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A BRIEF HISTORY OF McLEAN, VIRGINIA
By Carole Herrick
A village that became known as McLean can trace its beginning to 1902 when John R. McLean and Senator Stephen Elkins obtained a charter to operate a trolley line, the Great Falls and Old Dominion Railroad. This was simply a business venture to promote the scenic beauty of the Great Falls. The fourteen mile electrified railroad ran between Rosslyn and the falls, linking with Washington D.C. via the old Aqueduct Bridge. Its rails were laid through forests, farmland and fruit orchards, bypassing the existing villages of Lewinsville and Langley. The trolley line began operating in 1906.
There was a stop, originally called Ingleside, where the tracks crossed Chain Bridge Road, and a hub of activity quickly began to form at that location. By 1910 the Ingleside name had changed to McLean, honoring one of the trolley’s founders, who was also the publisher of the Washington Post newspaper, and so the next stop down the line to the west became known as Ingleside. Storm’s General Store opened next to the tracks at Elm Street and Chain Bridge Road, with a railroad siding adjacent. By 1911 the Lewinsville and Langley Post Offices had closed and were combined with a new one named McLean that operated out of Storm’s General Store and Post Office.
Even though the rail line was built as an afternoon scenic excursion to the country, the area all along the route underwent change. The trolley’s impact was tremendous. Northern Virginians could more easily travel into the District. Farmers now had a faster way to get their crops and dairy products to market. Many businessmen discovered the art of commuting and began moving from the city for a more rural environment. But the area surrounding the stop at the junction of the tracks and Chain Bridge Road, a major artery in Fairfax County, witnessed the most change. Everyone wanted to locate near that station.
In 1910 St. John’s Episcopal Church, built in 1877 near Langley Fork, was mounted on casters and moved to a site on Chain Bridge Road not far from the rail stop. The Franklin Sherman School, the county’s first consolidated public school, opened in 1914 with 29 students facing what was later named Corner Lane. The following year, the first McLean Carnival was held at the “Civic League Lot” adjacent to the school, with the proceeds going to benefit the school. Initial meetings began in 1916 concerning what would ultimately become the McLean Volunteer Fire Department.
Centering around the trolley stop, the area grew. There was no plan. An amorphous village began to develop in a hodge-podge fashion. Eventually the orchards and dairy farms were replaced with residential and commercial development. McLean never became a separate town or city. It lost any opportunity to incorporate when in 1968 Fairfax County adopted an urban county form of government, and so McLean remains today a community.
There can be no present without a past. While the above paragraphs discuss the early formation of McLean itself, there is little to indicate a richness of heritage that is equal to any in the commonwealth. For instance, everyone has a general knowledge that in 1607 Captain John Smith landed at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. Most are not aware that Smith, with a crew of fourteen, surveyed the Chesapeake Bay region during the following summer and sailed up the Potomac River. The group reached the head of navigation at the Little Falls, just above today’s Chain Bridge, before turning back for the Bay. Smith, with the help of Captain Nathanael Powell, mapped the entire coastline, incorporating their findings into a map of Virginia, first published in 1612. The stage was now set for the displacement of the Native Americans.
Forty one years after Smith’s voyage, King Charles II while in exile in France, gave 5,000,000 acres to seven loyal English Noblemen. This was the Northern Neck Proprietary, later known as the Fairfax Proprietary. To the dismay of the various Indian tribes, early settlement in the Proprietary began to steadily increase. But few pioneers were adventuresome enough to brave settling the wilderness along the upper Potomac in the vicinity of the Little Falls until after the 1722 when Governor Alexander Spotswood negotiated the Treaty of Albany with the Iroquois League of Six Nations. This treaty mandated that the Iroquois remain west of the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the Maryland side of the Potomac River.
This is not to say that the Europeans were not acquiring property. One such individual was Thomas Lee, whose descendents helped shape much of the commonwealth’s history. Lee, after serving as resident agent for the Northern Neck Proprietary, was able to make use of his knowledge and acquire a great deal of land. Amongst his many acquisitions was the grant of 2862 acres near the Little Falls in 1719, which he named Langley after ancestral Lee holdings in Shropshire, England. This grant also contained another 232 acres, separated from the larger parcel, but included in one grant.
