Gay Montague Moore

The Peruke Shop

[405 Prince Street. Owners: The Moore Family.]

This house is completely surprising. Many years ago the owners put on a new pressed-brick front and changed the sash from the usual small lights to two single lights of large dimensions. The transition from this 1890 front to an eighteenth century interior in a perfect state of preservation, produces upon one crossing the threshold the sensation of walking straight through the looking glass. And whither does the looking glass lead? Right into the parlors of Mr. William Sewell!

The stairway rises on the far side of a fine arch in the entrance hall. Halfway up, it becomes obscured from view, leaving one gazing at a paneled ceiling, as it makes an abrupt about-face. The rooms on the second floor are quaint. Low-pitched, sloping ceilings, off-center mantels with odd panels and chimney closets and six-paneled doors with H&L hinges, are amusing as well as charming.

Two parlors on the ground floor, opening off the hall, are formal and elegant. Fine paneled chimney breasts dominate these rooms. Dentils and fret trim cornices and mantels. Chair rails, six-panel doors, wide board pine floors, and double doors opening flat against the walls, making the two rooms into one, are found here. In the front room the interesting feature is a Franklin stove set in the fireplace—quite the last word in comfort in the 1780s.

On July 14, 1749 the Reverend John Moncure bought lot No. 61 for £5 9s. On March 28, 1752, the deed for this property was filed at Fairfax Court House and described as lot No. 61, a half acre of land on Royal and Prince Streets, as surveyed and platted by John West. Two years later, June 15, 1754, the Reverend John Moncure, along with other gentlemen of prominence in the colony, lost his lot for having failed to comply with the directions of the assembly to build thereon within three years. The following September there took place an auction of these forfeited lots, and No. 61 passed to William Sewell for £5 7s. 6d.

At a court held at Fairfax, on April 18, 1759, with five gentlemen justices presiding; to wit, John Carlyle, John West Jun., John Hunter, Robert Adam, and William Bronaugh:

William Sewell brings into court his servant Elizabeth McNot for having a base born child. Ordered that she serve for the same one year and she agrees to serve her said master six months in consideration of his paying her fine.[120]

Thus out of the mist of one hundred and ninety years emerges again the dim figure of William Sewell. And who, pray, was William Sewell? Peruke-maker! So called in a deed of trust dated 1766, "William Sewell Peruke Maker," and Elizabeth, his wife. The same Elizabeth?

Nearly two hundred years have passed since William dressed a wig or powdered a head, but if these parlors were his shop, and certainly they were, all the gentry in the town waited his pleasure here. Visitors who came to Alexandria and took part in the balls testified to the elegance of the ladies' apparel (almost always) and a lady to be elegant must have a well dressed head. It was rare, too, to see a gentleman without his peruke. William must have had a very large business. One likes to think that Major Washington dealt with Sewell, and it is not difficult to imagine on ball evenings Mrs. Carlyle's maid rushing in, making a hasty curtsy and breathlessly demanding Madam's wig; or perhaps Mrs. Fairfax's maid presents Mrs. Fairfax's compliments and "Please, will Mr. Sewell come at two o'clock to dress Mistress Fairfax's hair?" Nor, is it difficult to picture William, when the shop day is over, with his apprentices bent over the fine net, meticulously crocheting, by candlelight, the white hair into a lofty creation that will, in about six months time, take a lady's breath away.

Alas! Alack! Peruke-making and hair-dressing were not all they ought to be. Poor William owed a lot of money. He was indebted with interest to John Carlyle and John Dalton for £42 15s. 7d.; William Ramsay for £83 14s. 4d.; John Muir for £23 7s. 9d.—all merchants of Alexandria. But that was not all; the Kingdom of Great Britain was concerned. He owed one Henry Ellison, of White Haven, merchant, £62 10s. 7d., and Joshua Pollard of Liverpool, shipmaster, £17. Poor William put up for security lot No. 61, with all buildings thereon, water rights, watercourses, etc., which led, eventually, to a sheriff's sale. By due process of law, and to satisfy and pay sundry mortgages, lot No. 61 fell to William Ramsay.

mantel

Mantel in home of William Sewell, peruke-maker

Ramsay sold a part of this lot on Prince and Royal Streets in 1785 to Colin McIver, and the property was described as bounded today: "Beginning 24 feet 6 inches west of Royal and running West on Prince 24 feet, 6 inches, thence 88 feet North to a six foot alley, etc., for £225, with all houses, buildings, streets, lanes, allies, profits, etc."

In 1795 Colin McIver's son, John, sold the property to a Philadelphia merchant named Crammond for £450 and Crammond agreed to give up the house and land within a stated time to anyone paying more, or to pay the difference.

After twenty-three years the property was bought by another merchant of Philadelphia, Thomas Asley, for $750.00, and within two years Mr. Asley sold it to John Gird of Alexandria, in the District of Columbia, for $1,300. In September 1819, John Gird had a note endorsed for $4,100 by Isaac Entwistle, and mortgaged some of his personal possessions which were listed as "one clock, one sideboard, two mahogany dining tables, two tea ditto, one pair card tables, one secretary, two bureaus, one writing desk, one dozen rush bottom chairs, one ditto with settee to match, one sofa, two looking glasses, carpets, brass andirons, two fenders, shovel, tongs, window curtains, three bedsteads and beds, chair, wash stand, chest, house linen, one set gilt tea china, four waiters, one half dozen silver teaspoons, one set plated castors, sundry glass and earthen ware, kitchen furniture, etc."[121]

Six years later this debt was not cleared up and John Gird secured the debt with his house and lot. Thus ended Gird's tenure and the property passed on through other hands for twenty-four years to the Miller family; thence to Isaac Rudd, until the Moore family purchased the house about 1892.

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