McLean and Fairfax County, Virginia

History & Maps

Fairfax County (including the future Loudoun County) in 1751, six years before Loudoun was formed.

Loudoun and Fairfax counties in 1839 - more roads and villages including Fairfax, the county seat.

Northwest Fairfax County in 1886, showing a growing house population.

An excellent reference for the history of Fairfax County is that created by Nan Netherton, Patrick Reed and others who co-authored Fairfax County, Virginia: A History, which includes information on McLean.¹ Some years ago Patrick Reed had a personal web site (no longer available) that contained material from this book as well as quotes from an article² on McLean by John Mackall, which follows:

The first cars of the Great Falls & Old Dominion Railway rolled into Great Falls Park on 3 July 1906, and "by 1907, 1,600,000 passengers were being carried annually ... past ... crossroads which were soon to bear the names of the developers." The station erected where the line bisected the road connecting Lewinsville and Langley was christened McLean and soon became a collecting point for area farmers' milk and produce, which was then shipped to Washington markets. Far more noticeable were the changes in community life. Again in John C. Mackall's words, the two communities became one. A new central post office replaced those formerly in each town. The old Langley hotel and Hummer's store, which had housed Langley's post office, were razed since their locations off the trolley line made them obsolete. Prior to 1906, "due to the terrible condition of the roads," the Mackall family had been forced to take up winter quarters in Washington, where John, his three brothers, and sister attended school and their father practiced law. But the railroad solved the problem of getting from McLean to Georgetown. Another resident remembered that though the rest of the county was impossible to get to ... Georgetown was very accessible.... That's where we did our banking and got our groceries.... And really going in on that electric train was ... a social event, because you just knew everybody on it. Mackall observed, however, the problem of getting over that road from Langley to McLean had not been solved.... My father rented houses on the car line for two winters and finally solved the problem by building a house at McLean where we lived during the bad winter months, and then back a mile and one-half to Langley for the rest of the year.

The central post office referred to above was in Storm's store where Elm Street joined Chain Bridge Road. The store can be seen in some of the images below and in images in the book McLean Remembers Again ³, and was an early place of work for Maria (Caylor) Stoy.

The rural character of the county is clearly captured by Elizabeth Pryor in Frying Pan Farm⁴, which reviews life in the town of Floris, near Herndon, in the first part of the Twentieth Century. The dairy industry was important to the county for the first forty years of the century and it caused great changes in the transportation system that linked the county to Washington DC and Georgetown. Although the rail lines and automobile roads were very helpful to the farmers, the longer lasting effect was the creation of the villages and towns that became the suburbs of Washington beginning in the late 1940s.

When I was growing up just after WWII, there were still many dairy farms outside the central McLean area but by the mid-1950s these were disappearing and becoming subdivisions; however, the more rural western Fairfax did not start to see significant development for another decade. It had only been a few years since the electric railroad (Great Falls & Old Dominion Railway Line, established in 1906 and shut down in 1935) was replaced by Old Dominion Drive and used by cars.

The growth of Fairfax County and McLean were linked with the end of WWII signaling the beginning of a huge increase in population. The chart below shows how the county of Fairfax grew after the war and in the decade of the 1950s, doubling in the 1940s and almost tripling again in the 1950s ^5,6,7,8.

McLean was part of Providence District, one of several voting districts in the county. Up until the 1950s, the district had the same boundaries so population comparisons can be made - boundaries were redrawn by 1960. The chart below shows the changes in Providence's population with comparison to Dranesville district (the rural area closest to Loudoun County) and Broad Run district (the adjacent district in Loudoun County - very rural). Being closest to Washington DC caused Providence to see the population increase first with the more rural districts following 20 and 30 years later.

Langley School

I started kindergarten in the fall of 1946 at the Langley Cooperative School in Langley and remained there through the first grade. My first memories of anything were about age five - in the basement of the schoolhouse was a finger-painting bench for us to make a mess (one of my better subjects at the time). There was also Christmas tree decorating by glueing strips of red and green construction paper to make rings and then long "chains" to hang on the tree. I recall nap time where we rolled out small blankets on the floor and supposedly took naps although I don't remember sleeping - I do remember the blankets. And then there was the unforgettable event of a rat in the toilet scaring the crap out of us kids - childhood memories to cherish!

Another early memory was in 1948. We had the first TV on Elm Street and it was probably a 10" or 12" screen. The TV faced the living room window on the front porch - most of the homes had good-sized porches at the time - and we would look up from watching TV to see children's faces at the window watching with us. Howdy Doody, Milton Berle and The Lone Ranger were part of the household in the late 40s.

The Langley Cooperative School, about three miles east of central McLean, was located at an old home on Georgetown Pike that was once lived in by the Paul and Vessie Rhinehart family. An excellent history of the school was written in 1993 by Mary Lou Bohsali⁹ - I have a copy of the book but it's no longer available in print. However, the web site for the Langley School has a viewable copy here. In 1980 an inventory of Langley was done for the historic homes there in order to create a Langley Fork Historic District. A copy of the historic district document is attached and provides details on each of the properties.

An 1860 landowners map of Fairfax County shows that George F. M. Walters owned several tracts in the Langley area, including the property that became Hickory Hill, properties in what became Walter Heights, and the tract that the future Langley Cooperative School occupied (see below)

The Paul E and Vessie L Rhinehart family, originally from Rockingham County, Virginia, moved from College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, between 1930 and 1935^{10, 11}, taking up residence in Langley, renting the Walters tract on the north side of Chain Bridge Road (plot 42 in the above map). They operated a race track in the late 1930s and 40s, and also trained and rented horses (see Herrick's book Legendary Locals of McLean Virginia, page 54, and her book McLean (Images of America), page 96)^{12, 13}.

