In November 1748, three Scottish settlers — William Ramsay, John Carlyle, and John Pagan — sailed up the Potomac River from Dumfries, Virginia, looking for a better trading port. They chose a site four miles north of the creek at the public tobacco warehouses on West’s Point. They petitioned the House of Burgesses to establish a town. The petition was granted. The town was named Alexandria. Ramsay helped draft the town charter.

That founding act in 1749 set Ramsay at the center of everything that followed. He became the city’s first postmaster, overseer of the Alexandria Academy, Justice of Fairfax County, and on St. Andrew’s Day 1761 was voted the first and only Lord Mayor of Alexandria — presented with a gold chain and medal. His Ramsay House, built in 1724, is the oldest surviving house in the city and has served as Alexandria’s visitor center for decades. In 2015, the National Museum of American History devoted an exhibit to his merchant ledgers, desk, bookcase, and writing instruments.

His connection to George Washington ran deeper than civic partnership. When Ramsay married Ann Ball McCarty in 1751, he married into Washington’s family — Ann’s mother was a first cousin of Washington’s mother. In 1774, alongside George Mason, Ramsay helped form the Independent Company of Alexandria, the first independent militia company in British Colonial America. Washington recorded in his diary on 12 February 1785 that he walked in the Masonic funeral procession of his old friend. Six weeks later, on 1 April 1785, Washington walked in the funeral procession of Ann Ramsay too.

Ann McCarthy Ball Ramsay was a patriot in her own right: elected Treasurer of Alexandria, she raised more than $75,000 in taxes and donations in support of Washington’s cause. The Ann McCarthy Ramsay Chapter of the Children of the American Revolution in Alexandria bears her name today. Both William and Ann are buried at Christ Church — no known markers have survived.

One of Washington’s honorary pallbearers at the funeral on December 18, 1799 — Gilpin, then in his late sixties, was too old to carry the heavy mahogany coffin from the Green Room at Mount Vernon to the tomb — his own grave was lost for over two centuries. While 1935 library maps showed a “Gilpin plot” within the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex, the knowledge had been forgotten entirely. Through more than a decade of cemetery stewardship and original research, the probable burial area was identified, and in 2024 a team confirmed the exact location using ground-penetrating radar. The rediscovery of Washington’s pallbearer made headlines and represents one of the most significant cemetery finds in Alexandria’s recent history.

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When George Washington passed through Alexandria on his way to his first inauguration, it was Mayor Dennis Ramsay who delivered the farewell address — and who became the first person in history to address Washington as “Mr. President.” That phrase was first spoken in Alexandria — and we call the President “Mr. President” to this day. Ramsay’s connection to Washington ran deep: he was also one of Washington’s honorary pallbearers at his funeral on December 18, 1799. He now rests in the Presbyterian Cemetery at the Wilkes Street Complex — Section 42, Plot 72.

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No figure was closer to George Washington through both war and death than Dr. James Craik. He served alongside Washington beginning with Braddock’s disastrous 1755 expedition, and in 1774 Washington brought him into the Continental Army, where he served as Assistant Director General of the Middle Department before ascending in 1781 to Chief Physician and Surgeon of the entire Continental Army.

His patients read like a roster of the Revolution’s most consequential figures: he tended the Marquis de Lafayette after the Battle of Brandywine, cared for General Hugh Mercer mortally wounded at Princeton, and attended John Parke Custis — Martha Washington’s son and Washington’s aide-de-camp — who succumbed to camp fever in November 1782, a loss that profoundly affected the Washingtons. Through every campaign, Craik remained at Washington’s side. He was present at Washington’s bedside when the General died on December 14, 1799. His SAR marker at Old Presbyterian Meeting House, installed November 13, 2003, marks the resting place of one of the most intimate witnesses to Washington’s life and final hours.

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Cavan Boa holds a unique double distinction: he was George Washington’s personal tailor throughout the Revolutionary War years, and he became the very first person buried at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery when he died in 1789. This makes him both the inaugural burial in Alexandria’s oldest Catholic cemetery and a man who spent years measuring, fitting, and crafting the garments worn by the Commander-in-Chief himself.

