The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1904-02-19

The part of the history of the Car
! lyle House, however, in which we are
most interested is that dealing direct
iy with Washington as national char
acter. Most of us are fairly familia r
with Lieut.. Col. Washington's work
with the Virginians against the French
at Great Meadows; and we know with
what spirit he resigned his commits
sion from Gov. Dinwiddie rather than
take that misguided Scotchmans die
tum that provincial officers should
rank no higher than captains when
serving in concert with British regu-
lars.
Maj.Gen. Braddock, however, had
formed very different opinion of
Washington, and in recognition of the
young mans services, invited him to
become one of his staff and to serve
in his military family with the rank of
colonel 1t is in this we lare inter
ested.
Making his headquarters in the Car
lyle House, Braddock set to work at
once to fully organize his forces, part
of his military command long being
recruited in Alexandria. In mid-April
of 1855 Braddock had called together
in Alexandria the governors of Mas
sachusetts, New York Maryland.
Pennsylvania and Virginia, who were
William Shirley, James De Lancey,
Horatio Sharpe, Robert Hunter Morris
and Robert Dinwiddie. 1t was to the
councils of such men that Washing
ton was hidden by Braddock, and it
he received his commission as colonel
on Braddock's staff. The walls, wains-
coting. woodwork, mantel, etc, of the
very room in which this occurred re-
main to-day just as they We're on
that momentous occasion.
It takes no particularly vivid mag
ination to animate that place to-day
with sense of the atmosphere of that
time, now a century and a half gone
by, and the use to which the building
is now put-a repository for antique
furniture of the artistic sort-only
tends to give further touch to the
ancient halo about the place.
This room referred to leads directly
upon the broad central hallway of the
house, and, according 10 tradition, it
was at the foot of the still beautiful
solid mahogany staircase of this hall
way that Washington stood waiting
the coming of fair Sallie Fairfax on
the occasion OF q ball in the house,
and, likewise according to honored
tradition, it was in the room directly
opposite the one in which he received
his commission and counselled with
the colonial rulers that he proposed
to the same fair Sallie and was re-
jected.
But for the unusually substantial
manner in which the house and it's
old-fort foundation were built the
place would long ago have lost much
of it's originality. The ravages OF
time are now beginning to tell and it
will be but question of a few years,
if something is not done to prevent
the attacks of relic hunters and the
natural decay of materials, before the
building is ruined.
To-day the Braddock House. which
is not without it's civil war history
for it was there that Col. Ellsworth
of the zouaves was shot in 6I-is
deserted, only the wide
sweep of it's ground floor, which once
was the scene of many a ball and inn
portant function, is now Uttered with |
relics of every section of |
Virginia The work of preparing this |
furniture for the market is fast mar
ring the walls and injuring wainscot.
ing and the like, and the Carlyle
House suffers in common with it's
more recent neighbor.