Evening star., 1925-05-10

~ OUTH of Alexandria about five
miles the, electric car will stop at
Wellington. One of the familiar
- open-face railway waiting shell
ters. built of strong timber an6
corrugated iron sheeting, stands by
the track-side and the name 'Wel
5hngton" looks at you in big letters
Perhaps thoughts of Arthur Welles
ley, first Duke of Wellington. come
TO you, and perhaps also the thought
that men of burning ambition an6
Notwithstanding achievement turn to
dust as common men do.
The dust of the Duke of yelling
ton rests under the dome of great St
sPaupS, and there may be consolation
in that's You may wonder what rela-
tfon this wayside name has to that of
a man whose reputation as a soldier
was SO high and whose political role
in England was so conspicuous dur
ing the life AND after the death of
George Canning.
The Rambler does not know that
- there is any association between Wei
ilngton on the Potomac and the Iron
Duke. He believes that an owner of
the land may have given 1t the name
late In the summer of 1915, when
news of Waterloo reached the United
States and Wellington became what
50 many writers and speakers call a
household name.
The tract of land Wellington has
associations of interest and the Ram
bier means to set some of them before
You. Have patience. He will not
hand the record of these associations
to. you in one neat little chunk. They
might be pressed, in guide book style
into a few lines, but such compression
would violate the ethics of the writer's
union. The job of writing Wellington
CT of Loo of fyrro md
with skillful handling can be stretched
into two full Sunday rambles.
George Washington leased this land
q part of the Mount Vernon estate
to Tobias Lear and bequeathed it to
him, Washington, in his will. de-
scribed the tract, but did not call it
Wellington. When Washington died
in 1899 the Duke of Wellington was
only Col. Wellesley. commanding a
regiment in India. but fast rising in
prominence because of his merit and
through the favor of his brother Lord
Nornington, governor general of In
dia. George Washington never heard
of the Duke of Wellington, and if he
had would not have named a farm
for him.
Tobias Lear was found dead October
II, 1916. with pistol-shot through the
head in the garden of his house at the
northwest corner of Eighteenth and. F
streets northwest, and the Rambler
thinks there are reasons for assuming
that Col. Lear did not give the name
wellington to the tract he received
from George Washington. 1t was
after the battle of Talavera. in 1909,
that the title of Viscount Wellington
was given Gen. Wellesley. and English
success in Spain or elsewhere, between
1900 and 1915, did not move Ameri-
cans to name their homes after Eng
lish victors.
THE papers of administration of
Tobias Lear's estate were de-
stroyed by fire in our courthouse long
ago. and all that can be learned of
Lear from Washington court records
is an entry in docket No. 2 that his
estate was administered by his son.
BENJAMIN L. Lear, under bond of
$4,000, with B. D. Henley and John
Rodgers as sureties.
Wellington on the Potomac may
have been named by some one who
never heard of the Duke of Yelling
ton. There are two towns in England
named Wellington, one in Shropshire,
with history antedating the Con-
quest, and one in Somersetshire that
is older than any town in the United
States. Perhaps some settler in Vir-
ginia came from one of those yelling
tons or had a great-aunt who went to
school or market in one of them. and
he thought that Wellington would he