"Both girls rode, as did their mother. Mr. Rhinehart [Paul E] was also a very excellent horseman, and my brother Billy [Charles Richard Jones] rode for him (jumper) at Upperville show, so he had to have some fine steeds to get into that event. He was a character. Very religious, believing Sunday was the Sabbath; signs all over the barn.... After death of his wife he advertised in the Providence Journal for a new one, one who could cut a man's hair. Rented horses on weekends, and I have a story about that, his 12 gauge, and someone who never rented a horse there again. His sons were Tip and Mark. Mark married Annabelle Knaus? Melinda's mom (one of several sisters if I recall correctly - -('the Knaus girls') got the primary farm or most of it, and Uncle Tip got the rest. I don't recall if Melinda said if he ever married. Anyway, Tip built and owned the McLean Bowling Alley on land they owned near Ried's Bend. Melinda had a major piece of land near Bobby Burns (and his brother's) cleaners [on Old Dominion Drive]. Built an office building. I do not know if it is still there. Probably not."

A newspaper story in 1936¹⁵ shows how Paul E Rhinehart attracted visitors to his new operation:

Can you imagine this happening now in Langley?

Annabelle Rhinehart wrote a remembrance of McLean in 2006 for Carole Herrick's, Yesterday, Volume II: Additional Recollections of McLean & Great Falls, Virginia, page 323 ¹⁶, where she described growing up on Ingleside Drive in the 1920s and knowing Joe Trammell, son of French Trammell. Joe would ride his pony from his home on Churchill Rd to Franklin Sherman school and was able to stable the horse in the barn of Art Taylor. This was the home that Joe and his wife Mary Sanders Trammell would eventually live in on Elm Street in the late 1940s and early 1950s, next door to our home. Annabelle was well-known in McLean and contributed much to the history of McLean and Langley - she passed away at age 96 at her home in Great Falls in July 2015 and was buried at Andrew Chapel Cemetery:

Enough on this long aside on the Rhinehart family - back to education.

Franklin Sherman

Within a block of the center of McLean was Franklin Sherman, first an elementary/high school (including both higher and lower grades) then an elementary school (grades 1-7). The school still exists, located in the addition built onto the old school in 1952, but the original building is no longer and it's that old building that I most remember because it was my life from grades 2-7. My father and uncle graduated from it as a high school and Mom was secretary to the principal most of the years while my brother and I were there.

My father went to Franklin Sherman, when it was both and elementary and high school, from about 1916 to about 1926, playing on the high school baseball team in 1924. He appeared in the school photo taken below (probably taken in 1918 since Charlotte Corner's last year as principal was 1918).

I began at Franklin Sherman in the fall of 1948 for second grade with Louise Millard, a long-time teacher. She went to the same church as my great-grandfather and my grandmother (Dad's family) at Brown's Chapel near Route 7 and is buried at Brown's Chapel, passing away in 1982.
There were several activities I recall from elementary school and one was being a school crossing guard. Although I am not in the image below, it does show the white belt we wore - I worked at several of the street crossings, including this one on Chain Bridge Road at Library Street. The white house on the left was the office of Dr Leslie A. Rouse, dentist, and I had the pleasure of sitting in his chair when about age 6-10. Received several fillings from him and definitely did not enjoy the experience. The drill was slow, noisy and painful. Dr Rouse was a resident of McLean until his death in 2009¹⁷.

The house barely visible on the right was the residence of George Hennings, his wife Rebecca and children James (Jim), Gerald (Jerry) and Joyce. Jim Hennings became a minister in the Methodist Church and did some practice preaching at Langley Methodist under the guidance of Paul Martin in the 1950s and he performed the burial service for Mom in 1977 - see his obituary below.

Jerry married my cousin Ann Arnold, living most of his life in northern Virginia - see his obituary below:

Franklin Sherman's small softball field on Chain Bridge Road served as a location for the annual McLean Volunteer Fire Department carnival - sawdust on the ground, ring pitching, penny and dime pitching into small bowls, pitching balls to knock down milk bottles, small Ferris wheel, good carousel, cotton candy and unnamed things behind closed doors that we kids couldn't get into. All in all, a typical small-town carnival of the 1940s and very early 50s. An announcement of the carnival for 1939 appeared in the Washington Post and Jerry Hennings supplied me with a listing of where these people lived in the McLean area at the time. The entrance to the carnival on Corner Lane is shown below in this 1934 image:

Here is the 1939 newspaper announcement of the organization of the carnival.

Listing of where the various organizers lived in McLean in 1939, created by Jerry Hennings in 2008.

Below is the original Franklin Sherman Elementary School about 1950, seen from Corner Lane, which ran in front of the school from Chain Bridge Road (named for Charlotte Corner, first principal of the school). The front step area is where the school buses turned around and where kids were picked up and dropped off for school, at least until the new building was finished in 1953.

The following 1950s photo shows the fire escape slide on the side, stretching from the 2nd floor in the classroom where I was in Miss Jett's 4th grade class. During fire drills we would enter at the top through a door that could be locked (to prevent entry from the outside), grab an overhead handbar as we positioned ourselves, then let go to slide down to the bottom where a teacher (or Mr Judd, the janitor) would move us out of the way for the next person. On summer weekends we would climb the tube (blazing hot) to the top and slide down feet first, head first, or any old way - mindless fun, which we weren't supposed to do. Best slide outside of the water slide at Glen Echo park in Maryland.

The school grew with an addition completed for the 1953 school year and this addition became the main entrance on Brawner Street. Later enlargements over the years created the image below - it was undergoing renovation when I visited in 2008.

In 1954, while I was in the 7th grade, the Salk vaccine was first administered in a large trial to students of the school in the 1st and 2nd grades (we older children received the vaccine later, after the initial trials were concluded) - it was a big deal at the time and we were aware of the importance. See an expired web site for commentary on the Salk trial.