In May 1782, Colonel Lewis Nicola sent Washington one of the most remarkable letters in American history — proposing that the General use the army’s loyalty to establish himself as King of America. Washington responded with one of his sharpest rebukes, calling the idea “painful” and “injurious.” Nicola, who had founded the Invalid Corps in 1777 and served the Revolution faithfully, recanted immediately. He now rests at Old Presbyterian Meeting House — a building Washington visited on two documented occasions: the 1798 National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer, and a Masonic Lodge service held in the original structure. That building burned in 1835 and was replaced in 1837; Washington never set foot in the present-day Meeting House.

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On the night of December 16, 1773, Thomas Porter was 17 years old when he slipped out of the Old South Meeting House alongside the men who would carry out one of history’s most audacious acts of protest. As Major Samuel Cooper later recorded in his first-person account, a detachment of about 20 men disguised as Indians approached in single file through the church, marching silently down the aisle and out the south door, brandishing tomahawks — their destination the wharves where the tea ships lay. Porter was among them. He later became a respected Alexandria merchant, Mason, and founding member of the Bank of Alexandria. He is buried at Old Presbyterian Meeting House — one of two confirmed Boston Tea Party participants known to be buried in Alexandria, the other being Major Samuel Cooper at Christ Church Cemetery in the Wilkes Street Complex.

Major Samuel Cooper was just 16 years old on the night of December 16, 1773, when approximately 116 men divided into three groups, each assigned to one of three British merchant ships in Boston Harbor. Cooper was among them. As he later recorded in one of only four known first-person accounts of the event — and the one most widely cited today — the men proceeded “quietly” to the wharves, gained possession of the ships, and hoisted out the chests, emptying their contents into the dock. “No noise was heard,” Cooper wrote, “except the occasional clink of the hatchet in opening the boxes, and the whole business was performed with so much expedition that before 10 o’clock that night the entire cargo of the three vessels were deposited in the docks.” Together they dumped 342 chests, totaling over 92,000 pounds of East India Company tea.

Cooper went on to serve throughout the Revolutionary War, compiling one of the most distinguished service records of any Alexandria patriot. His grave at Christ Church Cemetery in the Wilkes Street Complex bears a joint SAR/DAR marker installed in November 1985, recognizing his service to the patriot cause from the harbor of Boston to the battles of the Revolution.

Of the approximately 116 men who carried out the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, two now lie buried in Alexandria — Thomas Porter at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Major Samuel Cooper at Christ Church Cemetery — a remarkable connection between the Revolution’s opening protest in Boston Harbor and a small port city on the Potomac.

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Major Henry Piercy’s service record reads like a map of the Revolutionary War’s major engagements: he fought alongside Washington in nearly every significant battle of the conflict. After the war, Piercy settled in Alexandria and led the Independent Blues, serving as part of the military escort at Washington’s funeral in December 1799. His exact gravesite within the Wilkes Street Complex has not been located.

A Quaker merchant and one of Alexandria’s most respected civic leaders, William Hartshorne served alongside George Washington as treasurer of the Potomac Company — the ambitious early American infrastructure project Washington founded to connect the Ohio Valley to Atlantic ports. Hartshorne also served as trustee of the Alexandria Academy and attended Washington’s funeral in 1799. His grave at the Alexandria Quaker Burial Ground marks the resting place of a man who helped shape both the city’s commerce and its connection to the first President.

Note: The Quaker Burial Ground is now the site of the Kate Waller Barrett Branch Library on Queen Street in Old Town. The library was built on a concrete slab over the graves. No graves are visible; some gravestones are displayed on an outside wall, while others were relocated to the Friends Woodlawn Meeting House near Woodlawn Plantation, south of Alexandria on Route 1.

Robert Allison Sr. fought with Bland’s Horse — the 1st Regiment Light Dragoons of the Continental Line — at Brandywine and Germantown, then built a merchant’s life in Alexandria, married Ann Ramsay, daughter of the city’s founder, and died in 1801 having seen the new nation he helped create take shape around him. He could not have known that his son would die defending it.

