern part of the Howson patent. In 1746, a survey map that Daniel Jennings prepared showed that Gerrard Alexander owned a house on a portion of the Howson patent that was north of Four Mile Creek.
Shortly thereafter, the town of Alexandria was chartered in 1749 on a more southerly part of the Howson patent. The town was named in honor of John Alexander and his family, who provided land on which the town was founded.
In 1760, the plantation housed 24 slaves who maintained crops and livestock on its waterfront property.Dodge, p. 43. After Gerrard Alexander's death in 1761, his three sons, Robert, Phillip and Gerrard (2nd), each inherited approximately of his estate.
Custis and Stuart families In 1778, John Parke Custis (nicknamed "Jacky"), the son of Daniel Parke Custis and Martha Washington and the stepson of George Washington, purchased Abingdon and its estate from Robert Alexander. Custis had been eager to obtain real estate in the Abingdon area on which to raise his family..
However, Jacky Custis' eagerness and inexperience allowed Robert Alexander to take advantage of him in the transaction, because compound interest during the 24-year term would eventually transform the £12,000 purchase price into payments totalling over £48,000. (Some sources claim that General George Washington purchased Abingdon for Custis.) When he learned of the terms of the purchase, Washington informed Custis that "No Virginia Estate (except a few under the best management) can stand simple Interest how then can they bear compound Interest".
Jacky Custis chose Abingdon because it was equidistant between the Washingtons' home at Mount Vernon, and the family home of his wife, Eleanor Calvert (the Mount Airy estate, whose restored mansion is now in Rosaryville State Park in Prince George's County, Maryland).Multiple sources:
Wilstach, p. 109 Eleanor Calvert was a descendant of Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, a member of the Parliament of England and the recipient of the charter for the Maryland colony.
During the year (1778) that Jacky Custis purchased Abingdon, his neighbors in Fairfax County elected him to the Virginia General Assembly as a delegate. Shortly after moving to Abingdon, Custis' wife gave birth to their third surviving daughter, Eleanor (Nelly) Parke Custis on March 31, 1779.Snowden, p. 80. Nelly, her older sisters, Elizabeth (Eliza) Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis Peter, and her younger brother, George Washington Parke Custis (G.W.P. Custis), were then raised at Abingdon.
However, Jacky Custis contracted "camp fever" in 1781 at the Siege of Yorktown while serving as Washington's aide and died shortly after Cornwallis surrendered there. Soon afterwards, George Washington "adopted" the two youngest Custis children, Nelly and George, who moved from Abingdon to live with the Washingtons at Mount Vernon. The eldest children, Elizabeth and Martha, remained at Abingdon.
Custis' widow, Eleanor, remarried in the autumn of 1783 to a friend and business associate of George Washington, Dr. David Stuart. During the period that Dr. Stuart and Eleanor resided at Abingdon, Dr. Stuart served as a delegate from Fairfax County in the Virginia General Assembly and President Washington appointed him to be one of the three commissioners that oversaw planning of the nation's new capital city.
In 1791, Dr. Stuart and the two other commissioners named the new capital the "City of Washington" in "The Territory of Columbia" (see: History of Washington, D.C.). Dr. Stuart and his wife had sixteen children, at least three of whom (Anne Calvert Stuart, Sarah Stuart and Ariana Calvert Stuart) were born at Abingdon.
Although John Parke Custis had become well-established at Abingdon, his financial matters were in a state of disarray due to his poor business judgement and wartime taxation. After his death in 1781, it took the administrators of the Custis Estate more than a decade to negotiate an end to the transaction through which Custis had purchased Abingdon.
Because the estate had been paid for with Continental currency, the heirs of Gerrard Alexander brought suit against the Custis and Stuart families to recover their money. After years of litigation, Abingdon was returned to Robert Alexander in 1792.
After Robert Alexander died in 1793, court-appointed commissioners surveyed his estate and divided it equally between two of his sons, Robert and Walter.Abbott, p. 38. In 1800, Walter Alexander obtained ownership of the southern half of the estate, which contained the on which the Abingdon house stood.
In 1805, George Wise acquired a portion of Abingdon that included the house. Others acquired different parts of Walter Alexander's Abingdon property.Abbott, p. 39. The Wise family lived at Abingdon until "General" Alexander Hunter acquired of the Abingdon property from George Wise and others between 1835 and 1842..