Having your mother be secretary to the principal of your elementary school had its pros and cons. On one side, it was an incentive to not get called into the principal's office for any reason. On the other hand, we got to know the principal, and many of the teachers were friends of the family. Mom and Dad played Canasta, and in later years bridge, with Ruby Dunkum (principal), Laura Jett (my 4th grade teacher), and Conrad Geier (my 7th grade teacher and the only male teacher at the time - a WWII veteran who survived the concentration camps as a POW. I was an usher in his wedding in 1954). Ruby was a reference for my co-op job at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas, starting in 1960.

Ruby Dunkum, about age 85 (1991). Copy of photo supplied by Wayne G Dunn, nephew of Ruby, to Robert Stoy in 2005¹⁸:

Her obituary stated:

"Ruby Florence Dunkum, 92, who served as a principal for various Fairfax County schools in McLean from the 1930s until retiring in 1971, died of a heart attack Aug 24 at the Gordon Home nursing home in Gordonsville, Va. Miss Dunkum began her career at Franklin Sherman Elementary in 1928. She became principal in the early 1930s, and served in that post until 1958. She was the principal at Churchill Road Elementary when it opened in 1958, and in 1965, she opened Springhill Elementary School, from which she retired in 1971. Miss Dunkum was described as stately and graceful, though always eager to jump rope or play kickball with her students. She was credited with maintaining a sense of calm and dignity when Fairfax schools were integrated. She was a native of Green Springs Depot, Va, and a graduate of the old Blackstone (Va) College. Miss Dunkum lived in McLean from 1928 until moving to Gordonsville in 1987. She was a volunteer for the McLean branch of Meals on Wheels, and she was a member of the McLean Business and Professional Women's Organization. Survivors include a brother, C C Dunkum of Gordonsville; and a sister, Jessie D Dunn of Louisa, Va. . . ."

The following photo, taken by Virginia McGavin Rita, shows left to right: Frances Parsley, Laura Jett, Virginia Millard McGavin, and Ruby Dunkum, about age 75 (1981). Copy of photo supplied by Wayne G Dunn. Virginia Millard McGavin was the mother of Virginia McGavin Rita and is descended from the Millard family (Louise Millard was my 2nd grade teacher at Franklin Sherman).  Clifton is in southwest Fairfax County, close to Manassas - the sign in the photo still exists and appeared on a Clifton web site in 2006.  This information was given to me in an email by Virginia McGavin Rita in February 2023).¹⁹

Neither Ruby nor Laura Jett married and were close friends since the time they both worked at Franklin Sherman. Laura retired from teaching in 1973 and passed away in Fairfax County in 1987. She is buried near her home in Northumberland County.

My teachers at Franklin Sherman were:
2nd grade   Louise Millard
3rd grade   Kate Eadie
4th grade   Laura Jett
5th grade   Helen Tietjen
6th grade   Margaret Grant
7th grade   Conrad Geier

Although she was not one of my teachers, Alice West was the 1st grade teacher at Franklin Sherman, apparently starting about 1947. Louise Millard, born in 1906, passed away in 1982 and was buried at Brown's Chapel Cemetery, close by where my grandparents are buried. Although Louise was buried at Brown's Chapel, she was a member of the Antioch Christian Church in Vienna. She was first assigned to Franklin Sherman in 1928 when it was both a high school and elementary school. Kate Eadie, born in 1909, married to Orrin C Eadie, passed away in 1997. She first taught at Franklin Sherman about 1946 and eventually taught at Spring Hill Elementary School in the 1970s. Her daughter, Sally, was in the same class with me and I recall visiting their home off of Old Dominion Road, near Pimmit Run, while selling doughnuts to earn money for the Langley Methodist Church in the very early 1950s.

Laura Jett, born about 1908, first taught at Franklin Sherman about 1942 and she retired from teaching in 1973. She had been teaching in public schools by 1930 in her home county in Virginia, Northumberland. Helen Tietjen was first assigned to Franklin Sherman in 1951 and, I recall because of a shower we held in her class, she married while I was in her 5th grade class in 1951-2. Margaret Grant lived on Elm Street in McLean and I delivered The Evening Star to her in the 1950s. She was born in 1904 and passed away in 2003. She first taught at Franklin Sherman in 1945 and her daughter, Jacqueline Grant Friedheim, reminisced about her mother's teaching and living in McLean in Carole Herrick's Yesterday, Volume II: Additional Recollections of McLean & Great Falls, Virginia, page 135. Conrad Geier, born in 1920 in Pennsylvania, was a sergeant and a paratrooper in the US Army during WWII, serving in the North African Theater and Sicily. He first taught at Dunn Loring Elementary School in 1949 and came to Franklin Sherman in 1952. At the end of the school year in 1954, he married Mimi Judd who also taught at Franklin Sherman beginning in 1953. Conrad passed away 20 Mar 1988 in Pennsylvania, where he is buried at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery.

At the end of my years at Franklin Sherman and the start of eighth grade at Herndon High, between 1953 and 1956, my brother and I delivered newspapers for The Evening Star, which along with The Washington Post (morning delivery) was the major source of written news for the Washington metropolitan area. Our route ranged from Curran Street on the east of central McLean to Cedar Avenue on the west; then from Chain Bridge Road on the south to the Trueax home on Old Dominion Drive on the north. We were able to deliver the Monday-Saturday papers on our bikes, splitting the load in half, but on Sundays the paper was so large that Dad had to drive us around the route with the back seat filled with papers. This was a time and place where newspapers were put in newspaper delivery boxes on the street at the front of houses, not thrown on door steps.

The home of Alfred and Mary Trueax, was a unique brick house on the east side of Old Dominion Drive, just before the road took a turn to the west, and that home is still there - at least it's viewable on Google Maps as of 2018 (see image below). Mary Trueax passed away in 2002 in her home and was an acquaintance of Mom's because of her association with Franklin Sherman, where Mom was secretary to the principal. I remember her because every month we went to each home to collect for the paper and this turned out to be a great way to know the families of McLean. Mary's obituary is attached and shows her connection to the history of McLean. I recall meeting her oldest son, Ross, who was a year behind me at McLean High and who now lives near Albuquerque.

