few are free
from faults, most, some good traits of character.

This post script I am endeavoring to practice.

F. DODGE, 1847.

Act well your part, there all the honor lies, Read, heed!

The above attended to with strict economy, industry and like, will
carry you through this life with honor and credit.

The education of the two oldest sons, Francis, junior, and Alexander
Hamilton, seems to have been planned to fit them specially for
commercial life, to succeed their father in his well-established
business. Francis was sent to Georgetown College and Alexander to
Princeton--he graduated in 1835. Robert Perley Dodge graduated from
Princeton in two years, standing fifth in a class of seventy-six. He
then entered a school of engineering in Kentucky. In six months he
completed a major course. He rated so high that he was offered a
professorship in mathematics, but declined, and became a civil engineer.

[Illustration: THE SONS OF FRANCIS DODGE, 1878]

William and Allen Dodge received special practical training in
agriculture and animal industry at the Maryland Agricultural College.
Mr. Dodge bought William a farm near Hagerstown, and for Allen one
near Bladensburg, but, due to the Civil War and the abolition of slaves,
both of these highly developed ventures failed, and the farms were sold.
Charles, the youngest, attended Georgetown College, and took up
commercial and export business. In 1862 he was offered command of a
Confederate regiment but declined, being a Unionist. He accepted,
instead, the rank of major and paymaster in the Federal Army and served
throughout the war. For a time he was interested in gold mining in
Maryland, and in 1889 succeeded his brother Frank (then deceased) as
collector of customs of the District of Columbia.

On the twelfth of June, 1849, a remarkable event took place in this old
house--a wedding ceremony at four o'clock in the morning of four of the
children of Mr. and Mrs. Dodge. Adeline was married to Charles Lanman;
Virginia to Ben Perley Poore, a well-known correspondent of _Harper's
Weekly_ in those days; Allen Dodge to Miss Mary Ellen Berry, and Charles
Dodge to Miss Eliza G. Davidson of Evermay. The weddings were celebrated
at this unusual hour so that the bridal couples could take the regular
stage leaving Georgetown for Baltimore at five o'clock. At least it was
a cool time of day for the celebration, and how beautiful it must have
been with the dew ly