was a sad one.

[Illustration]

EARLY GROWTH

The minutes of the trustees for 1755 announced that by this time the
first frame courthouse was fenced--it had taken two years--and the
gentlemen justices of Fairfax County, sitting on November 17, 1756,
ordered John West, John Carlyle, and William Ramsay, Gentlemen, to be
paid five thousand pounds of tobacco; John Doonas, Alexandria's first
policeman, was to receive 120 pounds for patrolling twelve days.

For the next hundred years the great municipal interests were to be
tobacco, wheat, and ships; the rapid and proper dispatching of the
produce stored in the great warehouses occupying the river front; the
housing and sale of the vast diversity of goods coming to anchor with
each new sail. But in these earliest days, tobacco and ships to
transport it were the motivating forces of the town.

Turning the pages of a journal of long ago, one gets this glimpse of the
fit setting:

In the evening we returned down the river about fifteen miles to
Alexandria or Belhaven, a small trading place in one of the finest
situations imaginable. The Potomac above and below the town is not
more than a mile broad, but it here opens into a large circular bay
of at least twice that diameter. The town is built upon an arc of
this bay; at one extremity of which is a wharf; at the other a dock
for building ships; with water sufficiently deep to launch a vessel
of any rate or magnitude.[31]

On May 19, 1760, George Washington "went to Alexandria to see Captn.
Litterdale's ship launched, wch. went off extreamely well."[32] Again on
October 5, 1768, he "went up to Alexandria after an early dinner to see
a ship [the _Jenny_] launched, but was disappointed and came home."[33]
Next day, the 6th, he "went up again, saw the ship launched; stayd all
night to a Ball and set up all Night."[34] His expense account shows a
loss of 19 shillings at cards for the evening.

Alexandria's importance as a seaport was phenomenal and after a few
years it was ranking third in the New World--greater than New York, the
rival of Boston. Master shipbuilders turned out vessels to sail any
sea--manned, owned, and operated by Alexandrians. Down the ways of
Alexandria shipyards glided as good vessels as could be built. From her
ropewalks came the rope to hoist the sails made in her sail lofts.
Chemists' shops specialized in fitting out ships' medicine boxes for the
long voyages, and bakeshops