Mary's obituary follows:

Libraries

Libraries have always been interesting places for me, from the old, dank public library in McLean in the 1940s to today's online libraries that I use for research. McLean had its first public library in the Smoot residence at Salona then Franklin Sherman school by 1916 but my first memory was the library built on Library Street (now Curran Street) one block behind our home on Elm Street.

It took years for the library to progress from land donated by Douglas Mackall in 1917 to a study of various building plans in 1923 to a finished building by 1925 to a dedication ceremony in November 1929 (see "Historical Newspaper Index Search," County of Fairfax ( https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library_newsindex/ : accessed 15 May 2019) for news items. My first visits to the old library were about 1948 and I can still recall checking out the Oz books and reading them. It was a one-room library with rather used books but for a six-year old, that was good enough. There just wasn't enough variety so eventually Mom took us to Cherrydale to the library there which served me throughout elementary school and until I went to McLean High. At Cherrydale I found biographies, science books and science fiction - subjects that I stuck with through many years. By the time of high school, a bigger, better library was needed and that turned out to be Georgetown public library where I was able to find most anything I needed.

Speaking of Cherrydale and hardware stores, which I wasn't but will now. Howard England and Dick Hinkle ran the McLean Hardware in McLean's second "strip mall" on Old Dominion Drive behind the post office on Elm Street. When Dad couldn't find what he needed at McLean Hardware, we went to Cherrydale Hardware, much larger, and still there.

If we needed something more, we went to Hechingers in Annandale, the "big box" hardware store of the 1950s. I remember buying my first 1/4" drill there shortly after I started at Georgia Tech.

Cherrydale was also the location of my first summer job in June of 1958. It was a family-owned small construction company located one block off Lee Highway near the library and I was basically a gofer and then laborer at $40/week, good pay for a kid that knew nothing. I had to deliver plans, tools, and general equipment to the various construction sites in northern Virginia, Washington and Maryland using the company's car - this taught me all the roads and traffic, skills that came in handy over the next few years. The company built several of the original McDonalds with the arches in the metro area and I worked as a laborer on two of them. My big laborer "job" was at the Washington Golf and Country Club on Glebe Road in Arlington, which the company built in 1958. One coincidence was one of the three people in the company office was an engineer whose job was to estimate construction jobs and help create the designs - he was a Georgia Tech graduate, the first I had heard of this school.

Dad

Dad played hardball and softball for many years, often as first base, starting out with the Franklin Sherman school team in the 1920s, then the McLean Athletic Club in the 1930s, the Vienna ball team in the 1940s, and finally with the District Industrial fast-pitch softball club when working at the District Title Company in the late 1940s and 50s. McLean A. C. played ball at the field at Reid's Bend. The reminiscences of Harold "Rabbit" Dailey cover this ball field as well as the Franklin Sherman field in Carole Herrick's, Yesterday: 100 Recollections of McLean & Great Falls, Virginia (page 38) and his story is well worth a read to understand how local sports existed 80 years ago in McLean.

Methodist Church

Church was a weekly (mostly) happening in our family when my brother and I were young. This was a time when the church was located in Langley, only a couple of hundred feet from the Langley School. The inside wasn't particularly fancy, the pews were hard and I fidgeted a lot so, when young, my parents let me bring a pencil and notepad to doodle on - it was my amusement. I recall the bell for the call to service had to be rung by pulling on a long rope - something that Cliff Brown frequently did. The Brown family lived on Elm Street several houses from our home and their son, Clifford, was in my class at Franklin Sherman. The reason for my recalling Cliff Brown ringing the bell was that he was not a large man and the rope would lift him from the ground a bit on each pull.

The earliest minister I remember from the late 1940s was Woodrow Wilson Hayzlett (1916-1983). According to the newspaper article on his playing the role of Santa during the Christmas season of 1951, he had started at Langley in 1947 and was there until about 1952 when Paul Douglas Martin replaced him as minister of Langley Methodist (see the attached obituary for Rev Martin). During Rev Martin's tenure, a new church was built on land between Langley and McLean, across Chain Bridge Road (later Dolley Madison) from where Jim Robeson lived at Merry Hill. After the church service came Sunday School, first in the basement at Langley and then in a larger room in the new church. Many of the students that I knew at Franklin Sherman and McLean High were members of the Methodist Church - these were people I played ball with and worked with to sell boxes of donuts to make money for the church (the church always needed money to go in the kitty for building the new facility). By the time I was 16, Sunday church was a rare occasion and after leaving for college in 1959 it became non-existent. Nevertheless, I still recall the old church, the singing of hymns and rather boring sermons for an eight-year old.

In 1972 Trinity United Methodist Church, which the old Langley Methodist Church had become, published a directory of members that Ann Arnold Hennings had saved in her genealogy files.

The directory contains photos of members made in 1972 along with a listing of members. There are four sections to the listing - Members, Out-of-Town Members, Address Unknown, and Friends:

There are several people that I remember well from Trinity Methodist Church and McLean, almost all of whom are now deceased. These are people, for the most part, who were neighbors in a small town, whose children were my contemporaries and playmates when young.

