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    Ghosts of Alexandria
    Ghosts of Alexandria
    Ghosts of Alexandria
    Ebook154 pages2 hours

    Ghosts of Alexandria

    By Michael Lee Pope

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    About this ebook

    The award-winning journalist and author of Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C. combs through the haunted past of this Virginia colonial town.
     
    The ghost of a Revolutionary War spy that fosters a centuries-old grudge against the British, two young lovers parted by fire but reunited in death and Union and Confederate soldiers who still battle at the Hotel Monaco are among the haunts of Alexandria, Virginia. Beside the Potomac and the twice-blooming wisteria, local author Michael Lee Pope takes readers on a thrilling journey with his collection of historic ghost lore. Join him as he searches for the identity of the Female Stranger of Gadsby’s Tavern and wanders the lonely halls of Woodlawn Plantation to encounter Alexandria’s restless souls.
     
    Includes photos!
     
    “A thrilling journey . . . [A] Halloween crowd-pleaser.” —Local Kicks
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 27, 2010
    ISBN9781614235378
    Ghosts of Alexandria
    Author

    Michael Lee Pope

    Michael Lee Pope is an award-winning journalist who lives in Old Town Alexandria. He has reported for the Alexandria Gazette Packet, WAMU 88.5 News, the New York Daily News and the Tallahassee Democrat. A native of Moultrie, Georgia, he grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and graduated from high school in Tampa, Florida. He has a master's degree in American studies from Florida State University, and he lives in the Yates Gardens neighborhood with his lovely wife, Hope Nelson.

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      Book preview

      Ghosts of Alexandria - Michael Lee Pope

      INTRODUCTION

      LOWDOWN ON THE COLONIAL TOWN

      Don’t look now, but there might be a ghost standing next to you.

      You looked, didn’t you? What’s that, you say? Didn’t see anything? Well, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a ghost standing there. It may only mean you didn’t really look.

      Ghosts are everywhere. They’re in our dreams and in our basements. They live in the past yet creep into the present. They loom over important times, and they’re with us during the most mundane moments. And it really doesn’t matter whether you believe in them or not. Ghosts are here to stay. As William Faulkner once observed, The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

      No, the past is not dead. It’s here with us, just like that ghost standing next to you right now. Maybe he’s a prehistoric hunter who used a stone tool to kill a mastodon thirteen thousand years ago. Or maybe she was from a moneyed family that helped pay the bills during the startup phase of the city. Perhaps he’s a spy for the American cause. Then again, she could be a star-crossed lover who found herself horribly burned in an unexpected fire. Or her fiancé, suicidal with grief and armed with the means to do something about it.

      These are the ghosts that are around us every day in Alexandria. All we have to do is take the time recognize them.

      From its humble origins as a tobacco port hugging the southern shore of the serpentine Potomac River, Alexandria, Virginia, has been at the crossroads of time and tide. Here was where a teenaged surveyor by the name of George Washington helped lay out the city streets. Here was where a British general launched a disastrously unsuccessful invasion into the French-controlled interior of North America. Here was where men with black cockades in their tricorns celebrated independence. And here was where the early republic found triumph and tragedy among the twice-blooming wisteria and stately headstones.

      Perhaps it was the Narrative of John Trust that put it best, in a vivid description of an occult scene revealing the identity of the infamous Female Stranger: What I had seen excited me strangely…Ghosts of dead hopes, half memories and half dreams haunted me.

      Spoiler alert: The following pages will reveal the identity of the Female Stranger. They will explain why the Swope House suddenly became haunted in the 1850s, long after the death of Michael Swope. They will unveil the secrets of City Hall. And they will plunge the depths of Yates Gardens, where people are still fighting over what happened—or what didn’t happen—in 1798.

      What follows is a compilation of some of Alexandria’s most famous ghost stories. It’s not intended to be comprehensive, and there are many more ghost stories lurking around Old Town. Each of the chapters blends archival research with modern-day interviews, essentially blending historical fact with opinion and perspective. Hopefully, you’ll walk away from the book with an appreciation for the ghosts that are all around you. And you’ll realize that Alexandria is, in fact, a city that’s haunted by its past.

      CHAPTER 1

      GHOST OF A SPOOK

      GRUDGE LINGERS IN THE AFTERLIFE

      Alexandria’s most notorious ghost has carried a grudge for centuries, haunting the house at 210 Prince Street with a particular hatred for all things British. Some say that the ghost here is an American hero who began haunting the house after his grave was disinterred. Others say that the ghost is a spy who was executed by the British. In any event, it’s one of the most talked-about ghost stories in Old Town.

      I don’t normally believe in ghosts, said Virginia Rocen (who purchased the house with her husband, Donald Rochen) in a 2006 interview with the author. But I could change my mind if I heard something. Couldn’t we all?

