Sully Historic Site: The Story of the House and the People Who Called It Home

By Beth Sansbury

This book tells the history of the house called Sully, built in 1793 by Richard Bland Lee and now owned and managed by Fairfax County, VA. Lee was the first Congressman of Northern Virginia, a key player in the Compromise of 1790 that established Washington DC as our capital, and the uncle of Robert E. Lee. The story traces the historical events that impacted the house and its inhabitants, including the Civil War when both armies camped on the property. A section of the book contains photos of the house, inside and out, with a commentary about the function of each room and building in the Federal period.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387073559

Book preview

Sully Historic Site: The Story of the House and the People Who Called It Home

Sully Historic Site: The Story of the House and the People Who Called it Home

Beth Sansbury

Wolfe Hill Publishing

Great Falls, VA 22066

June 2017

Copyright © 2017 by Robert S. Gamble and Beth Sansbury

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2017

ISBN 978-1-365-77498-0

Wolfe Hill Publishing

10850 Wolfe Hill Lane

Great Falls, VA 22066

Foreword

In 1971 the Fairfax County Office of Comprehensive Planning asked me to prepare a brief study of Sully as part of a series then being developed on landmark structures throughout the county.

As a young historian working with the Department of the Interior, I responded enthusiastically, assuming I could do the research and writing in my spare time.  Soon, however, it became clear that there was a lot more to the history of Sully than anyone suspected.  Old letters—many still in private hands, early court records, and anecdotes passed down through families for generations gradually revealed that the Sully story was in many respects the story of Fairfax County in microcosm.  It was a saga peppered with colorful personalities and events, stretching over two and a half centuries from the plantation society of colonial Virginia to the dawn of the Jet Age and Sully’s last-minute rescue in 1959.  Thus my initial study expanded into a book of more than 200-pages published by the Sully Foundation Ltd. in 1973 as Sully: The Biography of a House.

The bucolic countryside which still surrounded Sully at that time has vanished.  But development of the house and grounds as a county-owned historic site has continued, including archaeological investigation.  Now, this attractive, richly-illustrated and accessible guidebook, prepared by volunteer docent Beth Sansbury, brings the Sully story up to date.  It is a great introduction to an important Northern Virginia landmark, a tranquil island in the midst of suburbia linking us to another time and way of life.

Robert S. Gamble

Montgomery, Alabama

March 2017

Introduction

When I became a docent at Sully, I realized that there was no recent short book about the house and the people who lived there that the casual visitor could buy.  The definitive book, Sully, the Biography of a House, written by Robert S. Gamble, was published more than 40 years ago and at 228 pages is a formidable work.

To fill this gap, I set out to create an updated and shorter but no less accurate version of the Gamble book.  Digesting a book of this size was made easier by my career as an intelligence analyst where I reduced reams of all-source information into small briefs for the busy policymaker. Using Robert Gamble’s authoritative text as a lodestar and listening to the interests expressed by the many visitors on my tours, my goal was to write a book that would make history come alive.  Whenever possible, I used the words of the people who lived at Sully as expressed in their letters.  These are easily identified in the text in a calligraphic font and sourced in a notes section.  I also included recent color photos of the Sully house today, both inside and out.  

In order to acknowledge the importance of the contribution of the enslaved people at Sully, I wrote a separate section on this subject. Generations of enslaved African-Americans worked in the fields during the time of Richard Bland Lee’s father and grandfather, and Richard Bland Lee used