John Gadsby and His Famous Tavern

[Gadsby's Tavern is controlled today by the Gadsby's Tavern Board, Inc., under the auspices of the American Legion. The patriotic organizations of Alexandria have joined in the restoration of this building. In 1932 the Alexandria Chapter of the Colonial Dames of America, the Alexandria Chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Washington Society, restored the first floor, which included the famous dining rooms of the City Hotel.

Due to the untiring efforts of the late Mrs. C.A.S. Sinclair, State Regent of the Virginia D.A.R., and Mrs. Robert M. Reese, one of the most worthwhile restorations in Virginia was completed in the fall of 1940 in the replacement of the woodwork in the ballroom. Happily, the floor is original. The inventory called for a coal grate, and in the attic the original grate, of Adam design, was found.

In 1937-38, the Alexandria Association made a careful restoration of the roof, cornice and dormers, enabling other much needed work to go forward and before this book goes to press the original doorway in which Washington stood to receive his last official tribute in Alexandria will have been brought back from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where it has been for four decades) to its rightful location. This patriotic restoration of the doorway by the Alexandria Association has been made possible by the past president and Honorary President of the Association, Colonel Charles B. Moore, U.S.A., Ret.]

When Alexandria was one of the three largest seaports in America, a busy city of shipping merchants, a rendezvous for travelers, soldiers, and people of note, it was from necessity a city of taverns and hotels.

Many are the tales, handed down from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century travelers, and from the advertisements of the journals of that time, that, put together, form a very complete picture of this early American hostelry.

The most famous tavern in Alexandria, perhaps in America, are the buildings on the corner of Cameron and Royal Streets, generally known and spoken of today as Gadsby's Tavern. Built in 1752, the smaller of these buildings was known for fifty years or more as the City Tavern, and sometimes as the Coffee House. John Wise built the large brick addition adjoining the City Tavern in 1792. On February 20, 1793, the Alexandria Gazette carried the following announcement of Mr. Wise's City Tavern:

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David Rankin Barbee says that the hotel was opened on February 11 with festivities commemorating the birthday of General Washington: "As the guests assembled they were amazed as well they might be, at the internal arrangements of the new Hostelry."[100]

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In Wise's new hotel, Alexandria architecture reaches its highest expression. For its day and time it was the ultimate in comfort and elegance; more than that, it was in exquisite taste. A well known architectural historian has written of the ballroom, "One can sense that it was built as an Assembly room for Gentlefolk";[101] and gentlefolk used it for near a century.

When the Jockey Club races were run on November 6, 1793, we find the members dining at Wise's inn, "the dinner to be on the table at three o'clock."[102] For the better entertainment of the guests, "Mr. Card performed wonderful feats at the Tavern every evening during the races. Feats in cards, slack-wire, celebrated equilibrist, ground and lofty tumbling."[103]

And for the benefit of the ladies, November 6: "Information is hereby given that there will be a dancing assembly this evening at Mr. Wise's, to which are invited the ladies of Alexandria and its vicinity on both sides of the river. Tickets for the gentlemen, without which none can be admitted, may be had at the bar."[104] Out turned crimson velvet breeches, green damask coats laced with silver, or cinnamon damask with broad gold lace, while ladies in failles, lena gauzes, velvets, lace and ribbon took their places beside the dandies. Logs and coals glowed, candles burned, while the gossips sat against the wall and passed on the grace of this or that gallant and his lady. When the gentry came to the races, they remained for the dance!

High above the floor, attached to the wall, hung the musicians' gallery[105] and to the strains of fiddle, flute, and banjo, the quality of the neighborhood bowed and glided. Upon these boards skipped little satin slippers and many times the heavy tread of the first citizen of America, for this gentleman was ever fond of the dance. Here gathered the Masons from Gunston Hall and Hollin Hall; the Lewises from Woodlawn; the Dulanys from Shuters Hill; the Lears from Wellington; the Ramsays, Herberts, Fairfaxes, Craiks, Browns, Roberdeaus, Lees, Fitzhughs, Diggeses, Custises, Swifts and many other of the town's Scottish gentry and their neighbors across the river.

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The doorway from hall to ballroom stands invitingly open

In 1794 an Englishman, one John Gadsby, took over the tavern under a long lease. As fine as the tavern had been under Wise, it was to reach new heights of public entertainment. Running the two taverns as one, under the name of Gadsby's, he brought its culinary fame to such a state of perfection that the odors of his dinners linger in the memory and titillate the palate to this day.

