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Updated: June 1, 2025
We really miss them, and think of them as pleasant visitors who have been spending a few days with us. We hope that Honeysuckleville will not be forsaken; but that every year the birds will return, and rear their young beneath its fragrant shade, making hearts of the little Dudleys glad, and teaching them to love.
Long, long ago, in old Colonial times, the Honorable Thomas Dudley, Esquire, a man of note and name and great resources, allied by descent to the family of "Tom Dudley," as the early Governor is sometimes irreverently called by our most venerable, but still youthful antiquary, and to the other public Dudleys, of course, of all of whom he made small account, as being himself an English gentleman, with little taste for the splendors of provincial office, early in the last century, Thomas Dudley had built this mansion.
The Dunlaps, McIldowneys, Dudleys and Elwells were the stay-at-homes. Having had their thrust at the job of pioneering before the war they were now content on their fat soil. To me they all seemed remote. Their very names had poetic value, for they brought up in my mind shadowy pictures of the Coulee country as it existed to my boyish memories.
The Jamestown colonists in their search for unused land had gradually started to move into Fairfax County around 1649. Among these were the Masons, Draytons, Baxters, Brents, Vincents, Merriweathers, Fitzhughs, Hills, Dudleys and Howsings. Most of these men were not ready to make their homes here, however, for this area was still infested with unfriendly Indians.
Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight or the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his errand in the burial-grounds, knocking at the iron doors of tombs or upon the marble slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within, "My mistress, old Esther Dudley, bids you to the province-house at midnight;" and punctually as the clock of the Old South told twelve came the shadows of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys all the grandees of a bygone generation gliding beneath the portal into the well-known mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she likewise were a shade.
The Dudleys, who were anxiously waiting for her on deck, saw her coming, just as the sailors were about to take up the gang-plank, and begged the Captain for a moment's delay.
As for silver, the iron closet which had been made in the dining-room wall was running over with it: tea-kettles, coffee-pots, heavy-lidded tankards, chafing-dishes, punch-bowls, all that all the Dudleys had ever used, from the caudle-cup which used to be handed round the young mother's chamber, and the porringer from which children scooped their bread-and-milk with spoons as solid as ingots, to that ominous vessel, on the upper shelf, far back in the dark, with a spout like a slender italic S, out of which the sick and dying, all along the last century, and since, had taken the last drops that passed their lips.
She was a sister of the Earl of Lincoln who had come to the title in 1619, and whose family had a more intimate connection with the New England settlements than that of any other English nobleman. Her sister Susan had become the wife of John Humfrey, another member of the company, and the close friendship between them and the Dudleys made it practically a family party.
Rumor had it that not all her guests were flesh and blood, but that she had an antique mirror across which ancient occupants of the house would pass in shadowy procession at her command, and that she was wont to have the Shirleys, Olivers, Hutchinsons, and Dudleys out of their graves to hold receptions there; so a touch of dread may have mingled in the feeling that kept the populace aloof.
Watch her well by day and by night, old Sophy! watch her well! or the long line of her honored name may close in shame, and the stately mansion of the Dudleys remain a hissing and a reproach till its roof is buried in its cellar! "Able!" said the old Doctor, one morning, "after you've harnessed Caustic, come into the study a few minutes, will you?" Abel nodded.
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