With Halloween fast approaching, it seemed the perfect time to revisit a history column I wrote some years ago about Cabin John’s spooky legends and tales, from a ghostly hermit in the woods to a mysterious female stranger and family burial grounds. Captain John Smith, who helped establish Jamestown, was the first to map the …
Local History: Revisiting the Ghostly Tales of Cabin John Read More »
A young woman in a striped coat gazes out from the photo, a plumed hat perched on her head. In other snapshots, she sits grinning from a canoe with paddle in hand, smiles with her two boys along the banks of the river and poses in her garden. These black and white images perfectly capture …
Local History: Cabin John’s First Historian, Edith Martin Armstrong Read More »
Nestled in the woods behind 81st Street are the remnants of Bucolston Quarry. A brief stroll along the path leads to the mossy outline of a shallow pond and ruins of a stone cottage, its graffiti-covered chimney still precariously standing. Some rusted metal bits, both large and small, litter the woods amongst decaying leaves. A …
Local History: “Cat Man” and Other Tales From the Quarry Read More »
A 1913 obituary from the Evening Star was recently brought to my attention by a local history buff.* The obituary was for Mrs. Esther Stewart, also known as “Mother Stewart,” who died at her home at Lock 13 at the age of eighty-three. The newspaper clipping is an introduction to one the C&O Canal’s many …
Across the Potomac River, the grave of a mysterious young woman who died over 200 years ago rests in an Alexandria cemetery. The legend of the female stranger has been a part of Old Town’s lore for centuries. One hundred years after her death, a romance novel attempted to sprinkle some of the legend’s fairy …
Local History: Does Mysterious “Female Stranger” have ties to Cabin John? Read More »
Like many Cabin John residents, my dog Toby and I know Alpine Veterinary Hospital well. This particular site along MacArthur Boulevard has served the Cabin John community for nearly a century. Long before it started welcoming pets through its doors in 1973, it was a center of Cabin John’s social life—a grocery shop and gas …
While we’ve all become armchair travelers this past year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us take daily strolls across what was once a must-see tourist destination, the subject of postcards, photographs, and letters. At the turn of the 20th century, the Cabin John Bridge was on the itinerary of the capital’s visitors and …
Local History: Alex J. Yowell, Self-Proclaimed “Successor to John of the Cabin” Read More »
This past spring, as Covid-19 lockdowns began and people worried about the availability of fresh food, victory gardens and backyard chickens became a growing trend. In Cabin John, raised beds and deer-proof fencing became more common. But what many of Cabin John’s backyard farmers may not have known is that their newly cultivated gardens revisited …
I was delighted to receive a wonderful handwritten letter a couple of days before the deadline for this column. Though Mr. Jesse J. Crook’s correspondence began by expressing doubt as to whether anyone in Cabin John would remember him, his name is certainly familiar to me within the context of Cabin John history, and I’m …
Local History: A Little More Post Office History Read More »
The slightly yellowed paper is about the size of a diploma. Folded into eighths, Post Office Department is authoritatively spelled out in Old English font. Swirling cursive proclaims the appointment of Joseph Bobinger to Postmaster on the 18th day of March, 1878 by the Postmaster General of the United States, David M. Key. “Now know …
Local History: A Piece of Cabin John’s Post Office History Read More »