With The Rambler (Peirce Cemetery)

In that ramble which treated of Peirce Mill, of Isaac Peirce and Betsy Cloud and their ancestors and descendants, the Rambler told of having come upon a burial plot on the highlands northwest of the mill and north of the geophysical laboratory. That little cemetery is a somber place, where sobering thoughts are apt to come to one. All paths, whether they be garlanded with flowers or strewn with thorns and thistles, must lead to such a place. An old tombstone preaches an impressive sermon. It warns against the petty vanities of life and it urges that the only ambition is that which bids a man live in such a way that the world is better that he lived.

It is true that some persons read tombstones differently. Even a tombstone admits of varying interpretation, and perhaps of misinterpretation, and this should be a warning against too great positiveness that one’s own view of things is the only righteous view. The Rambler has had much experience with tombstones. He has found tombstones which most persons had forgotten. He has come upon them in lonely woods. He has found them nearly buried in the mold of the humus of the forest. He has found them in thickets of vines and brambles—a favorite retreat for old tombstones. Wherever he has found one he has knelt before it and in his notebook has jotted down the story which its chiseled letters spell. The story has gone into print and memories in many a man have been stirred by it.

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It may be that a tombstone in the woods is a terrible thing to some men. The Rambler fancies that he has felt a shudder, a fear, a faintness of the heart in some persons as they have come upon the grim marks of a place where lies what was once a man. He has a feeling that some men, should they come at night upon a hoary gravestone, lonely in deep woods through which whined and wailed a winter wind, would not stop to touch their hand upon the tomb and pay the tribute of a thought to the man whose bones rest there, but whose spirit must be living still. Not many Sundays ago the Rambler came upon an old tombstone, or a group of old tombstones, and after copying their inscriptions and photographing them, sat down among them on the mat of periwinkle which loves the company of graves. It had been a long march, and the camera had grown heavy. The Rambler took a sandwich from his pocket, and, of course, ate it, and then, still resting on the mat of periwinkle, lit his pipe. The tombstones looked on, and not in a reproving way. As the Rambler sent little fogs of sweet-smelling smoke to mingle with the fragrant cedar boughs above, he fancied that the oldest and the grayest of the tombstones wanted to talk to him, and taking out his notebook he wrote down what follows, which is what he thought the tombstone said:

“We tombstones are glad to have you here. We may not be merry company, for we are so old that the years have so nearly worn away the names and dates on us that you had difficulty in finding out who we are and whom we represent. The man I stand for was, like yourself, a smoker, only I think he smoked a better brand. He raised tobacco on the farm of which this little lot was once a part. He was, as I say in my inscription, a good husband and a kind father. He was a generous man and his neighbors liked him. His children loved him, his dogs always rushed to greet him and his horse neighed at the sound of his voice. When children, dogs and horses show a liking for a man, that man is good. But by some of the standards of your day he was not an eminently proper man.

“When he was young he would ride from here to Piscataway, or Upper Marlboro, or Rockville, or Fairfax to attend a dance, and he would dance all night. He was fond of fox hunting, and I know that as a youth he stayed out late at night on coon and possum hunts. When he got angry his speech was very human and he was not too proud to use his fist. On winter nights I know that instead of popping corn or meditating on religious themes he would play seven-up. When he got married it was to the sweetheart whom he adored.” (And as the older tombstone said this the Rambler thought he heard a faint little laugh that seemed to come from a gentle and pallid, though smaller, tombstone which stood next to that which was speaking.)

“He had land,” continued the larger and the older tombstone, “which his father had left him, and he owned slaves, whom he treated well. He did not care about work himself. He had never in his life read an essay on the dignity of labor. He really and truly believed that it was beneath the dignity of a gentleman of his station to get out in the field and work with a hoe. There were some ideas, commonly accepted when I was a new tombstone, which seem strange now. He went to church every Sunday morning and did his duty to his parish. He was godfather at many christenings and pallbearer at many funerals. When the old church was nearly wrecked by the great storm of 1747 and it was concluded to build a new one he bought lottery tickets in the lottery which was instituted to provide the funds. I know that he visited Marlboro, Bladensburg and Annapolis while he had those lottery tickets in his waistcoat pocket. It never entered his head that he had done anything wrong. Times change and manners change with them. As he grew old he became more inclined to meditation, and he was calm and resigned when he knew he was coming out under these cedars. His spirit still hovers around the old place and takes flight to the haunts of his youth. I know this well, and though you begin to puff hat pipe impatiently, as though you doubt my sanity, I give it to you on the word of a very old and very sober tombstone.”

