Rambler Finds Bradbury Heights Really Entitled to Its Lofty Name
Further Investigations Along an Old Road Furnish Some Facts of Interest --
Names and Dates Which Are Associated With Early Local History

We are on the road we left last Sunday, I wrote that sentence "We are back on he road which we left last Sunday," but I cut out "back," believing that a reader should know that if "we are on the road we left last Sunday" we must have come back to it. It is well to be clear about such things because there are a few readers who have no more knowledge of English than writers have. Thus, we are on the road.

It is an old road, and it will not tell its age. Likely it was a trace through woods when the Eastern Branch was the north limit of white settlement in the Potomac country. Log houses were built and patches of forest cleared. Farms came to be, and frame houses with porticos and brick chimneys were built. Ox carts moved along the road and the family carriage came upon it. Settlers and business increased and the stagecoach rolled along. Wayside taverns hung out signs if they did not set up a green bush. Then the mail stage came.

When Bladensburg, then Georgetown and later Washington came as spots on the map a few city men made homes beside this road and villages were born. In modern times the road, with some twists and turns removed, was renamed Alabama avenue. A plat sent the Rambler by his old friends Mel Hazen and Jack Armstrong in the surveyor’s office shows that parts of the line of Alabama avenue are stilled called Bowen road. Those parts are from Thirty-second street to the site of Fort Davis, at Pennsylvania avenue and Thirty-eighth street, and from Fort Dupont, at Alabama avenue and Forty-second street, to Bradbury Heights.

The road passes Fort Dupont and a few hundred yards later enters the village of Bradbury Heights. The District-Maryland boundary runs through the village, but most of it is in Maryland. Near Bradbury Heights are the settlements of Boulevard Heights, Dupont Heights and Capitol Heights, and there are other “heights” east toward Seat Pleasant. Hills and ridges in that section are 250 to 300 feet above tide, and no one will quarrel with fathers and godfathers of settlements for naming them “heights.” Long ago the word “hill” was more used than “heights” as a high-placed name, and not far from Boulevard Heights, Bradbury Heights and Dupont Heights are Silver Hill and Oxon Hill.

There is fashion in names. Men who buy farms and found settlements bound to be cities have a slant not only toward “heights,” but also toward “park,” “terrace” and “view.” If there is a clay bank on the farm, which would cost too much to cut away, it can be turned into Primrose Terrace. If a 20-foot ridge runs through the farm it can be called Grand View, and if a lame pine tree grows in a fence corner the place may be called Pine Park. Lots would not sell for more than they are worth in a place named Sassafras Corners, Persimmon Hollow or Papaw Crossroads, but you name the place Azalea and many persons will move out from town.

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The name Bradbury Heights is justified because the town is on high land, with views of the Eastern Branch Valley, and prospects of the vale of Oxon Run. It was named Bradbury after one of the Bradbury boys. There were two of them, Robert F. and George, who bought parts of the farms of William Trimble and Joseph Trimble, who got it by will from their uncle, Matthew Wright. I believe that Bradbury Heights is on the Wright-Trimble land, which Bob Bradbury bought. It is the story of Matthew Wright, his nephews, William, Joseph and Matthew Trimble, and Adam Gaddis, who married William Trimble’s daughter Mary, that the Rambler is leading to, but there is no hurry. The Rambler has to write one of these stories each week, and is under no obligation to use all his facts at one sitting. He is under many obligations to the half-million Star readers who follow his choice words, but to feed out his facts too fast is not one of those obligations, but, with the co-operation of other literary men on The Star, he hopes to give every patron 5 cents worth of enlightenment on Sunday.

The story must also touch on the Marshall family, which owned the tract, Marshall’s adventure, which became part of the Wright-Trimble farm, and ought to recall memories of Robert Marshall, his wife, Charlotte Brown, and their sons, Provost Marshall, who died in the Confederate military service, and G.R. Wilfred Marshall, whom thousands of old-timers in the eastern District and Prince Georges knew and loved as “Willie” Marshall. Willie was one of the noted tournament riders of southern Maryland, a famous hunter, and if there is a man among you who liked horses and dogs more than Willie Marshall did, I’ll be glad to have you come to see me at The Star office.