	Bertha Yowell lived with John and Elsie Payne in the 1940s, only a few houses from our Elm Street home. Bertha appeared in some of Dad's home movies from 1939-1940 and can be seen on the video webpage. Tom Corner also lived near the Paynes. Theirs was a second marriage for each. Bertha passed in 1995 and Tom in 2006.
	Bessie and Earl lived on Elm Street and were the parents of Mary Louise Sanders, wife of Joe Trammell, our next door neighbors in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
	Beulah was married to French Trammell and they had a farm on Churchill Road. Beulah and French were the parents of Joe Trammell. Beulah passed in 1971 and French had died in 1948.
	Desales Wheat Collins was the daughter of John Wheat who had a farm on Balls Hill Road and owned much of the property where my family's second home was located. John had run a furniture refinishing business late in life and he refinished all my childhood bedroom furniture for my parents. Bill and Desales married in 1952 and she passed in 1994 - Bill passed in 1997. Both were close friends of my parents and visited often with us.
	The Browne family lived near the Payne family on Elm Street and both were active in Langley Methodist Church. Their son Clifford was in my class at both Franklin Sherman and McLean High.
	Effie was the mother of Everett Revercomb and the wife of Luke Revercomb - she passed in 1975 at age 85.
	The Revercombs lived on Curran Street (old Library Street), just behind our Elm Street Home. Their son Everett appeared in one of Dad's home movies and he was two years behind me at Franklin Sherman and McLean High. By the 1950s the family moved to Walter Heights, near Langley, and we used to ride our bikes to visit with them when we were at Franklin Sherman.
	Elsie Arnold and John Payne lived on Poplar Street (now Beverly Street) a few houses from our home on Elm Street. They were the parents of Jean and Betty Lou, cousins to my cousin Ann Arnold. Elsie passed in 1998 at age 100 and John died in 1983, at which time the Payne home was sold as McLean was being developed. They always had good treats for us kids at Halloween.
	George was the father of Jerry Hennings, husband of my cousin Ann Arnold, and the Hennings lived at the corner of Library Street and Chain Bridge Road. George passed in 1998 and his wife, Rebecca, had passed in 1962.
	Helen Arnold Dodd lived with her husband Samuel in McLean on LaSalle Avenue, near Tysons, after living on Lee Highway in Cherrydale. She passed in 1979 and Samuel in 1971.
	Irene lived near Churchill Road - her husband Jim had passed in 1975. Her daughter Linda was a year ahead of me at McLean High as was her son Jim. I visited with Irene many times in the period 2000-2010 and enjoyed her remembrances of McLean and our families. She passed in 2010 at age 89.
	Jean Payne Volz and William lived on Cedar Avenue in West McLean - Jean was a cousin to my cousin Ann Arnold Hennings.  Jean passed in 2006 and William in 2007.
	Mary Sanders and Joseph Trammell lived next door to us on Elm Street in the late 40s and early 50s. Their children, Rodney and Mary Jo, were constant playmates for my brother and me. Joe passed in 2003 and Mary in 2010 at age 90.
	Mary Leigh and Stuart Robeson were the parents of one of my closest friends, Jim Robeson, and occupied the MerryHill home on Chain Bridge Road - the site of many ball games and parties as we went through elementary school and high school. Jim was one of my ushers at my wedding in 1964. Stuart passed in 1984 and Mary in 2004 at age 92.
	Pauline Moffett Arnold was married to Gilbert R Arnold, brother of my Uncle Worth Arnold - they divorced in 1953 and she lived two houses from my family on Elm Street. I delivered the Evening Star to her in the 1950s. She passed in 1977.
	Ruth Arnold Gaines and Charlton Gaines were the parents of Charlton Jr and Jimmy. Charlton was a year ahead of me in school and Jimmy was a year behind. Played ball together with Jimmy and knew his parents who lived in Salona Village, a couple of blocks from Franklin Sherman Elementary School. Ruth passed in 1992 and Charlton in 2002.

Mom

Although Mom worked at the District Title Company in Washington (where she met Dad) in the late 1930s, after marriage she stayed at home to raise Jimmy and me. I have no doubt it was boring so she re-started her secretarial career by working at an insurance office in McLean after Jimmy and I were both in elementary school, then she became a secretary at Franklin Sherman. I remember that she was also responsible for selling office supplies at school (paper, pencils, glue - simple things the students needed) and in the 4th grade I worked a bit helping to hand out supplies and make change for the purchases - this was the first place I learned how to count change and not screw it up. She remained at Franklin Sherman, working for the principal Ruby Dunkum for a number of years after I finished and went to McLean High in 1955 (Ruby was a close friend of my parents, as were other teachers I had at Franklin Sherman, and she often visited to play cards with Mom and Dad). From there Mom was secretary to the principal of George Marshall High School in Falls Church, then secretary to the principal of Langley High School by 1965 where she remained until her death in 1977. While at Franklin Sherman, it wasn't simple having your mother be secretary to the principal and her being knowledgeable about all that went on at school.

Mom when she worked at Langley High School:

McLean

McLean did not exist in the 1800s - Langley was the important village and Lewinsville was the next community along Lewinsville Road, which eventually became Chain Bridge Road. Below is a map prepared by the Corps of Engineers of the area from Langley to Lewinsville along what was then Lewinsville Road about 1860. "McCall" hill (Mackall hill) is on the map but Ingleside and McLean are some years in the future. Mackall's hill is also visible in the 1941 topo image below, although today the hill is barely discernible, having been lowered for development.

McLean was not established until the early years of the 20th Century but the Mackall family owned property there (and in Langley) much earlier.

Homes were built slowly on Elm Street in the Ingleside subdivision, which was laid out in 1904, and which eventually became McLean. Dad's parents bought their two lots in 1908 and by 1909 their home was built - the home immediately north was likely built at the same time and was identical.

The photo on the left above was taken about 1913 after my grandparents had separated and the barn of the home next door is just visible on the far left. The 1904 plat plans for Ingleside are below. The 1937 aerial map shows limited development away from central McLean and the topographical maps beginning in 1945 show the locations of homes in McLean and how the subdivisions were spreading.

The following image labels the above plat map with names of owners and businesses roughly in the 1940s:

McLean Aerial Images - 1937

In 1937 the United States Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, undertook an aerial survey of much of the country as part of an effort to better counter the effects of soil erosion - this was the middle of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the Midwest was an immediate problem. Many of these images still exist and, in fact, are being used by local conservation, archeological and planning departments. During 1937 aerial photographic crews covered 375,000 square miles and by 1941 had photographed 90% of the United States. The images for Fairfax County were digitized and were originally distrib uted by the county on DVDs and are available today (2019) on the county website (https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/maps/).