      The house looks much the same today as it did two hundred years ago. Basement windows peer into the street from below, and a hand-carved doorway beckons visitors. The windows have the romantically flawed sense of distortion, indicating original material or something replicating the aesthetic. A mysterious garden is guarded by a red brick wall as shadows gather in a pitch-black archway that’s almost invisible from the street. From all appearances, something is lurking at 210 Prince Street.

      This house is haunted.

      Various versions of the legend have emerged over the years. One says that the ghost is Colonel Michael Swope, a commander of a Pennsylvania brigade who was captured during the war and later released in a swap for Loyalist William Franklin—the son of Benjamin Franklin. Another version identified the ghost as John Dixon, a wealthy Alexandria merchant who joined the militia and was executed by the British as a spy. Interestingly, each version of the story presents a tension between Loyalists and rebels.

      If a ghost is seen by only one person, you have to question either the authenticity of the ghost or the veracity of the teller of the tale, explained historian Ruth Lincoln Kaye in Legends and Folk Tales of Old Alexandria. But when a ghost is seen many times over a number of years—who wants to be the first to dispute its existence?

      The Swope House is home to one of the most notorious ghosts in Old Town, one with a hatred for all things British. Library of Congress.

      In the beginning, this tract of muddy land was part of the original 1749 auction. According to the Alexandria Gazette, the original sale took place for fifteen pistoles on July 14, 1749. Considering the land where the house now stands is valued at $600,000, exchanging a handful of Spanish gold pieces seems like a bargain. But the landowner failed to seal the deal.

      This was a time when the city leaders wanted to encourage landowners to begin construction as soon as possible. Alexandria was a questionable startup seaport without much of an identity, set in a Virginia wilderness, and rules were designed to force the landed class to build within two years or forfeit their property. Empty lots served no one. And so it was that the poor soul who threw down fifteen pistoles lost his investment when the government acquired the property by eminent domain and returned it to the open market.

      On June 18, 1754, the property was sold to Alexandria founding father William Ramsay—one of the city’s first mayors and owner of several other significant properties in town. He laid down thirty-six and a half pistoles, a sharp advance in value from its original selling price according to one account published in the newspaper. Yet the record does not indicate any construction at the site until 1784. That’s when a man by the name of Michael Swope enters the picture.

      Swope was a true patriot, said Wellington Watts, owner of Alexandria Colonial Tours. Here’s a man who is a real hero of his day, someone who was admired and revered.

      Swope’s story is chronicled in Heitman’s Register of Revolutionary Officers, Saffel’s Lists of Revolutionary Soldiers, records of the United States War Department and documents in the Pennsylvania archives. His father came to America in 1720 from Wurtenburg to settle in a corner of Lancaster County known as Swope’s Knob, now known as Conner Spring.

      Michael Swope became an active participant in the Pennsylvania rebellion. As early as 1774, he was a member of the York County Committee of Observation. The next year, he joined the Safety Committee and later became a colonel of the First Battalion, First Brigade, of the Pennsylvania Flying Camp. While Michael Swope was at war, he wife kept the Swope Inn on West Market Street in York, where President of Congress John Hancock entertained friends while visiting York.

      In the fall of 1776, the rebels suffered the most serious loss of York County troops during the Revolution at the Battle of Fort Washington, which took place in the northern part of what is now New York City. In November, it was attacked by a large force of English and Hessian troops. Colonel Robert Magaw ordered Swope to defend the approaches to the fort. But that’s not how things worked out. On November 16, 1776, Swope was apparently captured at Fort Washington in New York and held for years as a prisoner of war.

      Terms of surrender were offered by the enemy, but Swope refused, wrote York County historian George Prowell. A furious contest ensued when the gallant colonel and 400 of his York County soldiers were killed, wounded or became prisoners of war.

      Swope lived in captivity for years on a prison barge in New York Harbor before the British indicated that they were willing that Colonel Swope be returned for Governor Franklin. That would be William Franklin, who was governor of New Jersey and was taken into custody by the Provincial Congress of New Jersey in 1776. But the exchange didn’t take place—at least not until several years later, and Franklin may not even have been part of the deal. During time in captivity, the British captured Philadelphia, and the Continental Congress moved to a little town in Pennsylvania known as York—Swope’s hometown.

      When he was imprisoned in the British ship, he was treated miserably, explains Watts. So he built up an even healthier anger against his old enemy.

      When Swope was finally released, the story goes, he was forced to walk all the way to Alexandria, hundreds of miles and after suffering years of captivity. After the war, Swope appears in Alexandria in 1784. His life after the war is not as well chronicled. Some accounts say that Swope and his sons became chandlers, shining a light on the postwar boom that the city was experiencing. Others say that he opened a riverfront warehouse and began a shipping business to Barbados and beyond. Whatever became of his professional situation, his personal life appears to have followed the old maxim about good fences making good neighbors.

      According to an item in the Alexandria

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