River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1901-05-02
OLD BRICK CHURCH.
Washington Sometimes Worshiped
Within Its Plain Walls.
Romantic spot in the Valley of Broad
Creek, Ten Miles from the Cnp-
itai, on the Maryland side
of the Potomac.
Especial Washington letter.

h TIE 1OIeStS are eau III elAiei d4u
green, the air is redolent of
floral life and resonant with
the chipperings and twitterings and
chickering's of the feathered children
of creation; the hills and dales of
suburban Washington are daily and
nightly travelled, on their superior
roads, by riders, drivers, cyclists,
automobilists and pedestrians. Not
only our own people are enjoying the
woodland glories and beauties of the
country, but visiting friends who
come from near and far are shown
the country side of the national cap
ital, as well as its official, social and
architectural side.
There is no road leading into or
out of the national capital which
does not bring one to historic spots;
and they who have been here long do
not realize this fact so well as the
casual visitor or occasional literary
tramp, who keeps his eyes open and
asks questions of the plain people,
realizing the wisdom of the old say
ing:
Lest, where one stood before, two fall
Something God hath to say to thee
Worth hearing from the lips of ALL
In one days journey along the old
common road which follows the
Maryland shore of the Potomac,
down towards Piscataway creek, by
asking questions of the people, we
discovered that this oft Travelled road
is replete with history-and the
writer has been over it fully four
score times, without asking ques-
lions. BY the time one has travelled
so far from the city that the natives
begin luting-which they never do
in the immediate vicinity of town
you can, in your imagination, date
yourself back three or four genera
tions without meeting anything mod
ern enough in appearance to bring
you out of it," to use the phrase of
the hypnotist.
The region was once rich tobacco
country, and spot of untitled land
was more rare than a well-cultivated
field is now. Tobacco, or the "sot-
weed" as it was called, made the col
ony one of the wealthiest of the new
world, and the "sot-weed factor" or
agent, was a lord, to all intents and
purposes, though in his loneliness
somewhat registering and illiterate.
To-day his descendant, if he has
chung to the land, is being gradually
forced to knuckle under to the vigor-
Gus second-growth of oak and pine,
which is slowly encroaching upon the
worn-out fields. But those energetic
hard-drinking, bull-baiting and cock
fighting old colonists builded well
and left to their posterity solid walls
often of brick imported from Eng
land, which are as good to-day as
they were century ago; and so their
easy-going descendant has a home
in as good repair and quite as re-
spectacle as his pedigree. You will
find any number of these picturesque
old places, some in good condition
still, others occupied only in part, as
the habitable portions have been
slowly contracted by advancing de
cay, others again quite abandoned
and falling into complete ruin, OF
gone entirely, and their sites marked
only by solitary chimney standing
like gravestone.
A ten-mile drive from the city will
bring us to a point where the road
makes sudden dip into the valley OF
Broad creek. After we descend the
stony hill and cross the stream at its
foot we will come upon little brick
church, surrounded by two or three
score of graves. The little edifice is
in fair state of repair, and there is
little about it to suggest great age
but on one of the headstones in the