The aerial image above has the plat lines from the 1904 Ingleside map superposed with streets and some landmarks labeled. Below are four topographic maps from 1941 to 1965 showing central McLean. Some of the maps show homes and businesses.

Property Owners in Central McLean

The following list of property owners in McLean in the 1940s was put together with the help of Jerry Hennings, Jean (Payne) Volz), Betty Lou (Payne) Bennett, Ann (arnold) Hennings, Jim Stoy and me in early 2003. Jerry's knowledge of old McLean was extensive first because he grew up and worked there and because he was an active member of the fire department. The material is broken down by lot number as shown on the Ingleside plat map and covers some of the history of the owners/renters.

Block 5, Lot 7

The original building on this lot was a two-story frame structure facing Elm Street that was owned by the Mackall family, built before 1910 and torn down about 1939 to make way for the Safeway grocery store (facing Chain Bridge Road).

Block 5, Lots 5 & 6

Elizabeth H Auld (nee Vinson) and husband Robert E Auld (residing in Washington DC) sold to Elmer C Stoy lot #6, block #5 in the Ingleside subdivision, developed by Fairfax Land Company, for $300 in May 1908. This is the Elm Street property next to the lot where the Stoy home was built. This lot would remain empty until the sale of both lots in 1960. The deed was recorded in the Fairfax County Clerk's Office 5 June 1908 and the document was mailed to Elmer at 3132 M Street NW, Washington DC. On 31 Aug 1908 the Fairfax Land Company sold to Elmer C Stoy of Washington DC lot #5, block #5 of Ingleside, Elm Street for $2000. This was the property where the Stoy home was built and was next to the previously purchased lot #6. Elmer C Stoy and Maria M Stoy, wife, of Washington DC, parties of the first part, and U S Walter and D S Mackall, parties of the second part, entered into a mortgage in August 1908 for $1000 to be paid to Fairfax Land Company at $15 per month beginning Oct 1908, for property of lot #5, block #5, Ingleside. Loan conditions were laid out in the document. Based on the deed records, Elmer and his family lived in Washington until late 1908 or early 1909. The home on Elm Street must have been completed in 1909 because Robert Stoy was supposedly born in the house in August 1909, although Virginia (Stoy) Arnold maintained that Robert was born at the family's apartment in Washington - in either case the home was completed by 4 May 1910 because the family resided there during the census of that year.

Dad sold the property in 1960 to the contractor that built my parent's new home on Churchill Road and by December 1961 the property had been resold and was a McDonald's, with the contractor moving into the Trammel house next door and using it as an office for a few years.

Block 5, Lot 4

The house on this lot was identical to the Stoy home and was likely built at the same time. The 1920 census²⁰ shows that Arthur "Pop" Taylor and his wife Mary, both age 60, lived there and his occupation was mail carrier. Mr Taylor had earlier lived in Langley, close by the families of Douglass Mackall, Ulysses Walters and Braden Hummer. Mr Taylor passed away at his home in Arlington in 1931 and is buried at the Lewinsville Presbyterian Cemetery.

Dad told a story in the 1950s that could only have been about Pop Taylor, who lived next door. It seems that one Halloween Dad and friends took apart the buggy and reassembled it on top of the fire station, to be discovered the following morning. This would have been the early 1920s.

Block 5, Lot 3

This was the home of Gilbert and Pauline Arnold by 1935 and I remember Pauline living there in the 1950s - always had some treats on Halloween. Pauline's mother was Beulah "Nellie" Moffett, who lived in the house next door. Pauline passed away in 1977 and is buried in Union Cemetery in Leesburg. Gilbert passed away in 1981 and is buried at Shenandoah Memorial Park in Frederick County, Virginia. One of Gilbert's brothers was Worth Arnold, my uncle and husband of Virginia Stoy, Dad's sister. Gilbert and Pauline had divorced in 1953.

Block 5, Lot 2

Home of Beulah Moffett by 1940, next door to her daughter Pauline. She would bake brownies and other treats for Halloween, no store-bought candies. Beulah passed away in 1963, outliving her husband by 35 years - she did not remarry. She is buried in Union Cemetery in Leesburg.

Block 5, Lot 1

Elizabeth Matheny and Virginia Benson lived here in the 1940s and 50s. Elizabeth, her sister Margaret and her mother Belle lived in the same house at the time of the 1930 census. She passed away in 1980 and is buried in Monterey Cemetery in Highland County, Virginia. Virginia Benson was the principal of Franklin Sherman School before Ruby Dunkum took over in 1951. Virginia had joined the faculty at Franklin Sherman in 1944 and became principal in 1946. Virginia passed away in 1983 in Fairfax County and is buried in Mt Holly Cemetery, Onancock, Virginia.

Block 4, Lot 6

Below, Storm's general store at the intersection of Chain Bridge Road and Elm Street in 1934. The railway tracks were to the left of this photo and were removed in 1935 to make way for Old Dominion Drive. In the second photo, Henry A Storm is in the white shirt seated on the left - he ran the store and was postmaster, retiring in 1954. Robert Stoy is standing on the far left and remarked that he was the only one in the photo alive in 1984 when he made notations on his copy of McLean Remembers Again - he died one year later.

Below, Storm's Store became the District Grocery Store - at the center of McLean, circa 1959.

Block 4, Lot 5

Built after 1937, the two buildings on this lot in the image below have survived to 2019. The building closest to Storm's store was built as the post office, which was moved out of the store to the larger space. Lonnie Storm was still postmaster and Mildred Kidwell his assistant. The other building became the telephone exchange facility. Originally on Elm Street, there were "party lines" where a caller had to interrupt another person on the line if an "emergency" call had to be made. Our phone number was 533, giving some idea of how few homes that were served by phones. After a couple of years, probably about 1948, the number became 3533, which was not a party line. Then, a few years later, it became ELmwood-6-3533, a good indication of the growth in McLean. Notice in the image below that there are no buildings to be seen behind and to the right of the exchange building. The McLean Shopping Center was yet to be built when the photo was taken in 1951.

