page_title: Carlyle House
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Carlyle House / History
caption_attribution_description: Image of the Carlyle House in 1909, showing the original house completed in 1753 and additional terraces added in the mid-nineteenth century.
context_page_description: Carlyle House is a historic mansion in Alexandria, Virginia, United States, built by Scottish merchant John Carlyle in 1751–53. It is situated in the city's Old Town on North Fairfax Street between Cameron and King Streets.
context_section_description: When the lots for the new town of Alexandria were auctioned in July 1749, Carlyle purchased lots 41 and 42, situated between the Potomac River and the town's market square, ideal for his merchant business.  He began construction of a house in 1751, using indentured and slave labor.  The home was built in mid-Georgian style with space for entertaining and private family and servant use. He also built a number of outbuildings for both household and business needs. Carlyle and his wife, Sarah née Fairfax, moved into the house on 1 August 1753, the day Sarah gave birth to Carlyle's first son, William.  Carlyle or someone associated with the house's construction is believed to have sealed the body of a cat within the house's foundation for good luck, a custom that was prevalent in the British Isles and northern Europe. The cat's remains were discovered during restoration work in the 1970s.
  In 1755, the house was the initial headquarters for Major-General Edward Braddock in the Colony of Virginia during the French and Indian War. The Congress of Alexandria convened in the dining room of the house and here Braddock decided to make an expedition to Fort Duquesne which would result in his death. He was urged not to undertake the expedition by native Virginian George Washington who was then a volunteer aide-de-camp to Braddock. Braddock first suggested the idea of levying additional new taxes on the colonists to help with the cost of the war at the house.
  Carlyle was a slaveholder.  Carlyle's slaves lived and worked in his Alexandria home, on three plantations and in a foundry located on the same lot as the house.  When he died in 1780, there were nine slaves living at Carlyle House: Moses, Nanny, Jerry, Joe, Cate, Sibreia, Cook, Charles and Penny. In the colonial period, as many as twenty-five slaves might have lived and worked within its walls and in the various outbuildings.
  Following Carlyle's death in 1780, his son George William Carlyle inherited the house.  However, he died one year after his father at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina. The son of John Carlyle's eldest daughter Sarah Carlyle Herbert, John Carlyle Herbert, inherited the Carlyle House in 1781.  The house passed from the family's possession by 1827 when Sarah Carlyle Herbert died and John Carlyle Herbert sold it to pay off an uncle's gambling debt. He himself had moved to Maryland in the first decade of the 19th century.  A wealthy Alexandria merchant, John Lloyd, owned extensive tracts of real estate both in and outside of town, and ended up acquiring possession of the Carlyle House.  Not successful in selling the property, Lloyd offered the structure as a possible site for the new city and county courthouse to be constructed in Alexandria in 1838. This proposal was rejected and Lloyd continued to lease the premises to a number of renters until it was sold to James Green, the owner of Green and Brother Furniture Factory, a noted Alexandria furniture manufacturer in 1848.
caption: 1909 drawing of the Carlyle House
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