Lee’s property was above the palisades along the Potomac and the land was poor, but agriculture was not of concern to Lee. He had a vision of competing with the merchants along the Potomac for the tobacco trade and gaining control of commerce from the back country by establishing a landing and tobacco warehouse at the mouth of Pimmit Run, just below the Little Falls. This business venture proved unsuccessful; however, his oldest son, Philip Ludwell Lee, continued to believe that the Falls Warehouse site offered financial reward and in 1772 went so far as to lay aside 100 acres for a town to be called “Philee.” However Georgetown and Alexandria further down river were the beneficiaries of the commercial rewards and the town was never realized.
In 1785 the Potowmack Canal Company was chartered with George Washington serving as its first president. The object was to construct a series of locks and canals so that shipping could navigate around the Great Falls. In backing the canal, Revolutionary War hero Henry (“Light Horse Harry”) Lee, simply shifted the warehouse business concept from the Pimmit Run site further up river. “Light Horse Harry” was married to Matilda Lee, the oldest daughter of Philip Ludwell Lee. In 1790 the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation that incorporated forty acres for a town by the canal at the Great Falls called Matildaville, named after his wife who had died earlier. Washington often visited and inspected the canal site. On his way he would stop at Towlston Grange, the home of his close friend Bryan Fairfax, Eighth Lord Fairfax. The canal did not meet expectations. Operations ceased in 1828 and Matildaville slowly faded away.
A great deal of type has been devoted to the Lee family, but the 1719 grant along the palisades makes up a large portion of today’s McLean. The CIA, the Potomac School, Langley High School, the Historic Langley Fork District, Hickory Hill, Salona and Merrywood, the girlhood home of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, are located on portions of the original Thomas Lee grant. The western side of McLean developed on 3402 acres granted to George Turberville from Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, in 1724. This tract was called Woodberry Hill. The Langley Shopping Center, the Giant Shopping Center, the Balls Hill Police Station, the Lewinsville Presbyterian Church and Benvenue were built on former Turberville property.
The area that evolved into McLean was little more than wilderness when, on August 24, 1814, the British invaded and burned Washington D.C., and the nation’s leaders were forced to flee into the surrounding countryside. President James Madison, First Lady Dolley Madison, Secretary of State James Monroe, Attorney General Richard Rush and Navy Secretary William Jones were amongst many who found safety in the wilderness of Northern Virginia. Dolley spent that firey night at Rokeby, the home of her friend, Matilda Lee Love. After stopping briefly at Minor’s Hill, it is thought that Madison spent the night at Salona, which was no longer in possession of the Lee family, but under the ownership of the Reverend William and Anne Maffitt
Eventually, two small villages began to develop. The first was at Langley Fork, where the Falls Rolling Road (Chain Bridge Road) and the Sugarlands Rolling Road (Georgetown Turnpike) joined. Benjamin Mackall purchased 700 acres from Elizabeth Lee in 1839 and retained the name Langley. An existing house was remodeled and the family moved into it. A hamlet developed around the house. The second village formed in the vicinity of what today is known as Chain Bridge Road and Great Falls Street where in 1846 the Lewinsville Presbyterian Church was built next to an existing cemetery in an already incorporated village named Lewinsville.
Shortly after the Southern victory at First Bull Run July 21, 1861 the task of better fortifying Washington began. Lewinsville and Langley were incorporated into a system of defenses around the nation’s capital, and the area within its perimeter was occupied by Federal troops. The building of Fort Marcy, part of a 37 mile circle of 68 forts and batteries, was undertaken to protect Chain Bridge. Confederate troops camped near Bull Run at Centerville, Virginia, about thirty miles from Washington.
Northern and Southern troops continually roamed the area between the camps on scouting or foraging missions. Sometimes they would encounter each other, often resulting in a skirmish. One such incident took place at Lewinsville on September, 11, 1861. Colonel Isaac Stevens, 79th New York Infantry, left Camp Advance near Fort Marcy, taking First Lieutenant Orlando Poe of the Topographical Engineers and a force of nearly 2000, to examine the vicinity around Lewinsville as a possible site for permanent occupation. They were there for several hours while Rebels observed at a distance. When the survey was finished a bugle sounded recall. While the Federals lined up in columns to form a return to camp, Confederate forces, led by Colonel J.E.B. Stuart, Commanding Officer, First Virginia Cavalry, opened a destructive fire with guns and cannons. Although they experienced heavy shelling, the Union soldiers were able to silence the enemy guns, but not before lives were lost on both sides, mainly the Union. Even though there were further skirmishes in and about Lewinsville, this was the main event and became known as the “Battle of Lewinsville.”