The barn to the left of the post office (later library) in the above image was part of the Storm store property and was used by the fire department to store excess equipment. The concrete pad in the front of the barn was used as a preaching spot in the early 1950s by a "fire & brimstone" preacher - he would set up a microphone and start talking away. I can't recall anyone congregating to listen.

Block 4, Lot 4

Theodore Seegrist and his family lived here at least by 1935 and appeared in the 1940 census. It was a very nice two-story home with many trees on the property. His son Donald was eleven years older than me and I saw him only occasionally but one event remains in my memory. I sighted a skunk in our garage one day and called Dad. He immediately went across the street to get Donnie who showed up with his .22 rifle. The skunk didn't last long and, to this day, I still don't recall how Dad disposed of it - it did stink.

The Seegrist story ends in sadness. Donnie married Ruth Silge in 1959 in California where they had a daughter, Sylvia, born in 1960, and the family eventually moved to Springfield, Pennsylvania. Donnie and Ruth divorced and Donnie passed away in 2012. Their daughter in 1985 bought a rifle and became a rampage killer, killing three people and wounding seven at the Springfield Mall. She was adjudged insane and committed to the State Correctional Institution in Muncy, Pennsylvania, where she now resides for the rest of her life.

Block 4, Lot 3

This was a large two-story home with a wrap-around porch and a barn in the rear of the property next to Old Dominion Drive. The first owner appears to be Ulysses Walters, one of the people who loaned my grandparents $1000 to buy their property in 1908. In 1910 Ulysses and his family lived in Langley, near where he grew up, and by 1920 they lived on Elm Street across the street from Arthur Taylor (who had lived close to Walters in Langley in 1910). Walters also owned the two empty lots, Lot 1 and Lot 2. The family was still there in 1930 but left by 1940 - Ulysses passed away at home in 1933 and is buried at Lewinsville Presbyterian Church. His wife Hattie passed away in 1957 and is buried with him.

The home is shown below in 1940 during a heavy snowfall when Elm Street became sleddable:

Likely by the mid-1940s, Louis and Frances Ritchie moved into the home. Their son Louis Jr was a few years older than me but Clare was my age, Barbara was my brother's age and David was a couple years younger. We had Fourth of July parties at their home - I recall cherry bombs and blowing up a paper box. We were lucky there were no accidents. There was also an excellent Halloween party in the barn, with lots of decorations and dipping for apples in a tub - the neighborhood was there. Clare went to Langley School with me for one year then she attended St John's Catholic school about a mile south of McLean, halfway to Chesterbrook.

Louis and Frances moved in the early 1960s to Capitol View Court off of Churchill Road opposite the old French Trammel farm. Louis passed away at home in 1982 and Frances in 1987 and both are buried in Fairfax City Cemetery.

Block 4, Lot 2 and Lot 1

Both lots were first owned by Ulysses Walters, then by John Payne. They remained vacant for as long as I lived in McLean but John always raised corn on Lot 2 as I recall.

Block 7, Lot 13

This was the residence of Theodore and Charlotte Corner before fire consumed the property in 1934. The Corners built their new home on Block 6, Lots 9 and 10, directly across Elm Street and their new home is seen in the 1937 aerial image. A new home was built on Lot 13 by 1937 and was eventually occupied by Lee Charters sometime after the 1940 census (in 1940 the Charters family was living in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania). Lee was a real estate agent in McLean, competing with Laughlin Realty for clients - he did fine. Their oldest son was David and youngest was Robert, who was in my classes at Franklin Sherman and McLean High. They moved from Elm Street in the mid-1950s to a new home just to the east of Franklin Sherman school on Brawner Street. Lee passed away in 1965 in Arlington, Virginia, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Robert passed away in 1991.

Block 7, Lot 12

The residence of John and Elsie Payne after their marriage in 1927. They lived in this home with their children Jean and Betty Lou for most of their lives. In the early 2000s, Jean helped me with some of the family history research that I was working on and remarked to me how many people on Elm Street had died of cancer and that she had often wondered if there were some local cause. I didn't think too much of this at the time (even though both my parents and my grandmother had died of cancer) but as I look at death certificates for these many families, I think Jean was asking a reasonable question.

Elsie Arnold Payne was the sister of Gilbert Arnold who lived across Elm Street on Block 5, Lot 3 and the sister of Worth Arnold, my uncle. She passed away in 1998 and John had passed away in 1983 - both are buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Falls Church, Virginia.

The home was torn down some time after 1983. It was typical of the shingle and wood exteriors on many homes in the area although there were a few brick homes (image courtesy of Ann Arnold Hennings).

Block 7, Lot 11

Hubert Hoover moved to this home after his marriage to Marian Lape in 1937 and before 1940. In the 1940 census his occupation was construction engineer for an electrical company. Both passed away in 1971 and are buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Falls Church.

Block 7, Lot 10

Apparently, the first resident of this property was Isaac Lord who rented the home at the time of the 1940 census. By the mid- to late-1940s Clifford and Edna Brown with their son Cliff, who was in my classes in Franklin Sherman and McLean High, lived here with daughter Virginia. The family attended the Langley Methodist Church and I recall Mr Brown had a rather deep voice and could really belt out "Bringing in the Sheaves," a popular hymn at our church. Samuel Clifford Brown passed away in 1982 and Edna in 1996, both in Rockingham County, Virginia.

Block 7. Lot 9 and Lot 10

Theodore and Charlotte Corner built their new home on Lot 9 and a temporary home on Lot 10 after the fire in 1934 in their original home across Elm Street on Block 7. Lot 13. This home on Lot 10 has been remodeled and still stands in 2019. Theodore passed away in 1936 and Charlotte in 1988. Both are buried at Lewinsville Presbyterian Church.