On September 5, 1814, Robert Allison Jr., aged 27, was killed at the Battle of the White House (Landing) on the Potomac River — a five-day engagement pitting American militia against seven British warships making their way downriver after sacking Washington. The battle enraged Admiral Cochrane, who accelerated his timeline for attacking Baltimore. That assault led directly to the bombardment of Fort McHenry — and to Francis Scott Key, watching from a truce ship, composing the words that became the National Anthem.

Robert Allison Jr. rests in the Presbyterian Cemetery in the Wilkes Street Complex, his gravestone reading: “who fell in battle on the 5th Septr. 1814 at the white house in gallantly defending his country aged 27 years.” A commemorative plaque honoring him hangs on the eastern wall of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House sanctuary — the same church where his father worshipped and is now buried. Father and son: one who fought for independence, one who died preserving it.

Read the full story of the Battle of the White House →

Rhode Island was the last of the thirteen original states to ratify the United States Constitution — holding out until May 29, 1790, more than a year after the new government had already taken effect. When the Rhode Island State Convention finally convened, William Ladd was among the delegates who cast the votes that completed the union. A delegate from Little Compton, he had already served as a soldier in the Revolution, represented his town in the Rhode Island General Assembly, and helped found the Marine Society of Newport in 1785. He was also a member of the Society of the Cincinnati — the hereditary organization of Continental Army officers founded by George Washington, whose Alexandria chapter counted many of the city’s most prominent citizens among its members.

Ladd did not settle in Alexandria. He came to visit his children, and he died here on December 1, 1800, at the age of 68, of pleurisy. Rev. James Muir buried him four days later in the Meeting House churchyard. His gravestone — recorded by researchers in 1913 and again in 1923 — carried an inscription that captured something essential about the man: “Benevolence and Patriotism characterized his life and gave him the confidence of others.” A soldier, a legislator, a founder, and a father — Alexandria was simply where his journey ended.

Philip Richard Fendall built the Lee-Fendall House in 1785, was elected the first President of the Bank of Alexandria in 1793, visited Mount Vernon thirty-four times between 1770 and 1799, and in 1778 traveled to France where John Adams recorded dining with him in company that included Arthur Lee — the diplomat who had just helped secure the Treaty of Alliance, whereby France agreed to supply the Continental Army. He was, in the language of his contemporaries, a “banker, lawyer, and merchant prince.”

His three marriages created an extraordinary web of connections to the Lee family. His second wife, Elizabeth Steptoe Lee, was the widow of Philip Ludwell Lee of Stratford Hall — making Fendall the stepfather-in-law to Light-Horse Harry Lee. His third wife, Mary “Mollie” Lee, was Light-Horse Harry Lee’s youngest sister — making him simultaneously his former stepson-in-law’s brother-in-law. Light-Horse Harry Lee’s son was Robert E. Lee. Fendall stood at the intersection of Alexandria’s Revolutionary and Civil War history, connected to Washington through friendship and to the Confederacy’s greatest general through two marriages.

He was also, by the end of his life, ruined. The agricultural depression of the mid-1790s collapsed land values across the South. Fendall owned 82,408 acres and couldn’t convert a single one to cash. He declared bankruptcy and was confined to debtors’ prison in Fairfax County in 1803. He died suddenly two years later — “in usual health last Lord’s Day,” Rev. Muir wrote, “taken ill on Monday.” His will asked for burial “without pomp or show” at the private cemetery on his farm near Slater’s Lane.

That farm cemetery was destroyed in 1902 during the construction of Potomac Yards. For over a century, historians believed the Fendall family burials had been lost. They had not. This researcher identified Ivy Hill Cemetery as the likely location; historian Catherine Weinraub volunteered to search the cemetery archives and found the interment cards confirming P. R. Fendall in Section B, Lot 1. Upon learning of the finding, archaeologist Mark Ludlow volunteered to conduct a GPR survey, which identified four burial anomalies consistent with Philip, his two wives, and one additional burial. No marker exists at the site. The Fendall family plot was hidden in plain sight for over a century.