sers carved in a more
elaborate fashion than was the practice of the thrifty Scotsmen of
Alexandria. At the rear of this large house, separated only by a narrow
area, stands another house, facing the long garden and originally the
river. The front of this house boasts the loveliest bit of Georgian
architecture left in the old seaport. A pure Adam loggia, executed in
stone, runs across the garden facade. While arches are now filled in and
clothes hung to dry flap on the gallery, the outline is so chaste in its
classic form that nothing can destroy the illusion of beauty.

No search of records reveals how or why these two houses stand back to
back. Whether Jonah Thompson built the first for his bank or business
offices, or whether his family outgrew the house and he needed more room
is not known. The two are treated as one house in all the documentary
evidence, and one's curiosity, interest, and imagination are excited by
the twin or married houses. One story has it that Jonah Thompson built
the rear or twin house for his eldest son so that the two families might
be together but with separate menages.

[Illustration: The Adam Loggia. Originally open between column and
pilaster]

Captain John Dalton forged a link between Mount Vernon, his family, and
his posterity that was stronger than he knew. It was his granddaughter
who was so deeply distressed at the ruin and desolation of the home of
Washington that she fired her daughter's imagination with an idea that
saved the spot for the nation. This great-granddaughter of John Dalton
was Ann Pamela Cunningham, whose name will ever be indissolubly
connected with Mount Vernon. In 1853 she formed the Mount Vernon Ladies'
Association, and as its first regent stirred the women of America with
her ardor and directed the entire campaign until adequate funds were
collected. In 1859 John Augustine Washington sold the Mount Vernon
estate to Miss Cunningham for two hundred thousand dollars--after the
Virginia Legislature and the federal government had both refused to
acquire it.

This sale was negotiated by the Alexandria banker, John W. Burke, who
was appointed executor and guardian of John Augustine Washington's
estate after he was killed during the Civil War while on active duty as
a member of General Robert E. Lee's staff.

When the war broke out, Alexandria was occupied by Union troops. The
Union authorities knew of the sale of Mount Vernon and repeated but
futile efforts were