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Written Memories Oak Hill Recollections Mary Grace Watt Pulley September 1, 2005 (Ms. Pulley tells of her family and her early childhood growing up at Oak Hill.)

My grandfather, William Watt, bought Oak Hill March 26, 1889 and moved in shortly thereafter. My father, Egbert Thompson Watt, was born May 8 of the same year. Grandfather Watt bought Oak Hill because he wanted property of his own on which to support his family. Previously he had come to this country as a young man and served in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. He married Elizabeth Steele in Canada in 1867 and after 1870 took his young family back to Scotland. He had farmed on property owned by others since he had brought his family back to the United States from his native Scotland some time after 1883. In Scotland property was owned only by the lairds (landed gentry) and worked by farmers on 99-year leases. Being a well-educated man and self-educated by reading of current literature throughout his life, William Watt was keenly aware of the historical background of Oak Hill. The naming of his youngest daughter, Elizabeth Elliot Fitzhugh Watt in 1896 attests to that.

The purchase price of Oak Hill in 1889 was $900 for fifty acres and the farmhouse and outbuildings. It was sold to William Watt by Nancy T. Battaile who had inherited it from Ann F. Battaile. The property was part of the original land grant and was known as the Fitzhugh farm. Nancy Battaile partitioned her land and sold off lots as needed.

The William Watt family was large, eleven children. William died in 1911 and Egbert, the youngest son, became the one to stay at home and maintain the farm. In addition in 1911 four nieces and nephews came to Oak Hill when their parents died in England, and they stayed until they left for college. In 1917 Egbert married Grace Estelle Frenzel of IIda in Fairfax County. In August 1918 the first of their six children came along to further fill the house. Twin daughters, Mary Grace and Anna Elizabeth, were born at Oak Hill on August 14, 1918. All the Watt children were born at home, attended by a midwife and by Dr. F.M. Brooks of Swetnam. Nephew George Watt rode horseback to near present day Fairfax Station to fetch the doctor. The midwife was a neighborhood Black woman known to the family as Aunt Catherine, and she stayed to care for the 22-year old mother for a couple of weeks. The youngest child, Ronald Fairfax, was born in 1930.

The lore concerning Miss Ann and her lover is just that as far as I have ever heard. It makes an interesting story but we children were never informed about it if it ever happened. Nor was it authenticated by any of the older generation to my knowledge. There were no ghosts or odd noises, etc. in the years that my parents or I lived at Oak Hill. I have no authoritative knowledge of Oak Hill during the Civil War. After the slaves left there was no one to work the farm. Selling off the land was the main livelihood of owners who could not work the land themselves.

Stories of other owners of Oak Hill are few. The Howreys bought from my father and appreciated the historical value of Oak Hill. They had the money to remodel the house from the modest old farmhouse and changed its character forever. From the house that had never been painted, only whitewashed years before, no indoor plumbing or modern heating, only wired for electricity, it became a lovely home even approaching the grandeur of Mount Vernon. The Howreys offered an attractive amount of money for Oak Hill in 1935, and with his young family in the middle of the Depression, my father needed money. He always regretted selling Oak Hill.

I have made a sketch of the layout of the outbuildings and provided it to the Park Authority.

The barn was fun. I learned to roller skate in the cow stable section of the barn, which had a cement floor. The rest of the barn also had a cement floor but was always covered with hay, horse feed, etc. We enjoyed jumping from the loft into piles of hay. One time my cousin Ruth jumped a little too close to the edge of the hay and sprained her ankle. The corn house had a high roof so I rigged up a trapeze and various swings and we played circus in there. The silo was fun to climb when it was empty. It was on the forbidden list of things to do but once in a while my cousins and I would climb to see the pigeons and their young squabs which we considered nasty looking, not knowing how highly prized they are to gourmets.

Silo filling days were exciting. Once a year when the corn was at the proper stage the silo filler would come with a crew of men, cut and chop the corn and convey it to the top where gravity would let the silo fill. The crew would have their noonday meal at the house where extra help in the kitchen was needed to prepare it. Wheat threshing was another yearly event with no combines in those days. The wheat had been cut with a wheat binder and stacked in the field. On the day of threshing the wheat was brought by horse and wagon to the threshing machine. It was a dirty, dusty job and usually in the hottest days of summer. The wheat grains were stored in the granary, another fun place to climb into, and totally off limits. The wheat was sold as is, but some was taken to the mill to be ground into flour. We always had a well-filled flour barrel since my mother made practically all the bread we ate. There were hog pens and chicken houses, several of each, always full to capacity. We had a herd of Guernseys. The original breeders were sent to us from England by my father's oldest brother, William James Watt, who was a veterinarian there. We shipped cream, sent butter to market, and fed the skim milk to the hogs. Eggs, butter, vegetables were taken to old Southwest Market in Washington each Saturday by horse and wagon in the 1910's and 20's and later in a Ford Model T truck. In the later 20's my twin sister and I occasionally went with my father and often spent time in the Smithsonian museum while he was at the market.

