William Marbury Fitzhugh’s residence on land he inherited in about 1857 (Parcel 1.1.4.5), is known through only a few sources. His daughter Mary A. (Dollie) Fitzhugh wrote in a March 1878 letter that the family was having financial problems and was preparing Cool Spring to take in boarders.¹ Research in the Fairfax County Public Library found mention of Cool Spring in two sources:

• In 1956 Charles W. Stetson wrote: “Mr. Egbert Watt, who has spent most of his life in the neighborhood, recalls that Miss ‘Dolly’ Fitzhugh, daughter of William Fitzhugh of Cool Spring, used to visit his family at Oak Hill, and she told him that it was built about 1780 for an eighteen year old Fitzhugh bride. He did not remember her name…. Cool Spring, another old Fitzhugh house built some distance west of Oak Hill, is no longer standing.” ²
• Twelve years later, Jean Geddes had found little more to add to the record in stating: “Besides these great homes there was still another called Cool Spring, of which only the old foundation and a spring remain today…. But little information is available today regarding its past.”³

If Dollie Fitzhugh’s information as told by Edgar Watt is correct in its key details, there are two plausible candidates in timing and age – brides of Fitzhugh men who inherited shares of Ravensworth and came to live there.

1. Sarah Ashton was born in 1769 and married Nicholas Fitzhugh in 1788, when she was about 18 years old. We know that Nicholas was living on Ravensworth by 1789, as he is listed in the Fairfax County tax rolls for that year. Most sources have Nicholas as the builder of Ossian Hall c. 1783 and the first Fitzhugh to live on Ravensworth.
2. Weaker evidence points to Susannah Meade, bride of Richard Fitzhugh in 1790. Her birth year is unknown (some estimate c. 1775), but she likely was younger than Sarah. Their home, Oak Hill, is estimated to have been built about 1790. Susannah was Dollie’s great grandmother. It seems likely Dollie would have mentioned that important point, if she was the bride in question. Perhaps Dollie did and Mr. Watt forgot that detail. If Richard was living on Ravensworth in 1789, he had no slaves or other taxable property reported by the county tax assessor, which would have been unlikely.

In either case Cool Spring might have been built as a temporary home until the manor house was ready. It was about 3/4 mile distant from Oak Hill on land Richard would later inherit, and more than two miles from Ossian Hall.

The author determined the location of Cool Spring near today’s Eddystone Street by georeferencing the survey plat that divided the property among William Marbury Fitzhugh’s heirs under a court decree in June 1900.⁴ In a further division of the property in 1905, the heirs sold 105 acres including the house to Lyman E. Sweet.⁵ Neither the deed of sale nor the earlier court papers refer to the house as Cool Spring.

With the question of Cool Spring’s location answered, another remains: Who was the eighteen year old bride it was built for?

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