Photos by Tabitha Johnston Beallair, one of the Washington family homes, is located at 73 Claymont Hill Street in Charles Town.

Happy Retreat will be one of the buildings featured on Jefferson County’s Washington Homes Tour on Oct. 18.

CHARLES TOWN — Long before it was incorporated in 1801, Jefferson County was already becoming a location of note, both for its excellent agricultural prospects and for the influential people who came to the area to take advantage of them.

Among those people was the future, first president of the United States.

“The first member of the family to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains was George Washington who, at age 16, as part of a surveying party for Lord Fairfax, came across the Blue Ridge into what is now Jefferson County, West Virginia,” said Walter Washington, referring to Thomas Fairfax, who owned the Northern Neck Proprietary in the Colony of Virginia. “He was so impressed by the quality of the soil, the fertility of the soil and the abundance of water that we have — we have two rivers and an abundance of creeks flowing into the rivers — that he persuaded his older, half-brother Lawrence Washington to start buying land up here. Lawrence had married into the Fairfax family and, so, had the wealth to do it.”

According to Washington, Lawrence did so in 1748, purchasing several thousand acres in what is now known as Jefferson County. That property was then dispersed between his family members, following his death four years later.

“He died in 1752 and his landholdings were then split up between his full brother, Augustine, and his four half-brothers, George, Samuel, Charles and John Augustine. In the meantime, George had purchased his first 500 acres in Jefferson County, which he called his Bullskin Plantation,” he said, mentioning George purchased the land in 1750, at the age of 18,” Washington said.

“He owned it throughout his life. It was first farmed by an overseer and was then rented out to tenants after that. It has only been owned by four or five other owners, since George Washington’s time, and is mostly in tact,” Washington added.

One parcel of land on the north side of the property was sold, he said, and was used for the building of South Jefferson Elementary School.

“The first of the brothers to move across the mountains and settle in Jefferson County, was Samuel Washington, who built Harewood in 1770,” he said.

Walter Washington, who practices real estate, probate and commercial law in Charles Town, is the direct descendant of Samuel and currently lives in Harewood. He said Harewood is the only original Washington family property that remains in the family in the modern day. In fact, the Georgian mansion on the property has never left the family, though some of its acreage has.

“Originally, at the time of his death, Samuel owned 3,800 acres of land. It’s down to about 260 now,” he said.

Harewood was visited by Gen. George Washington, the Marquis de La Fayette, French king Louis Philippe I and James and Dolly Madison, who were married at the location.

Another family property Walter Washington is directly involved with, is Happy Retreat, which was owned by Charles Washington.

“The next member of the family to move to Jefferson County was Charles Washington — the youngest brother. He moved from Fredericksburg to the land that he had inherited from his brother, Lawrence. He built the home called Happy Retreat on it, and moved there in 1780,” he said. “He founded Charles Town in 1786.”

Though no longer owned by the Washington family, Happy Retreat is still connected with it, through Walter Washington’s involvement as the board president of the property’s nonprofit owner, the Friends of Happy Retreat. This property is one of four — Harewood, Claymont Court and Beallair — that are open to the public for select events.

“Claymont Court is a much more elaborate house that was built by Bushrod Corbin Washington, the grandnephew of George Washington in the 1820s,” he said of the property, which is currently owned by the Claymont Society for Continuous Education. “It burned down in 1838 and had to be rebuilt, in the 1840s.”

The property was briefly owned by another person of significance, the American children’s book author Frank Stockton, who wrote his last book on the property.

A few miles away from Claymont sits Beallair, which is now located in a housing development of the same name.

“Beallair was the home of Colonel Lewis William Washington. He was a descendant of Augustine and, through marriage, of John Augustine, as well,” Walter Washington said.

He noted that this home was witness to at least one unusual historical event.

“Beallair is about three miles away from Harpers Ferry,” he said. “On the night of John Brown’s raid, he sent a party of his raiders to Beallair, to capture Colonel Lewis William Washington. There was a scuffle at the house. He was taken prisoner and was held in the fire house, where John Brown was holed up. When John Brown’s fort was stormed and John Brown was captured, apparently Lewis Washington was standing nearby. The story goes that, before he was liberated from the fire house, he sent someone to get his kid gloves — he didn’t want to walk out of the fire house, without his gloves on.”

Another Washington family home, Cedar Lawn, was built on land that was originally part of Harewood’s acreage.

“Cedar Lawn was built in 1929 by Samuel’s grandson, John Thornton Augustine Washington,” he said, mentioning John T.A. Washington served a term in the Virginia House of Delegates. “His house was beautifully restored by a family, who has owned Cedar Lawn since the 1940s.”

It will hopefully soon be joined by another fully restored Washington family home, Blakeley, which was built in 1820 by the grandson of John Augustine Washington, who bore his same name. It partially burned down in 1864, during the Civil War, and was then rebuilt and sold out of the family. Blakeley fell into disrepair over the years, but was then purchased by a Jefferson County native and his family a little over a decade ago.

“I grew up in the area and had always wanted to own this house. A proper opportunity to purchase it came up in 2014 — at that point, it had been largely abandoned and was unlivable. My wife and I have been working to restore it from the inside out, since then,” said the owner, who requested to remain anonymous. “We’re definitely honored to have the ability to live here.”

Along with these restoration efforts, Blakeley’s owner has been laboring in a second way to improve the property, by turning it into a working farm.

These seven properties — Blakeley, Cedar Lawn, Beallair, Claymont Court, Happy Retreat, Bullskin Plantation and Harewood — are the only ones in the Eastern Panhandle with homes original to the Washington family on them.

Two additional properties originally owned by the Washington family — Annaswood, which was originally owned by Anna Maria Thomasina Blackburn Washington, and Richwood Hall, which was originally owned by Lawrence Augustine Washington — have homes on them that were built after their ownership was transferred out of the Washington family’s hands.

The remaining Washington family property, Barleywood, does feature the original home of Samuel’s great-granddaughter, Millicent Washington, but it is viewed as unsalvageable, due to its extreme state of disrepair.