Food for Thought

[L Verge]

(08-09-2019 04:00 PM)mike86002000 Wrote:  Laurie said:
I'm glad that Bob Summers's version was cited here because the description of the reporter's group's journey to Dr. Mudd's is worth the read before they even knock on the door. Of course, as a local girl, I know exactly where most of the places he described were/are. He did get wrong information regarding the naming of the village of T.B., however.

I had a part time job in T.B. while in high school, and heard that T. B. stood for Tom Brooke. Supposedly, he was required to name his place for tax purposes, and considered neighbor's more stylish choices pretentious.
I never heard that he died carving his initials into a beech tree. That sounds like an embellishment. I wonder what version you heard.
I should also mention that Dr. Mudd's dining room is separated from his parlor by "pocket doors" that slide into the partition, not folding doors. I am very familiar with the house, and can comment further.
When a writer carelessly gets details like this wrong it makes me question the accuracy of his whole story. Particularly since, in this case, Dr. Mudd said it was a distortion.
I agree that military control of Dry Tortugas was the most important factor in sending the conspirators there.
Mike

Where did you work in T.B., Mike? Up until the late-1960s, most of the businesses were run by my family or our close friends, the Dysons (also related via marriage). Our big, old Victorian existed in the village until 2014, when vandals burned it, and our family also owned Gwynn Park House until the 1980s.

As for the naming of the village: Thousands of acres were granted by the king to Thomas Brooke in the 1600s, and he named his estate Brookefield. He was also careful to mark the boundaries of his property; and the northwest boundary happened to be where the village began. He marked that corner with an English field stone (lots of them came to our area as ballast aboard the tobacco ships and were tossed and left when the hogsheads of tobacco sailed back to England; the foundations of our old house (ca. 1840) were formed from such stones).

The story is that some primitive roads and mainly Indian trails were around this cornerstone, which Brooke marked with his initials -- T.B. Where trails intersect, villages grow. My great-grandfather Huntt, who was raised two miles south on their plantation, remembered the stone still being there during his travels to D.C. My grandmother says it disappeared in the late-1800s (she was born in 1874) and thought that folks who bought up property probably destroyed it. I feel pretty confident that this is correct history of the name since great-grandpa sorta qualifies as a primary source, having seen the stone.

Did I miss something? What's the issue about "pocket doors" vs. "folding doors" at the Mudd house? You are quite right that they are pocket doors. Gwynn Park House (1857) had similar ones to turn one huge parlor into two smaller ones.