Many old chaps hold gracious memories of Willie Marshall. He was a gentleman. He was not that kind of gentleman who pins a mauve ribbon on his nightshirt or who when riled says in carefully regulated accents “pish-tush” or “tut-tut.” He was sun-browned and would lift a horse over any fence that lay on a fox’s trail. Some of his famous horses were Dandy Tom, Governor and Lantern, and I remember that when Willie hung up his saddle and gun and passed to that realm where harp playing is commoner than hunting, the late B.B. Earnshaw bought Dandy Tom, who in maturity and age jogged in harness. Willie could pour stuff from a decanter and make a toast as did the knights. To him a woman was on a pedestal and too fine a creature to eat chop-suey or tripe and onions. He played seven-up instead of golf. He never smoked a cigarette, but could bite a “chew” off a “twist” of barn-cured Maryland tobacco. Under might provocation he could use language which George Washington and other great Americans have used at fitting times. When he had trouble with another man he did not send to the sheriff at Marlboro to help him. The other fellow hunted up the sheriff. Willie married Sally Warren, daughter of John Warren, who had a farm on Benning road, between the river and Bradbury Heights. And as this line ends another page of typing, you will allow the Rambler to fill his pipe and smoke a bowl while he has a dream in which the faces of pretty Sally Warren and dashing William Marshall smile.

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Matthew Wright settled in the District of Columbia in 1796. He was born in County Tyrone, Ireland and at the death of his parents came to America. He bought land on the Marlboro road, now Alabama avenue and added to his holdings until his farm was 350 acres, and parts of three patented tracts or “grants” named Bayley’s Purchase, Fortune Enlarged and Marshall’s Adventure. His farm lay in the District and in Prince Georges County. Matthew Wright has a prominent place in early annals of the District, and this will be shown as we go along. He died in 1847. He was buried in Congressional Cemetery, and on his grave is a marble slab inscribed: “Sacred to the Memory of Matthew Wright, a Native of County Tyrone, Ireland, but for the last fifty-one years a Resident of the United States, Who departed this life May 24, 1847, Aged 80 years.” Matthew Wright bequeathed his property to his nephews, Joseph, William and Matthew Trimble, sons of his sister, Margaret Wright, and her husband, Joseph Trimble. Next the slab on Matthew Wright’s grave is one which tells that it covers the grave of Matthew Trimble, who died December 26, 1858, aged 66 years, after 42 years’ residence in the District. Joseph Trimble, unmarried, died in 1885, when he was 88 years old, and was buried in Congressional Cemetery. A niece, Mary Blakely, daughter of Elizabeth Trimble Blakely, deceased sister of Matthew and Joseph Trimble, who lived at Joseph Trimble’s home, became a Mrs. Gunnell, and died in 1912.

The nephews, Matthew and Joseph Trimble, were living here at the death of Matthew Wright, in 1847. His will, recorded May 28, 1847, devises his lands in the eastern District and Maryland “unto my nephews Mathew Trimble of Washington City, to William Trimble of Tyrone, Ireland, and Joseph Trimble of Prince Georges County, Md.”

At Bradbury Heights the public school stands in a grove of old but hale and green oak trees. That schoolhouse stands a few yards northwest of the site of a home the name of which was Oak Grove, and the trees that shade the schoolhouse used to shade the home. The site of that house is bare, and one of the lane-like streets of Bradbury Heights crosses part of it. The house served as the public school until the school, the picture of which is shown, was built. The house of Oak Grove was taken down seven or eight years ago, and the man who superintended the work and did part of it with his hands - Samuel J. Owens - told me that the house was built of hewed oak timber, which shows that it was old.

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In 1855 Oak Grove was the home of William Trimble. How long William Trimble lived there before 1855 is one of the many things the Rambler does not know, but he thinks it was an old home then, and it may be that Matthew Wright lived in that house. It is difficult to go into a grove of oak trees and get from them all facts concerning houses that have stood among them. But I know that it was the home of William Trimble and his wife Lucinda in 1855, because on November 26, that year, their daughter Margaret was married to the late Adam Gaddis. Some men whose eyes are on this page may have been present. William Trimble died there in 1859, leaving his wife Lucinda and five children, who were Margaret, Mary, Jane, James and Matthew. Only Mary survives. She is the widow of Adam Gaddis, who from 1850 to 1885 was in the grain, feed and grocery trade at the southwest corner of Eleventh and M streets southeast, the store after 1885 becoming the grocery and feed store of B.B. Earnshaw, or, if my mind is not growing feeble, the firm of Earnshaw & Brother. Mr. Gaddis was prominent in other ways than trade.

Adam Gaddis, as you have been told, was married to Margaret Trimble, daughter of William and Lucinda Trimble, at Oak Grove, now Bradbury Heights, in 1855. Margaret Trimble Gaddis died October 6, 1878, and five years later, June 12, 1883, Adam Gaddis married Mary, her sister. Adam Gaddis died in December, 1915. He was born in East Washington July 26, 1826, son of Adam Gaddis, who came to America from County Down, Ireland, settled in Washington in 1820 and was foreman of the galley shop of the Washington navy yard for 45 years. His wife was Miss Julia Ann Green of Baltimore County.

I think, beloved reader, you have been given as many facts as you should have at this session, and I will go back to talk to the oak trees at Bradbury Heights, that I may hand you some names and dates next Sunday in this story of the Wrights, Trimbles and Adam Gaddis.