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The Rambler has strayed a good way from the story that at the beginning of this narrative he meant to tell, but when a tombstone is inclined to talk and to tell more than is carved upon it, it is a fact worth recording. Sunday before last, in the course of the Peirce mill chapter, the Rambler in writing of the Peirce cemetery said.

Only two gravestones have on them inscriptions which may be read. These are no longer upright, but lean against the fallen trunk of a monster pine tree which has been for so long lifeless that its dust will soon mix with the graveyard mold. This old tree, which for generations of men and trees stretched its arms over the little plot and gave its shade to those at rest beneath the brambles and the flowers, is even now with its poor dead trunk holding up the gravestones on which for so many years it looked down. These two stones are close together and the inscription which the Rambler read first follows:

“Sacred to the memory of Elizabeth Jane Peirce Ould, daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Cloud Ould. Born April 12, 1822; died November 26, 1825.”

The next stone is: “Sacred to the memory of Pauline Gaither Ould, daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Cloud Ould, born September 24, 1825 and died March 31, 1827.”

The Rambler told some facts about the Ould family, but he has since learned more. In the Library of Congress, with the aid of John Morrison and Mr. Moore, the Rambler found a book entitled “The Olds Family of England and America,” and it is interesting to note that this volume of genealogy was the work of Edson H. Olds of Washington, treasurer of the Union Trust Company. The Olds family has branches spelling the name Old, Ould and Olds, and from Mr. Olds and his book the Rambler obtained the story of two early Washingtonians—Henry Ould and Robert Ould. That story which is used by permission from Edson B. Olds, follows:

“In 1791 Henry Ould, who was a mathematical instrument maker living in Dartmouth, County Devon, England and who was married to Jane Peirce of Plymouth, County Devon, England, made application for a patent on an instrument which was afterward used in connection with Hadley’s quadrant for measuring longitude. He had two sons, one named Robert and the other Henry Longitude Seal Ould. The latter afterward dropped his long name and called himself simply Henry Ould. In 1811 Henry Ould was a clerk in the Bank of England and his brother Robert was in the London Library when they were invited to come to America and start a school, teaching the Lancasterian system. That school was started in 1812 in Georgetown, D.C., and was a success from its beginning. Later the school was removed to Washington, where it was conducted for many years. In 1811 Joseph Lancaster, the founder of the system, wrote a letter to Mr. John Laird of Georgetown, from which the following extract is taken:

“On looking over all my schools I found but one young man answering the description, that was willing to go, and he was unwilling to leave England without his brother—a brother bound to him in affection from his infancy and to whom he has been a foster parent since the decease of his mother. Both young men have quitted respectable situations and connections to embark in your cause; they are in every respect worthy your countenance and protection to which I commend them. The elder, Robert Ould, as well as his brother, Henry Ould, have been my pupils at an early age. I have been in frequent intercourse with them since they left school. They have also lived amongst my friends, so that in every respect I can speak to their merits and characters on gratifying evidence of the most satisfactory kind. Were I to say all I feel respecting Robert Ould I should write a volume of a letter.”

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Robert Ould was born at London, March 11, 1788, and died at Georgetown July 22, 1840. He married Pauline Gaither at Rockville, Md., on December 24, 1814. She was born May 3, 1784, and died in Georgetown March 1, 1876.

Henry Ould was born in London February 2, 1793, and died in Washington September 15, 1871. He was married at Georgetown May 18, 1821 to Elizabeth Cloud Peirce, who, the Rambler understands, was a granddaughter of Isaac Peirce, the Rock Creek miller, and great-granddaughter of Abner Cloud, who conducted a mill the ruin of which stands between the Potomac and the canal and between the Aqueduct and Chain bridges.

Robert Ould had a large family. The first of his children was Lancaster Ould, born in 1815 and died October 28, 1890. He was married to a Miss Bledsoe, a Pocahontas descendant. He became a Presbyterian minister, lived for a long time in Columbus, Ohio, and rests in Oak Hill. The second son was Remus, born in 1818 and died in 1852, and the third son was Henry, born 1822, died 1824. Then came Pauline Ould, who was born in 1824, was married to Samuel G. Griffith and died in 1856. Daniel Gaither Ould was born in 1826 and died in1832. George G. Ould was born in 1832 and died in 1887. Henrietta G. Ould, born in 1836, died in infancy, and Elisha R. Ould born in 1839, died in 1892. One may read these dates on a number of the Ould tombs in Oak Hill cemetery.