At the same time that John Parke Custis purchased Abingdon from Robert Alexander, he also purchased outright a tract of land from Gerrard Alexander (2nd). This more northerly tract, which was separated from Abingdon by the tract that Phillip Alexander had inherited, remained in the possession of the Custis family. G.W.P. Custis, who inherited this land from his father (John Parke Custis) later constructed and named Arlington House on a plantation that he developed on the tract.
Gallery of the Custis family
Weeping willow
According to accounts that historian Benson J. Lossing and others wrote in the mid- to late 1800s and early 1900s that were based on a story that G.W.P. Custis had told to Lossing, John Parke Custis served on George Washington's staff during the Siege of Boston in 1775-1776 and became an emissary to the British forces there. According to these accounts, Custis befriended a young British officer on the staff of General William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe. While in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the officer gave Custis a weeping willow (Salix babylonica) twig that the officer had taken from a famous tree that Alexander Pope had planted at Twickenham and that was first of its kind in England.
The officer had intended to plant his willow sprig wrapped in oiled silk along a stream on land he would seize from the Americans. However, following his army's defeat, he decided to give the sprig to Custis.
Custis then planted the twig at Abingdon. The resulting tree reportedly became the progenitor of all of the weeping willows growing in the United States at the time of the accounts.
One such tree reportedly grew next to Arlington National Cemetery near the northern end of George Washington Parke Custis' mansion, Arlington House.. Another reportedly grew from a slip of the Abingdon willow that American General Horatio Gates had planted at the entrance to his Rose Hill Farm in Manhattan. That tree, which became known as "Gates's Willow", grew at a site that became the corner of Third Avenue and 22nd Street. The tree was reportedly cut down in 1860.
However, two 1840 newspaper articles that related G.W.P. Custis' account of the origins of the tree then standing near Arlington House said that John Parke Custis had planted the Twickenham willow twig "on the banks of the Potomac", but had not identified Abingdon as the specific location of the planting.Multiple sources: Cited in
21st-century writers have questioned the veracity of such accounts.Multiple sources:
Hunter family "General" Alexander Hunter, a descendant of the Alexander family who had served at the Battle of Bladensburg during the War of 1812 as Adjutant of the District of Columbia Regiment of Volunteers, acquired Abingdon from the Wise family and others.Abbott, p. 42.Multiple sources:
Abbott, p. 44. Hunter was a wealthy man who held a position in Alexandria's custom house and reportedly spent lavishly to renovate and beautify his house and estate at Abingdon.
As U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, Hunter was a friend of United States President Andrew Jackson.Dodge, p. 46. Jackson frequently left Washington City to spend Sundays at Abingdon as Hunter's guest. Hunter reportedly had an inflexible rule that forbade office-seeking and discussions of politics during Jackson's visits. In addition to President Jackson, Hunter also hosted Presidents John Tyler and James K. Polk at Abingdon.
A chamber on the northeast side of the Abingdon house was referred to as "General Washington's room" during Hunter's ownership because George Washington had usually occupied this room while visiting his stepson, John Parke Custis. Some authors later stated that Hunter had told visitors that he chose not to build a more pretentious structure because a house that was good enough for Washington was good enough for him.
"General" Hunter died in 1849. According to an 1850 inventory of his estate, the plantation held at the time five cows, four bulls, at least six calves, two carriage horses, two sows, 27 hogs, numerous plows, a wagon, two carts, a blacksmith iron (anvil) with tools, the main house, a barn, five or six slave cabins and 22 slaves aged two to 70 years that together had a value of $5,035.00 (worth $ in 2021). The inventory listed the cattle and horses as being worth $1,209.50 (worth $ in 2021) and the value of Abingdon's furniture, implements and produce (including pillowcases, candles, pots, kettles, ironware, pieces of china, tools, andirons, a mahogany bookcase, a spinning wheel, barometers, a fishing rod, a waffle iron and 159 barrels of corn) at $1,459.99 (worth $ in 2021). Dodge, pp. 45-47.
The main house contained upstairs bedrooms, a wash room, a storage room, a kitchen, a dining room, and a breakfast room that held a walnut table, a stove and a copper tea kettle. A large cellar lay beneath the first floor.