ce and Mrs. Owen J.
Roberts.

Only two houses on this block are of any age. The little white cottage
near the corner of Washington (30th) Street was the home of three Miss
Tenneys and their sister, Mrs. Brown, who had a school for small boys
and girls. Then the garden ran to the corner. The father of these ladies
and of William H. Tenney had come to Georgetown from Newburyport,
Massachusetts, in the early part of 1800.

Just across from it, the large yellow mansion was the home of Commodore
Cassin, built by him, I think, in the early 1800's. In 1893 Mr. and Mrs.
Beverley Randolph Mason, of Virginia, opened here their school, Gunston
Hall, named, of course, for Mr. Mason's ancestral home, which continued
in Washington as a flourishing boarding school for girls for fifty
years. After that, this building housed the Epiphany School, an
Episcopal institution.

The property along 30th Street here was all owned at one time by the
Matthews family. Henry Cooksey Matthews came to Georgetown some years
before 1820. He had been born in 1797 on the farm near Dentsville, in
Charles County, Maryland, where his forbears had lived for four
generations. He married his cousin, Lucinda Stoddert Haw, whose home,
you remember, was on Gay (N) Street, and they built the large house on
the southeast corner of Washington (30th) and West (P) Streets.

Mr. Matthews and his wife were devoted members of Christ Church and
named their son for one of its rectors, the Reverend Charles McIlvaine,
who later became Bishop of Ohio. Mr. Matthews used to play the flute in
the orchestra in Christ Church.

Mr. Charles M. Matthews also married his cousin, who was a daughter of
Thomas Corcoran, junior, and niece of W. W. Corcoran. Mr. Matthews,
until his death, managed the estate of Mr. Corcoran. He built his home
on the southern part of his father's lot at the northeast corner of
Washington (30th) and Beall (O) Streets.

Back in the eighties Miss Charlotte and Miss Margaret Lee came from
Virginia and opened The West Washington School for Girls, sponsored by
several of the gentlemen of Georgetown, in the old home of Henry C.
Matthews. There, in the last year of its existence, I learned the
beginnings of the three R's.

Nearby, at number 3014 P Street, in the fifties and sixties, William R.
Abbott conducted a well-known school for boys. At that time it was only
a one-story building. Mr. Abbott was the son of John Abbott, whose home
was on Bridge (M) Stree