Tom Corner was one of the sons of Theodore and Charlotte and was a friend of Dad's. Tom was a valued historian of McLean and The Connection Newspapers published some of his recollections made in 2003 - click here. Tom can also be found on Eric Voytko's website that shares some images of old McLean. Tom passed away in 2006 and his obituary follows:

Epilog

The McLean Shopping Center was built in 1955 by O. V. Carper (see Herrick's book Yesterday: 100 Recollections of McLean & Great Falls, Virginia, page 235, for some background) and I mark this as the turning point in McLean's rural history and today's much more crowded setting. We needed the new post office and the drug store and all the others (Glen Aylestock moved his barber shop from near Corner Lane to the new buildings) but the increased traffic had created the first stoplight in McLean at the five-way intersection of Chain Bridge Road, Old Dominion Drive and Elm Street - the original stop signs just weren't doing the job. I graduated from McLean High School in June 1959 then worked the summer at Hazleton Laboratories on Route 7 near Andrew Chapel. By the end of August I entered Georgia Tech and only visited McLean after that time to see my parents and friends. Mom passed away in 1977 and Dad in 1985 - the house on Churchill Road sold in 1986 and my visits to McLean have become fewer and fewer.

The above 1956 image shows Dolley Madison Blvd newly constructed in the Langley area. The 1966 image shows the tremendous growth that McLean experienced in just one decade - multiple shopping centers, Salona Village had been built, Dolley Madison Blvd was built and new homes are everywhere. There was still empty space in 1966 but that was soon filled.

McLean today bears almost no relation to the McLean in the first half of the 20th Century or even the mid-century time. Social events in McLean centered around the Volunteer Fire Department, the school and churches with pot luck dinners at the firehouse as well as donkey baseball games played on the field behind Franklin Sherman. The easy-going life made growing up during this earlier time a real treasure.

Endnotes

1. Nan Netherton, Donald Sweig, Janice Artemel, Patricia Hickin and Patrick Reed, Fairfax County, Virginia: A History (Fairfax County, Virginia: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, 1992). First published in 1978, re-issued in 1992 as a 250^th Anniversary Commemorative Edition.

2. John Chichester Mackall, "McLean, Fairfax County, Virginia," Historical Society of Fairfax County, Virginia, Inc. Yearbook 4 (1955): 1-15. This is an excellent article on families and the history of the Langley - McLean - Lewinsville area in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

3. Louise C Curran, McLean Remembers Again (McLean, Virginia: The Sound Publications, 1976). See pages 53 and 61 for views of Storm's store, which became a DGS (District Grocery Store)in the late 1940s run by the Katz family and then was replaced by a Texaco service station in the late 1950s. See page 37 for the image of the McLean Beauty/Barber Shop.

4. Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Frying Pan Farm (Fairfax County, Virginia: Office of Comprehensive Planning, 1979). See Part II, pages 36-54, in particular. Available as an e-book on several websites.

5. U.S. Census Office, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population Volume I, Number and Distribution of Inhabitants (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931) "03815512v1ch10.pdf," p. 1125 & 1127, (https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1930/population-volume-1/03815512v1ch10.pdf : accessed 14 Dec 2018).

6. U.S. Census Office, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population Volume I, Number and Distribution of Inhabitants (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1942) "73538v1ch09.pdf," p. 1105, (https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1940/population-volume-1/33973538v1ch09.pdf : accessed 14 Dec 2018).

7. U.S. Census Office, A Report of the Seventeenth Decennial Census of the United States: Census of Population: 1950, Volume I, Number of Inhabitants (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952) "Virginia," p. 46-13, (https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-1/vol-01-49.pdf : accessed 14 Dec 2018).

8. U.S. Census Office, The Eighteenth Decennial Census of the United States: 1960, Census of Population Volume I, Number and Distribution of Inhabitants, Part A, Number of Inhabitants (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1961) p. 48-14, (https://books.google.com : accessed 14 Dec 2018)

9. Mary Lou Bohsali, Langley School: The First Fifty Years (Virginia Beach, Virginia: The Donning Company, 1993).

10. 1930 U. S. Census, Fairfax County, Virginia, population schedule, Providence district, McLean, enumeration district (ED) 30-24; digital image, Ancestry.com ( https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Jan 2019); citing National Archives microfilm publication T626, roll 2442. See pages 13A, 13B, 14A, and 18A.

11. 1940 U. S. Census, Fairfax County, Virginia, population schedule, Providence district, enumeration district (ED) 30-26; digital image, Ancestry.com ( https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Dec 2018); citing National Archives microfilm publication T627, roll 4261. See pages 9A, 9B, 16A, 61B, 62B, and 63B.

12. Carole L Herrick, Legendary Locals of McLean Virginia (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2014).

13. Carole L. Herrick, McLean (Images of America) (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2011).

14. Ernest Jones Jr, "Re:Question," e-mail message from wharfrat59@gmail.com to R Stoy, 3 Jan 2019.

15. "Black Bear Chase," (Harrisonburg, Virginia) The Daily News-Record, 27 Aug 1936, p. 8, col. 8; digital image, NewspaperArchive.com (https://newspaperarchive.com/harrisonburg-daily-news-record-aug-27-1936-p-10/ : accessed 4 Jan 2019).

16. Carole L Herrick, Yesterday, Volume II: Additional Recollections of McLean & Great Falls, Virginia (McLean, Virginia: self-published, 2009).

17. "Legacy.com, Where Life Stories Live On," database, Legacy.com (https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/ : accessed 14 Dec 2018), Leslie A Rouse entry.

18. Wayne G Dunn to Robert Stoy, letter 28 May 2005; privately held by Stoy, 2008.

19. Virginia McGavin Rita, "Brown's Chapel Cemtery, Photo Credit and Other Info," e-mail message from virginia.rita@gmail.com to Robert Stoy, 16 Feb 2023.

20. 1920 U. S. Census, Fairfax County, Virginia, population schedule, Providence district, McLean, enumeration district (ED) 38; digital image, Ancestry.com ( https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Jan 2019); citing National Archives microfilm publication T625, roll 1886. See pages 11B and 12A.

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