s, with
the mission of scouring the countryside for horses and forage. Objects
of military use more easily picked out of the list taken by his
executors include a spyglass, guns, pistols, swords, saddles,
saddlebags, holsters, a powder horn and "2 spontoons." It is a local
tradition that a store of these latter antique weapons were left behind
in Alexandria by Braddock's direction and that they constituted part of
the equipment of the town watchmen until the outbreak of the War Between
the States.

[Illustration: Mantel in the dining room]

John Carlyle was a Scotsman of gentle birth, of the Limkilns branch of
Carlyles of Torthorwald Castle. He left his home in Dumfrieshire for
Dumfries in Virginia at the age of twenty to enter one of the Scottish
shipping firms in that town in the year 1740. Foreseeing the end of that
port, he moved to the village of Belle Haven, and with John Dalton set
up in the mercantile and shipping business by 1744. This firm, under the
name of Carlyle & Dalton, was destined to become the most important one
in the new port, and John Carlyle the leading citizen. He was one of the
influential men in Fairfax County who agitated for a town at Belle
Haven, at the Hunting Creek warehouse. He was selected by the assembly
as one of the incorporators of the town of Alexandria, and as one of the
first trustees. Active in the town from the beginning, he helped build
the courthouse and market place. He was the town's first "Overseer." In
1755 he was ordered to build a warehouse at Point Lumley, a hundred feet
long, twenty feet wide, with thirteen-foot pitch, as well as to build
roads and clear streets.

[Illustration: John Carlyle's shell and silver snuffbox. Listed and
described in the inventory of his estate]

Carlyle bought the third lot put up for auction on July 13, 1749, No.
41, paying thirty _pistoles_. As the auction continued, he purchased
another lot adjoining the first for sixteen _pistoles_. Upon his two
lots he erected in 1752 the greatest private house in Alexandria for two
or more decades, and furnished it with the best his ships could carry.

The Carlyle house stands high above the river and so strong and thick
are the foundations that tradition has it they were early fortifications
against the Indians. The house of stone is oblong, being almost as long
again as it is wide and is believed originally to have had connecting
wings. Two-and-a-half stories high, large twin chimneys rise out o