Robert Ould had a son, Robert, who was a distinguished man. He died in Richmond, Va., in 1881. He lived in Georgetown, where he was recorder during the years 1847-51 and 1853-59. On the breaking out of the civil war he removed to Richmond and was commissioner for the exchange of prisoners for the south during the war. He was esteemed as an accomplished lawyer. His first wife was Sarah Turpin and his second was Mrs. Madge Dorsey Handy, a widow. The children of the first marriage were Sarah, who married George W. Donaldson, and is living in Charleston, W. Va., and Mattie, who married Oliver Schoolcraft. The child of the second marriage was Madge Dorsey Ould, who married William Francis Powers and is living in Richmond, and they have two children, Margaret Ould Powers and William Francis Powers.

Henry Ould of London, Georgetown and Washington, and, who was laid away in the little plot above Peirce Mill, and later disinterred and removed to Baltimore had a son, Marion Hall Ould. He was born in Washington July 14, 1834, and died in Baltimore April 24, 1909. He married Mary Susannah Swift, who was born in 1832 and died in 1901. Their child, Margaret Adaline, born in 1857, married in 1877 Walter B. Swindell. As the Rambler has already told, they live at Roland Park, near Baltimore. Of their children the Rambler knows that Walter B. Swindell married Gertrude Haldane de Velasco. Sue Ould Swindell married Claude Larlyle Nuckels. Jane Swindell married Charles Howard Smith and Margaret Swindell married Robert Quincy Blair.

The recorded history of the Ould, Old or Olds family reaches back to the time when its members were Thanes of Yorkshire and who are mentioned in Domesday book. The original name was Wold though pronounced Old, and there is a village called Old in Huningdonshire which was once the property of the Wolds of Derby. The family can be traced back to Roger Wold, who was living at Flixtune in Yorkshire in 1189. The first American Old was Robert, son of John Olde and --- Gatherest of Sherbonne, County Dorset, England. He was born in England in 1645, and although the date of his coming to America is not known he was living in Windsor, Conn. in 1667. There he married first Susannah Hanford, then Dorothy Granger, and next Joanna Adams. He was a doctor of medicine. From him descended four lines, the families of Robert, Hanford, William and John.

The Old or Ould family is found in Virginia early in the seventeenth century and there is a record in Norfolk county of the marriage of Edward Ould to a Miss Tooley in 1680, and that Edward Ould was a son of Edward Ould of the same county. Edson Baldwin Olds of Washington is descended from the family of John. He was born at Minneapolis, Minn., on February 8, 1857, and came to Washington in 1865. On October 3, 1895, he was married to Mabel Bradford, descended from Gov. William Bradford and six others of the Mayflower pilgrims. They live at Silver Spring and their children are Evelyn Bradford Olds, Marian Bradford Olds, Edson Baldwin Olds and Bradford Sargent Olds.

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Henry Oldys whom nearly all Washingtonians know, is also of the Olds family. The Rambler has been informed that Henry Worthington Olds was born in Washington in 1859 and in 1891 married May C. Meigs. He adopted the spelling “Oldys” because that was the spelling used by some of his ancestors. For many years he has been connected with the biological survey, and he became famous as a lecturer on birds and bird music and had been prominent in the bird protection movement. His children are Robert Oldys, Margaret Oldys, Katherine Sargent Oldys and Mary Meigs Oldys.

There are a good many threads to this story of he Olds and Oulds which the Rambler means to take up at another time, but it is necessary now to go across the Eastern branch and set foot on the Beall-Sheriff lands, where the Rambler left off last Sunday. These lands, on which Benning, Deanewood and numerous other settlements stand, were patented to Ninian Beall, and some of the acres are still owned and tilled by his descendants. Ninian Beall was born in Fifeshire in 1624, came to Maryland in 1658 and died in 1717, in his ninety-third year. He died on his Eastern Branch grant, which was called Fife, and it is believed that his grave is in the Beall family plot, at the rear of the Sheriff house, now owned by John W. Young, whose wife was Isabel Sheriff, daughter of George Beall Sheriff, son of Lemuel Sheriff and Susan Beall Greenfield Young. Efforts have been made to find a stone to Col Ninian Beall, but without success.

