It seems that the land northwest of the intersection of 35th and Reservoir was originally a burial ground, where, in 1798, Col. William Deakins, Jr., a soldier of the Revolutionary War and a member of the Maryland convention to ratify the Federal Constitution, was laid to rest. With fellow Georgetowner Benjamin Stoddert, Deakins had been President Washington’s confidential agent in the ferocious real estate speculation connected with the founding of the national capital.

In 1822 John Threlkeld deeded the land to his son-in-law, Georgetown importer and banker John Cox, who built a house there called The Cedars. Cox served as mayor of Georgetown from 1823 to 1845. The Cedars burned in 1847, and Cox died two years later. His son, Richard Smith Cox, rebuilt The Cedars and sold it to William David Clark Murdock, the heir to Friendship. Murdock lost much property due to poor business deals, was dogged by debts, and died amid “pecuniary embarrassments”.

The next owner was George Earle, Assistant Postmaster General in the Grant Administration. His daughters were known as “The Misses Earle”, and ran a female seminary in one wing of The Cedars. On the grounds there was a spring of cool water, “Bear Wallow Spring”, which by 1889 was coming out of a pump.

Construction of Western High School on the site of The Cedars started in 1897. Initially, the school lunch room served its students meals with linen, silver, china, napkins and finger bowls. The environs of the school were not so elegant. “Affairs in Georgetown - Carpet Beating Objectionable. The prevalence of diphtheria, scarlet fever and other contagious diseases in the northwest section of the town is attributed by some of the residents to the practice of beating carpets on the vacant lots north and west of the high school, on what is known as the Burleith subdivision. Carpets from all sections of the city seem to be brought to this place every spring and fall and dusted by colored men.”

Western High School held its last class in 1977, when it became Duke Ellington High School for the Arts.

Carlton Fletcher

(The information in this article originally appeared in the Glover Park Gazette in November, 2004. All rights reserved.)

Sources:

District of Columbia Probate Records, compiled by Wesley Pippenger, p.15

Columbia Historical Society, Vol.21, p.142

Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, The History of the National Capital, Vol.1, p.223

Bob Arnebeck, Through a Fiery Trial

Washington Federalist, Georgetown, D.C., November 8, 1802

Intelligencer, January 17, 1818

DC Liber WB6 (1822) ff 340

Proctor, Star Sunday, February 8, 1942, p.B4

DC Liber JAS101 (1855) f.449/357;

Georgetown Courier, January 22, 1869, November 11, 1871

The Rambler, Star, September 21, 1889

Georgetown Courier, September 13, 1873;

1880 census, ED 9

1890 Directory; Washington Star, September 21, 1889

October 2, 1899, 14:7; Western High School History, 1940

Threlkeld and Cox files, Peabody Room, Georgetown Branch Library

Abstract of Title to “BURLEITH” in Frederic W. Huidekoper, 1887: ms. 127, Historical Society of Washington

Washington, City and Capital, 1937, pp.369, 745-6

Edgar Farr Russell, A Short History of Burleith, 1955

Ann Lange, “A Brief History of Burleith”, Burleith Newsletter, 1985, September-October 1998: