Kindle Notes & Highlights
Initially part of a large land grant to Lord Fairfax before the Revolutionary War, what is now Arlington was ceded to help form the new federal government seat by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1790. It remained a part of the District of Columbia until 1847, when Congress retroceded it back to the commonwealth.
Washington’s presence after he purchased twelve hundred acres of Lord Fairfax’s land on the eve of the Revolution because he needed timber out at Mount Vernon.
What Washington shared with Moses Ball was the need to use a wellknown oak tree as a reference point in his survey. That tree was felled by a storm in 1898; a stump survives on exhibit in the Glencarlyn Branch Library.
Abingdon has been regarded as the oldest house in Arlington, built before 1741 by Gerard Alexander of the Scottish-bred landowning family who are the city’s namesakes. High on hills overlooking the Potomac and Old Town Alexandria, this prime property in the area called Gravelly Point would become the birthplace of George Washington’s step-granddaughter Eleanor Parke “Nelly” Custis. (In 1941, a Nelly Custis Airmen’s Lounge was built near the airport’s radar station.)
1960s, when Glebe Road was widened.
African American neighborhood torn asunder in 1942 during construction of the Pentagon. East Arlington (or, as its original 1892 subdivision was called, Queen City) comprised 903 souls living in 218 households near where Columbia Pike today gives way to the Air Force Memorial.
If there is a first family of Arlington, it would be the Balls. These landowners going back to the Revolutionary War lent their name to our crossroads neighborhood of Ballston.
Sanitary Grocery (precursor of Safeway) at Fairfax Drive and North Stuart Street.
