20 April 2009
 
The Stones of the District: Southwest Seven


(Southwest 7, April 2009. Photo Vic Socotra)
 
It is raining again, good for the crops, I suppose, but lousy for the commute. I have to travel out to Fairfax for actual in-person meetings this afternoon, which is going to be a problem. I always look for the brown sign on I-66, since that is where the County line slashes across the freeway at an acute angle. Just off the road, to the left about eight blocks is the West Stone, the one that marks the edge of the diamond of the original District of Columbia.

This would have been a long walk from the Ball farmstead, back in the day, but the line actually came to him.
 
Farmer John Ball died in 1766, though his little lean-to cabin would live a lot longer. Another hardy colonist named William Carlin bought the 166-acre Ball homestead, and he was the first of generations of Carlins who would stay on the land near where Big Pink now stands, operating a dairy farm and a resort when Arlington County (then called Alexandria County, which caused no end of confusion) was rural farmland.
 
William Carlin, his wife, children and mule were doubtless was interested when a rough party of surveyors and teamsters approached his property line. They were engaged in building the first public monuments authorized by the Congress of the young United States of America.
 
There is nothing older that remains in this Republic, and it is a short walk from the Ball-Sellers house across Carlin Springs road to see it. Watch the traffic.
 
In 1791 and 1792, Andrew Ellicott and his surveying team placed 40 boundary stones around the perimeter of the District of Columbia, one at each mile of the original diamond shape. The first stone- the baseline for the diamond- was placed closest to President George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, at Jones Point on April 15, 1791.
 
They say that a freedman named Benjamin Banneker fixed the position of the South Stone by lying on his back to find the exact starting point for the survey by “ plotting six stars as they crossed his spot at a particular time of night."
 
From there, Ellicott's team embarked on a 40-mile journey that took nearly two years, moving with determination in a clockwise direction from Jones Point to Falls Church on the first ten, and then striking out to the northeast, toward the Potomac River and Maryland. The West Stone, as all the cardinal stones are, is a little grander. If you stand over it, you can see the actual geometry of our County.
 
It was quite a project, and what is remarkable is that almost all the stones are still in place, or at least near where they were originally surveyed, even if the Virginia quadrant of the District was given back in 1846, being essentially ungovernable from the capital.
 
Perhaps the stones survived because they were intended to be on the edge of things, and not the center. The tall white sandstone pillars were inscribed with the words "Jurisdiction of the United States" and a mile number on the side facing the District. The opposite side said either "Virginia" or "Maryland," as appropriate. The third and fourth sides displayed the year in which the stone was placed (1791 for the 14 Virginia stones and 1792 for the 26 Maryland stones) and the magnetic compass variance at that place.
 
Ellicott and Baneker’s team did more than place the stones. They cleared 20 feet of land on each side of the boundary, over hill and into bramble. Where John Ball and the other settlers following the rivers up to the Arlington heights, the surveyors had to cut their way wherever the line took them, up hill and down dale. If the terrain precluded the precise placement at the one-mile interval, the extra distance was measured in poles and carved into the stone.
 
The stone that the Carlin family would have seen is now located at 5995 5th Road, Arlington, on the edge of parking lot “C” of the Carlin Springs Elementary School. You can also access it by going around the tennis courts to the private park behind the apartment building at 3101 S. Manchester Street, Falls Church, VA.
 
You can see that Southwest Seven has had its better days. On the scale of preservation, it is about a five. Some of the inscription is still legible, but not much. The signature metal fence is the best way to identify it, placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution just after the turn of the last century.
 
You can see the 14 stones in Virginia in a single sunny afternoon. The twenty-four remaining stones on the other side of the river are a little more of a challenge; NW 5 requires the special permission of the US Army for access. When visiting SE 8 and 9, you may wish to take your own search party.
 
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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Note: Although several of the Stones have been moved or replaced, there are 38 boundary stones in or near the original locations selected by Andrew Ellicott, including all 14 in the land that was returned to Virginia in July 1846. A 39th is in the garage of a Maryland transportation official, and the 40th is marked by a plaque at a liquor store. 
 
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