The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-12-19
EARLY COLONIAL HOUSES
HOMES OF FAMOUS FAMILIES NOT .f or GREAT SIZE.
so-Called Mansions Small and Plain According to Modern standnrds --Eighteenth Century Abodes
 of the weli-to-Do in New
 England and tho South.

A Boston family that recently went to, see seventeenth century ances- tral house in one of the smaller Mas sach usetts cities found 1t q moderate sized house of very simple architec- ture both within and without. That has been the experience of most Amer
 icans who hunt up early ancestral houses. gsf
 wflliamsburg, Va, which has more
 early eighteenth century survigals than most towns. has hardly single
 great house, and not one of elaborate
 architecture The impression that the
 aristocratic homes of Williamsburg
 made upon an Italian youth in the
 mid-eighteenth century period Is em- balmed in his reported exclamation upon looking round on the beauties ct dance:
 How can such angels live in such hovels?"
 Some of the biggest of the carly Colonial houses still stand on the banks of the Potomac and the James, but many of the houses once occupied by famous Virginia families are neith- CT very large nor of distinguished ar- chitecture. White House, the home of Widow Custis, who brought George Washington fortune, is a good-sized wooden house of plain aspect George Washington himself was born in a
 rather small and very plain farm
 house and the house to which he was taken as an infant. on the plantation on the Rappahannock opposite Fred ericksburg, was just such another. One of the early Lee homesteads on | tho Potomac not far from Wakefield. the birth- place of Washington, Is a plain and rather small house. The | famous Nelson house at Yorktown Is | fine example of Georgian domestic
 architecture belonging to the middle
 of the eighteenth century. but 1t is not
 great house tried by the standard of well-to-do persons today. In fact 1t has but twelve rooms
 All over Virginia are late seven teenth and early eighteenth century
 houses, the homesteads of distin- 1 guished families. but hardly one in | five is a great house. Few seventeenth century houses are left In Maryland and the early eighteenth century 1 houses, whether on the Eastern or the i Western shore are mostly of moderate l size.
 Only the great landowners built | large houses even in the eighteenth | century. There are a few large
 houses 200 years old or more in and about Annapolis. but some of the fa-
 nous brick mansions in that little capltdi arc ulsunBuisueu Iori syHihe- | try and for the beauty of their wood work rather than for their size. There stands in Montgomery Coun- l ty, Maryland, the early eighteenth century mansions of the Calverts. The 1 house is historic. Here George Wash | ington was a frequent visitor In Co., lonial times and there is a tradition l that upon one occasion he took too l much toddy when visiting the Calvert of his day.
 Famous men frequented the house for century and a half. Clay often visited the Calverts and it used to be said that he wrote out part of his
 compromise plan of 1850 in one of the
 bed rooms of this house. The man. sion Is a symmetrical building of brick
 and stucco, handsomely panelled with
 in and roomy withal, but families to- day that live on s10,000 @ year or less
 are building houses quite as large.
 Beverly, on the Pocomoke River, Is one of the nohlest of Eastern Shore mansions. but 1t dates from the sev-. ] enteenth century. and handsome and 1 dignified as 1t Is it does not rank in
 size with the considerable houses of
 today. Some of the eighteenth cen- | tury houses of the same region, once
 the homes of local magnates, would
 not comfortably house a moderately well-to-do family of this time. Only the great landowners built
 large standing In Pennsylvania and
 almost none that goes back much be- yond the middle of the eigh teenth century. Stenton, the historic man.
 sion on the edge of Philadelphia,T in sight from the Baltimore and OhIo
 Railroad, is an imposing eighteenth l century house with dignihed rooms
 and beautiful woodwork. but there are
 half dozen modern country houses
 of much greater size within a few
 miles of Stenton.
 Van Cortlandt Manor House in Van Cortlandt Park is not a great house
 and Philipse Manor House at Yonk :
 CTS Is hardly larger. It is In New York as, elsewhere in this country.
 there are few great houses that date
 much before the Revolution. The New
 York Dutch did not build big houses
 because they were not rich enough
 and their case was that of most New