The Sea Captain's Daughter and Her House

[617 South Washington Street. Owners: Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Westcott Hill.]

This large, almost square house, rises three stories in a stately pile of soft red brick, flanked by two ancient tulip trees towering twenty-five feet above the pavilion roof, while a great box hedge partially hides the front faÇade and large garden. Five generations of the same family have called it home.

It is a romantic and interesting house. Built prior to 1853 by Reuben Roberts on a half-acre of unimproved ground, it lay "in the country" for some years. Roberts, a Quaker of the family of Cameron Farms, died in 1853; his widow moved to New Jersey, and the house stood new and tenantless until 1857, when it was purchased by Captain Samuel Bancroft Hussey of Portland, Maine, as a bridal gift for his only daughter, Melissa Ann. And thereby hangs a tale.

Gallant Captain Hussey is reported to have been a descendant of that Christopher Hussey who arrived in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1630 and became one of the large proprietors. Intended for the Navy at an early age he ran away to sea and became a master of Clipper ships that raced the seas in the China trade. Captain in succession of the Reindeer, the Strabo, earlier and smaller vessels, he became Captain of the Westward Ho on which, in 1854, he made a record trip of eighty-five days from Canton to New York. In 1857 he speeded the same vessel from Boston around the Horn to San Francisco in a hundred days. Two years later he died on the Stag Hound of which he was master and part owner.

ship

The Stag Hound, one of the great clipper ships in the China trade

The Westward Ho was a great and beautiful ship of sixteen hundred tons, outfitted with every comfort and luxury of her day, including crystal, books, silver, and a melodeon on which to while away the hours at sea. Captain Hussey was frequently accompanied on his voyages by his wife, and for a time they lived in India, as well as many other far-off and curious ports.

Melissa Ann Hussey[194] after her graduation from the Charlestown Female Seminary, near Boston, made the grand tour with her father. This was not her first voyage, as he had entrusted her to Captain Creesy, master of the Flying Cloud on a long journey from China. But on the occasion of this grand tour graduation gift, he directed the Westward Ho up the Potomac and anchored in the then busy port of Alexandria. The city of Washington was not very sophisticated in those days, so the official and social set of the capital sought the theatres, taverns, and balls of Alexandria. Statesmen had apartments at the new and elegant Braddock House or Green's Mansions on Fairfax Street, and at this hotel the Captain engaged a suite for himself and daughter.

house

To this house came the Portsmouth bride, Melissa Ann Hussey Wood, with parakeets and nonpareils

While in Alexandria, a romance developed which resulted, in 1857, in the marriage of Melissa Hussey and Robert Lewis Wood. Their wedding took place in New York, and the young couple returned to take up life in Alexandria. No colonial house was desired by this bride of nineteen. She must have something new and fresh and modern, and as though preordained, they came upon the large red brick house at Franklin and Washington Streets, much like those so well known to her in Portland, Longfellow's "beautiful town that is seated by the sea."

With Melissa came to her new home a collection of rare birds in such numbers that the room over the kitchen was devoted to the cages of cockatoos, parakeets, parrots and nonpareils. Here these feathered friends in spectrum-hued plumage lived among the potted plants and charmed the little bride with their beauty and sweet tricks. Other appendages included a chimpanzee, and a small Chinese slave boy, bought by her father from one of the innumerable sampans in the harbor of Canton. "Chinese Tom" was reared and educated by Melissa Wood and after the War Between the States she gave him his freedom. For years he was the only Chinaman in Alexandria. Mrs. Wood's granddaughter remembers the visits of this man to her grandmother. He would station himself at the entrance to her door and a long conversation would go on between the guttural-voiced Oriental and the gentle little "Missey" whom he adored.

Almost unchanged is Melissa Hussey Wood's house. Her exquisite wax flower arrangements, colored and molded by her hands, her mother's tÊte-À-tÊtes, made in England and purchased in India, paintings of her father's ships and his ivory chessmen, her silver wedding bouquet holder, her baby's shoulder clips, her brass and crystal girandoles, her pictures, books and chairs, have all been used by her two daughters, her granddaughter, and her great-granddaughters. Old pressed brass cornices decorate the windows above the lace curtains. Unusual, too, are the very large silver daguerreotypes, made in California for the new house, and the haircloth "pouf" rocking chairs. An Italian clock, bought by her father in Florence, which arrived in Bangor, Maine, on the day Melissa Ann was born in 1838, stands on its original music box base upon the dining-room mantel. Strangest contrast of all, above the doors of this high-ceilinged room are steel engravings in their contemporary oval frames of Generals Joe Johnston, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee, placed there by the Yankee bride, who after three years in Alexandria became an ardent champion of the Confederacy and never took the oath of allegiance while Alexandria was under Union jurisdiction.