Its southern front, shown here, is the one most familiar
to everyone, and it is the view that I looked out on every day of my
life for more than a score of years from my father's house on Stoddert
(Q) Street.

As Mrs. Beverley Kennon, its owner during my youth, was my cousin and
had her motherless grandchildren living with her, some of my earliest
recollections are of running round and round the old circle of box in
front of the north entrance, playing "colors." I never, to this day,
smell box that I am not back at Tudor Place and see the cobwebs in the
old bushes bright with raindrops, as box, of course, is really fragrant
only after rain. Also there were lovely times in the fall when the
leaves were being raked up by old John, the colored gardener, who would
let us climb on top of the brilliant load in a wheelbarrow with a crate
on top of it. Such rides! Old John was a character (and one we loved
dearly), not much over five feet tall, with grizzled hair and goatee,
and always wearing an apron tied around his waist and a derby hat on his
head.

Tudor Place was purchased by Francis Lowndes, one of the prominent
tobacco merchants and shippers, in 1794, from Thomas Beall of George
who made a large addition to George Town in 1783, called by his name.
Mr. Lowndes started to build a mansion, but in 1805 he sold the property
to Thomas Peter and his wife, the former Martha Parke Custis.

[Illustration: THOMAS PETER]

When the Peters moved to their new home in George Town they used the
western wing, already built, with its addition on the east, as their
home, and the eastern wing was their carriage house and stable. This
fact has been proved by finding below the floors the signs of the old
stalls, and up in the rafters the corncobs of long ago. I have known
people who remembered the old yellow coach which often stood out in the
stable yard, and I've been told that if one dug deep enough its
cobblestones would still be found.

Mr. and Mrs. Peter decided to use the fortune left her by her
grandmother, Mrs. Washington, to build a stately mansion. They certainly
succeeded. They engaged as architect Dr. William Thornton, whose plans
for the Capitol had been accepted in the second competition, as the
first yielded none sufficiently good.

Dr. Thornton and his wife were intimate friends of the Peters, and a
beautiful miniature of him, done by her, is now in the possession of one
of the family. Mrs. Thornton was with Mrs. Peter