The northern army remained in the area throughout the fall and winter of 1861-1862. Camp Griffin occupied the Salona property and adjacent farms beginning in October of 1861, with the Salona mansion serving as headquarters for General William “Baldy” Smith and other Union commanders. Federal troops did take possession of Lewinsville, and the church was converted into a stable. Property around Benvenue was converted into a hospital tent city, while the stone house itself served as a hospital and headquarters for General W. S. Hancock’s Fifth Wisconsin. The Langley Ordinary was used as a hospital and headquarters for Major General George A. McCall, commander of the Pennsylvania Reserves. As occupying armies often do, the troops decimated the countryside. Hardwoods were felled, fences torn down and houses dismantled for firewood. All livestock, crops and grain were confiscated. Looting became a problem. Civilian arrests were not uncommon. With the arrival of spring the troops moved out of the various camps, leaving behind a countryside that took a long time to rebuild.
The Federal army may have broken camp for other theaters of action, but skirmishes still occurred in the area as the War continued. For instance, after the Battle of Second Bull Run, Lewinsville saw further action on September 3, 1862 as the Army of Northern Virginia, led by General Robert E. Lee, was moving towards Leesburg to cross the Potomac River for an invasion of Maryland. General Beverly Robertson’s cavalry brigade, with the task of protecting Lee’s rear, encountered Union pickets near the village. Firing broke out that lasted until sunset, when the Rebels simply retired.
After the War ceased, Fairfax County concentrated on dairy farming. By 1870, it was the largest milk producer in Virginia. Notable dairy farms such as Maplewood, Storm’s and the Kenilworth once dotted the landscape. But of far greater significance were the opportunities African Americans took to purchase land. A farming community developed in the area of Kirby Road named Lincolnsville (now Chesterbrook). One such entrepreneur was Christopher Columbus Hall who established a dairy farm and opened a store in the District where he sold his milk products. Cyrus Carter donated land on Kirby Road in 1866 for the construction of a one room church --- the First Baptist Church of Linconsville (now Chesterbrook). He also founded the Shiloh Baptist Church in 1873 with seven members. Services were originally held in Odrick’s Publick School. On September 25, 1887, the cornerstone was laid by Carter for the church which was built on Spring Hill Road, and the service of dedication was held October 11, 1891.
In 1872 Alfred Odrick built his residence near the junction of Lewinsville and Spring Hill Roads. A Freedmen’s community developed in that area. Odrick’s Public School, a one room building, was constructed adjacent to his property. It served a dual function of both school and church for residents of Odrick’s Corner. The congregation that formed the Pleasant Grove Church under the leadership of Samuel Sharper also began worshipping at Odrick’s Corner School. Ultimately they were able to purchase land to the west further down Lewinsville Road. The first service was held in the Pleasant Grove Church in 1896.
With the arrival of the trolley, the demise of both Lewinsville and Langley began. The tracks did not connect with either existing village. Instead they ran between them. It was natural that the vicinity around the stop at Chain Bridge Road would develop into some form of a community, but as stated before, it was hodge podge and not planned. McLean continued to be rural until after World War II, when many who came to support the War effort decided to remain in the greater Washington metropolitan area. Combined with the CIA locating at Langley, an increase in population began and the lifestyle began to change. Today the windmills, farms and orchards are gone. They have been replaced with subdivisions and homes on a grand scale. Yet, the rural flavor of the area has remained, and one has to wonder about the future of McLean, overshadowed today with the urbanization, continual expansion and proposed rail at Tysons Corner. Could it go the way of Lewinsville or Langley? Hopefully this will not be the case and the community will not lose its identity, or get “gobbled up” in the enthusiasm of progress.
Click here to View Historical Pictures of Mclean
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