There was always a fine stock of game, fish, oysters, terrapin, turkey and ham; Madeira, Port and brandy on hand for the traveler. Our own great Washington sat down to a very good dinner in his last days, if his adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis be correct, for on being assured of a plentiful supply of canvasback ducks about which he had just made inquiry, he gave the following order: "Very good, sir, give us some of them with a chaffing-dish, some hommony, and a bottle of good Madeira, and we shall not complain."[106]

The fame of the tavern went out through the country and from Boston to New Orleans the traveler bent his efforts to make Gadsby's. John Gadsby established his own coach line from Alexandria to Philadelphia, and it was necessary to be a guest in City Tavern or his associated inns to get seat or ticket. Then he inserted the following notice in the Gazette:

This was very enticing to gentlemen traveling by horseback as well as those in the city not having private stables.

Such men as George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, George Clinton, Benjamin Franklin, Braddock, the Byrds, Grymeses, Fitzhughs, Lees and Washingtons are among those who came here. One fine old tale has it that in 1777, in the old tavern courtyard, John Paul Jones met two bewildered Frenchmen in a dreadful dilemma—strangers in a strange land, speaking a strange tongue, unable to make themselves understood and doubtless very cross. By his knowledge of French, our brave privateer was enabled to smooth the way for these gentlemen, none other than Baron de Kalb and the Marquis de la Fayette, and the tale goes on that this assistance was so gratefully received that a friendship lasting a lifetime resulted from the encounter. The two taverns housed and fed most of the important persons visiting the country from 1752 for the next hundred years.

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Ballroom of Gadsby's Tavern, purchased and taken from Alexandria by the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, where it is now on exhibit

The Fairfax Resolves were prepared here—those resolves that eventually grew into the Virginia Bill of Rights. In this tavern met the little convention called by General Washington to settle the import duties upon the Potomac River commerce which led in time to the convention in Philadelphia which prepared the Constitution of the United States.

In 1802 Gadsby entered into a new lease with Wise for fifteen years. In the indenture, reference is made to a three-story brick house and a two-story brick house, a brick kitchen and several wooden houses. Gadsby at this time was granted permission by Wise to erect at his own expense a brick stable one hundred feet long and twenty-seven feet wide and of a suitable height. He was also given permission to erect at his own expense another brick house forty-five feet long and fifteen or sixteen feet wide and two stories high, finished in a neat and decent manner so as to be habitable, and he also agreed to extend a wall thirty feet long and of the same height. The annual rent was to be two thousand dollars, and Gadsby agreed to paint the three-story brick house and the two-story house outside and inside, and he had permission to remove what wooden buildings were necessary and to keep the remainder in good repair.

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In the ballroom the musicians played from the balcony suspended from the ceiling. This is the restored ballroom

That Gadsby did not desire to keep the tavern so long is borne out seven years later when on November 13, 1809, John Wise, N.S. Wise, and R.I. Taylor leased the tavern to William Caton for three months and then for nine years for two thousand dollars a year, and stated the tavern was "formerly occupied by John Gadsby."[107] But the following year Caton had had enough and the Alexandria Gazette, on March 9, 1810, carried the following advertisement:

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Ballroom fireplace containing original grate before which the gentry were wont to stand on winter nights

In 1811 an Englishman traveling incognito, put up at the tavern, formerly Gadsby's, became ill, and after it was discovered that he belonged to the Masonic fraternity, he was nursed by the gentlemen of the Alexandria lodge. Making a happy recovery, the gentleman departed, and apparently that was the last of him. Four years passed. One day there arrived by ship an enormous packing box for the lodge. It contained twenty-five hundred pieces of cut glass, decanters of all sizes, and glasses for any liquor distilled. The bottom of each piece was engraved with the Masonic emblem and the initials and number of the lodge. The enclosed card read simply: "From an English Gentleman and Brother in appreciation for fraternal courtesies." One hundred and seventy-five pieces remain in the Masonic Museum today, after more than a hundred years of use, and excellent crystal it is.