There was an implement shed where the corn planter, wheat binder, wheat drill, cultivators and so forth were stored. A tool house with an attic was used for small tools, saws, hammers, and workbench. On the other side of the barnyard were garage, carriage house, kerosene shed and wood shed. The well house was a distance from the house. Adjoining it was the dairy house where the cream was separated from the milk with a cream separator. It was cooled in a large tank with water pumped from the well. Most of the outbuildings had cement floors that could be cleaned up fairly easily. We had an orchard of approximately thirty apple trees, good old standbys like Smokehouse, Grimes Golden and Winesap. Their flavors cannot be matched by the hybrids of today, though probably they would not ship as well as those of today. When my cousins and I would spot a hornet's nest in one of the trees we would pelt it with apples until the enraged bees came out. Then we would lie flat and still in the high grass until they calmed down.

We played in the boxwood a lot. There were two rows of American boxwood with a walkway between. The vegetable garden was between the boxwood and the main orchard. We spent a lot of time in the garden as we got older. My father planted the boxwood on one side of the lane into the house. Originally there were three huge oak trees in a row at the edge of the lawn on the south side of the house. One died before I was born. The other two were still there when we sold but later died. One had been struck repeatedly by lightning. Until I went to high school, I attended Wakefield School on Wakefield Chapel Road north of Oak Hill. Students attended through seventh grade, though it was not called Wakefield Elementary. My mother was the teacher for two years before her marriage, then one more year afterward. Photographs of Grace Frenzel and her Wakefield students at the school building are in the Virginia Room at Fairfax City Regional Library. Wakefield School was a one-room school with a shed for wood and the teacher's horse and buggy, with a privy on each side of it. There was not much play room outside with many stumps and small bushes where we had a makeshift ball diamond. Water was brought from a spring 500 yards away and there was a dipper to fill individual cups. We were not allowed to drink out of the dipper. Other health considerations were attended to by Mrs. Seamans, a public health nurse who checked heads for lice and gave health tips, and by Dr. Caton, school doctor who came occasionally.

The school had large windows on the east and south sides. The entrance door opened into a small vestibule where we hung our coats and where a door on each side led into the schoolroom. It had desks for approximately twenty-five students and a large stove in the middle. I don't know who built the fire before school each day, but I don't remember being cold.

There was a series of teachers at Wakefield after my mother until the school was closed in 1930, when bus service began along with consolidation of schools. Our high school was Lee-Jackson located on Little River Turnpike near Seminary Hill. Now that area has been annexed by Alexandria. I enjoyed school overall, not having any other experience to compare it with. I graduated in 1934, but returned in 1935 for postgraduate business course, the first time it had been offered. The most enjoyable part of high school was being on the basketball and track teams, since anything having to do with athletics appealed to me more than any other activity except reading.

Christmas was the most outstanding holiday as a family. We were quite poor as far as money or gifts went, but we had practical gifts and did not feel deprived. We hung our stockings and got oranges, nuts, something that would fit in there. We were better off than many in our neighborhood and we always had lots of good food, milk, eggs, meat, plenty of canned vegetables from the summertime bounty. In my younger day we had a ceiling height Christmas tree with real candles and old decorations. The candles gave way to safer decorations as time went on and even electric lights after the electric line went through in 1930 and we became wired.

Easter was great too, with egg dyeing and Easter baskets. One year when my sister and I were ten, my aunt in Washington took us to the White House for Easter egg rolling. I wasn't too impressed. Halloween was a fun time when we were allowed to go with a group to neighboring houses. It was not a trick or treat thing, just a knock on doors and show off costumes.

Each week we attended Wakefield Methodist Church (at present day Wakefield Chapel) and had a minister every two weeks. The organist ploughed through the old hymns faithfully but with less than inspirational talent. We went to annual ice cream festivals to make money for the church.

Our family doctor was Dr. Frederick Brooks who lived near Fairfax Station. He would come with his supply of little pink pills. I think they were calomel but usually [would] do the trick with stomach aches. And of course he was always right on track when the time came for a birth. We went to Alexandria to dentist Dr. Roberts.

I do remember Rebel Hill, one steep winding road. I especially remember helping push the Model T truck up that hill when the low speed band needed to have something done to it. My mother made most of our clothes and did her best to teach us to sew, not one of my best accomplishments. Shopping for clothes, school supplies, and shoes was done mostly in Alexandria. Most of the time my sister and I were able to catch a ride with one of the men in the neighborhood who drove in each day to work.

We had no memories of Prohibition though we read the Washington Post, which came by mail a day late. We heard of stills in the County being raided but nothing that touched our personal lives. The Depression was a big subject but didn't have too much impact because we always had enough to eat, didn't have to pay rent, didn't need a job - yet. Later after we left Oak Hill and were in the job market, jobs were low paying. Virginia's government job quotas were filled. We loved Oak Hill and all it stood for. I dreamed of someday buying it back. We hated the day it was sold. I liked everything about living there, my happy childhood. I never felt deprived because we didn't have a flush toilet or central heat or that the house needed painting. I can't remember any most favorite memory - it was just home.