Ninian Beall was a Scottish soldier loyal to the house of Stuart. Fighting against the Cromwell forces, he was made a prisoner at the battle of Dunbar. Whether he came to Maryland because he did not relish the government of the Commonwealth the Rambler does not know, but some writers have said that he was “transported” to Maryland. He had three brothers, Thomas, John and George, and they all had Maryland patents to lands. Thomas, who married Elizabeth Lee, died in 1708, and left a large family. John married Joan Tyler. Ninian had eight children. One of his sons, Capt. Charles Beall, had a son, Col. Joshua Beall, and he was baptized by the Rev. Hugh Conn, one of the early Presbyterian ministers of this region. Mr. Conn had a church at Bladensburg, and he married into the Veitch family, which owned part of the field on which the battle of Bladensburg was fought.

It is on the Conn-Veitch lands that the National Industrial Training School for Boys stands and on which Fort Lincoln and Battery Jameson were built during the civil war. Part of the old farm, north of the Reform School, is owned by the Boyle family, descended from the Conn-Veitch marriage, and by other members of the Veitch family. The old Veitch-Boyle family cemetery is east of the Reform School about a quarter of a mile, and the old Veitch homestead is on the north slope of the Reform School hill. That is, it was standing there when the Rambler last walked that way. The Joshua Beall who was baptized by Rev. Hugh Conn, married Elinor Smith Greenfield, of one of the old families of Maryland, and that is one of he ways in which the Bealls and the Greenfields are related. The Eastern branch state of Fife descended to Joshua Beall. He was for years the judge of the county court at Upper Marlboro and he died at that village in 1796. His daughter was the wife of Gen. Rezin Beall of the Maryland line of the continental army. Gen. Rezin Beall died October 4, 1809, and the Rambler believes that his grave is his old estate Flying Turkey near Beltsville.

Adjoining the Beall-Greenfield-Sheriff burial plot near Benning is another old family graveyard, in which there are three stones with legible inscriptions. One is to the memory of Mrs. Eliza McCormick, wife of Alexander McCormick, who died August 21, 1844, in the thirty-eighth year of her age. Another stone is inscribed to the memory of Ellen Van Horn, who died December 19, 1811, aged thirteen years. The third stone is to the memory of Elizabeth Van Horn, a little child “who departed this life November 9, A.D. 1815, aged twelve months and twenty-five days.” The Rambler has no knowledge as to this Van Horn family and only a meager acquaintance with the McCormicks. These McCormicks were related to the Bealls and some members of the family are still living near Benning. Admiral McCormick is of this family. There was a Gen. Rezin Beall who was born in Rockville, who figured in the war of 1812, and the Rambler supposes that he was a son of Gen. Rezin Beall of the Maryland line in the continental army who is buried near Beltsville. The second Rezin Beall was commissioned an ensign in 1793, his commission being signed by President Washington. He became a captain in 1794 and a brigadier in 1808. The Rambler’s understanding is that he died in 1843 and that he is buried at Wooster, Ohio.

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If you should cross the Benning bridge and then turn north along the old Anacostia road, you will observe wide tracts of land, generally treeless, between the road and the river. These fields are planted to vegetables in summer. The geological survey, in its classification of the soils of this region, gives the name of “Norfolk sand” to this soil, and remarks that it is one of the finest of soils for the growth of vegetables. At first glance the land is flat, but it is really gently rolling, with numerous low, rounded ridges and shallow folds. You will not walk more than a couple of hundred yards along the Anacostia road when you will come to a fence opening through which leads a lane toward the west. Far off to the right is the grandstand and the ruins of the stables of the Benning race course, which is on land sold by the Sheriff family for a driving park in 1866. Ahead, you will see a very old house closely grown around with silver poplars. This is a characteristic tree around old homes in Maryland, especially the homes of old Catholic families, for it is generally called an “aspen,” and there is a legend that the cross was made from the aspen and that the leaves of the tree have trembled ever since because of its horror that it should have been put to such a use. At the rear of that house you will find the burial place of the Bealls of Fife. This particular tract of the great grant of Fife has been known for generations out of mind as Beall’s Pleasure. The Bealls have always pronounced the name “Bell,” and there are a good many descendants of the early Bealls who spell the name as it is pronounced.