ned rooms
of agreeable size and beautiful woodwork.

James Lawrason of Sussex County, New Jersey, married Alice Levering.
Their son, Thomas Lawrason, builder of the house, was born in Norfolk,
Virginia, in 1780. The Lawrasons lived for a while in Canada, where life
for those with Tory sympathies was more agreeable, but after the
Revolution, and prior to 1795, the family returned to Virginia and
settled in Alexandria, where the senior Lawrason was associated for a
time with Benjamin Shreve.

Thomas Lawrason, a member of the important shipping firm of Lawrason &
Fowle, married Elizabeth Carson, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Dr.
Samuel Carson of Armagh, Ireland, in October 1808. To them were born
five children: Samuel Carson, October 18, 1809; James Thomas, July 28,
1811; William Wilson, 1814; George Carson, 1816; and Anne Carson, 1818.

Thomas Lawrason died on June 7, 1819, before he could enjoy his fine,
new home, leaving Elizabeth to struggle with a house and family. She
never remarried, remaining in Alexandria until her children were reared
and settled in life. Then she followed her youngest son, George Carson
Lawrason, to New Orleans. An entry in the family Bible reads: "Elizabeth
Lawrason, consort of Thomas Lawrason died at the residence of her son
George C. Lawrason in New Orleans on the 11th of April, 1851, aged 59
years." A curious and sad sequel to her death is that some years later
her grave was washed away and swallowed by the Mississippi. When General
Lee's body lay in state at Washington College (now Washington and Lee
University) her grandson, Samuel McCutcheon Lawrason, then a student at
Virginia Military Institute, was one of the bodyguards at the bier.

[Illustration: The rear parlor. These rooms are spacious and well
proportioned, the woodwork in style of McIntire after Adam is worthy of
the master builders]

The original portraits of Elizabeth and Thomas hang in the Lawrasons'
Louisiana plantation home at St. Francisville. Some of the family
silver, made in Alexandria by I. Adam, belongs to her granddaughter,
Mrs. Kirkpatrick.

The La Fayette-Lawrason association rightfully includes the name
Cazenove to commemorate the role played by Alexandria's noble
French-speaking citizen on the happy occasion of La Fayette's visit.
Really his name was De Cazenove for his family was both Huguenot and
noble. They had fled France in 1688 and settled in Geneva, Switzerland,
where they were prominent bankers f