One of the most romantic stories told of Gadsby's, a true one at that, is the mysterious tale of the Female Stranger. On a day in early autumn of 1816 a ship docked at the wharf in Alexandria, purported to have come from the West Indies. Down the ways came a striking couple. Luxuriously apparelled, they presented figures of great elegance. The handsome young "milord" was all tender solicitude for the fragile beauty clinging weakly to his arm in a state of collapse. Bystanders were considerably intrigued and greatly impressed by the distinguished strangers. Unquestionably they were rich, and certainly noble. It was indeed curious that such important people had no attendants, neither manservant nor maidservant, and the young lady sadly in need of assistance. Even while the sailors were busy with the great ropes and anchors the handsome stranger was making arrogant inquiries for the best tavern in the town and demanding a carriage for transporting the lady there with the least delay. First impressions were borne out, the gentleman was undoubtedly English, and he was a person of importance!

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In the Coffee House. A fine mantel and panelled chimney breast

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Doorway to Coffee House or City Tavern

Naturally the strangers were directed to the best the town afforded, and to "Mr. Gadsby's City Hotel" the young people came looking for rooms. The gentleman evidently took mine host into his confidence and was provided with the most elegant accommodations. The young woman was put to bed and a physician ordered in attendance. She was truly very ill. Two of Alexandria's good Samaritans were informed of the pitiful little sick girl's condition and Mrs. John S. Wise and Mrs. James Stuart took their turns with the invalid. The husband proved himself devoted and fairly daft with anxiety, and 'twas said rarely left the bedside. The young woman grew rapidly worse. The skillful nursing, the constant and faithful attendance of the physicians were all useless, and after an illness of several weeks, the Female Stranger died. Thus she has been remembered in Alexandria, for a very curious thing had occurred. The doctors and volunteer nurses were asked to take an oath before ever they entered that sick chamber, and swore never to reveal aught that they heard, saw, or learned. That oath they kept. The young woman's name, her destination, her former habitation, have never been revealed, and her secrets lie buried with her.

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The Coffee House or City Tavern which later was run as one with Gadsby's Tavern and City Hotel. Headquarters for Washington and the Alexandria Militia in 1754

Many are the stories that survive. Some say the husband decamped without paying his host, doctors, and nurses. Others that he had eloped with this girl of good family and destroyed her reputation, and so brought about her death. One story claims that he was a criminal and was seen in prison by a gentleman from Alexandria, and others far more romantic tell of his reappearance at stated intervals in Alexandria when he was observed prostrate upon the tomb. Whatever his own story, he placed the mortal remains of the little stranger in St. Paul's Cemetery and covered her with a table tomb which is inscribed with the equally mysterious inscription:

In 1808 the celebrated actress, Anne Warren, known as the "ornament of the American stage," was acting at the new theatre, Liberty Hall, just across from the Tavern on Cameron Street. While stopping at Gadsby's she became ill and died. (Not all the Tavern's patrons were so afflicted.) It is said that her interment was the last in old Christ Church yard.

On October 16, 1824, La Fayette was entertained by the Alexandrians "amid the wildest popular demonstration of joy and affection,"[108] and again in February 1825, he returned to Alexandria and Gadsby's for a farewell entertainment by the Masonic lodge. The tavern at this time was run by a Mr. Claggett.

Washington's association alone is sufficient fame for Gadsby's. In the little tavern he recruited his first military command, when as colonel of Virginia Militia in 1754 he set out to protect the Virginia frontier from the French and Indians. Again in 1755, as aide to General Braddock, he established headquarters at the City Tavern. Here, prior to the Revolution, he celebrated the King's birthday anniversary balls, an institution subsequently replaced by festivities of his own birthnight anniversaries:

At Gadsby's he was entertained right royally by proud and patriotic citizens on his way to New York to be inaugurated as President, and on his return to Mount Vernon and private life. Throughout his life he attended the assembly balls, and from the steps of the new building he gave his last military order and took his last military review.

John Gadsby left Alexandria for greater fields—his hotels in Baltimore and Washington were in time more important than the City Hotel. He had a positive talent for Presidents, and knew them all from Washington to Polk. On the least provocation, it was said, he could put on an entertainment that would furnish food for gossip for a week.

In 1836 Gadsby bought the Decatur house in Washington, and proceeded to entertain the Élite of the town with the finest his kitchen and wine cellar could produce. President and Mrs. Polk often attended these functions. Again to quote Barbee: "The Chevalier Adolph Bacourt, Minister from France, attended one of these functions."[110] The gentleman was not very happy about it, and denouncing Gadsby, he wrote of him:

Gadsby died in the Decatur house in Washington in his seventy-fourth year, leaving his widow (a beautiful third wife!) to reign in this mansion some years after his death. He is buried in the Congressional Cemetery, surrounded by his children and grandchildren.

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