Visit to Wellington (River Farm) on the Way to War

On April 17, 1862, William H. Snowden boarded the steamboat John A. Warner for a trip down the Potomac River. He was traveling for business….with the Union Army. While he was raised in the Quaker tradition, at the first sign of war, he returned to his hometown in New Jersey and enlisted in Company A,  3^rd Regiment of the New Jersey volunteers. Snowden and his company spent the fall and winter at Fort Worth (near Quaker Lane) drilling and waiting for their “marching orders” from General George B. McClellan. They were to be part of the Army of the Potomac’s Peninsula Campaign—a mobilization of more than 100,000 soldiers headed toward Fort Monroe in hopes of surprising the Rebels in Richmond.

Snowden was no stranger to Virginia, as he and his brothers had relocated to Fairfax County in 1859. They purchased the home we know as Wellington or River Farm from George Washington’s heirs. William’s brothers, Stacey and Isaac, remained at Wellington to keep the farm operating. Meanwhile, war preparations at the docks in Alexandria were not at all familiar to Snowden. He remarked, “–this unceasing rattling of drays and huge army wagons and swift railway trains–the creaking of derricks and noisy bustle of stevedores, and the steady tide of life from early dawn to set of sun is in strange contrast, with that comparative quiet and loneliness which so lately reigned here at the beginning of the rebellion.”

The workers Snowden saw preparing supplies for the exodus may have included African-American men as Union-occupied Alexandria had a growing reputation as a safe haven for self-emancipated people who would continue to flood into the city over the next couple of years.

The John A. Warner was built in 1857 as an excursion boat for passengers on the Delaware River. Like other steamers pressed into service as troop transports, it seemed too elegant for the job. The military bands that played upon departure and decorative streamers that adorned some of the vessels contributed to that feeling. When they were underway, William Snowden leaned into his description, “We have been floating slowly down the stream, and I look back on the city four miles in the distance. We are about to lie to until morning to await some unfinished arrangements of our expedition. The ponderous anchor plunges through the water and we are held fast and firm by its good chain in the hurrying tide.”

Like some other steamers that departed before them, the Warner paused overnight at the mouth of Broad Creek. It would have been a good place to wait for whatever was needed from Alexandria for their journey. Snowden noted, “Broad Bay is a wide estuary of the Potomac on the Maryland side fronting ‘Wellington,’ making the river at this point nearly 3 miles in width.” It also gave him a chance to wax poetic about the family home.

“Just opposite on the Virginia shore, and but a short distance from our anchorage, is ‘Wellington,’ our Virginia home. From its commanding elevation it seems to greet me, and I am glad to view its dearly cherished localities once more. The sloping lawn is green down to the water’s edge, and the great walnuts and oaks, with their buds fast swelling into foliage, stand like sentinels in its green expanse; and the ‘great porch,’ where in summer and autumn in happier days agone, I have passed so many genial hours in reading, or in converse with good, kind friends, or in watching alone the floating clouds and the sails on the river, looks just as inviting and pleasant as ever to my longing sight.”

We don’t have to work hard to imagine what he saw. Wellington still sits on its commanding elevation 160 springs later. At least one of his arboreal “sentinels” is still there–a Black Walnut that perhaps was not quite as large and lonely at that time. The house and porch were updated in an early twentieth-century transformation of the property into a country estate, but I feel confident that Snowden could easily recognize his old home. 

These sights stood out “prominently and temptingly” to Snowden and before long, two officers were with him in a yawl boat swinging away from the Warner. “It is already dark and the lights are lighted in the ‘old mansion.’ A knock at the door is quickly answered and we are kindly welcomed. Our coming is a pleasant surprise. The good folks tell us they were sure we would not go on the expedition before paying a visit. It is not long before we are summoned to a grateful repast served up in a very different style from that of the usual soldier’s mess.” 

They chat late into the night and then head back to their vessel. Snowden reflects on what lies ahead and whether this will be his last visit. “I am hopeful and look with no misgivings into the future. As in all my life before, all is bright and rose-colored in that sky that spans for me the days that are to come after these troublous times in which blood may flow and many graves be made in far off and strange places and many homes be made sorrowful and desolate.”

The next morning Snowden records, “From a refreshing sleep I rise at the drum call, and look first toward the home on the hill. The sun is up and shining brightly over the placid stream, and it gives a beauty to the ‘old mansion’ and its surroundings, it almost transfigures them to my yearning eye. How much I should regret if I had not gone ashore last evening, and once more said ‘good bye’ to the folks I am leaving….But we are weighing anchor, and as we steam away, the inmates of ‘Wellington’ wave to us a parting.”

The future was not quite as rose-colored as the romantic Snowden had foreseen. He did eventually make it back to his family and his home at Wellington after some hardship as a Confederate prisoner. Perhaps as a reward, the “days after those ‘troublous times’” stretched for decades. He saw the the establishment of the Mount Vernon District in Fairfax County, the creation of public schools and the arrival of the electric railway along the Potomac to Mount Vernon. Snowden continued to write expressively, most notably a guide for that same railway, lauding the history and scenery around his home and the post office he founded, which he named Andalusia and Arcturus, respectively. His neighbors and those that came after them called him “Captain” as a sign of respect, many not realizing that it was a rank he had earned in his service to the Union Army. When William Snowden’s end came in 1908 at the age of 84, he was laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery.