People

MOSES BALL GRANT

Entrance to Northern Virginia Doctor’s Hospital and South Carlin Springs Road near bus shelter

Moses Ball (1717-1792), the ancestor of generations of prominent Arlingtonians, received a 91-acre grant on this land from Lord Fairfax in 1748. The property remained in the Ball family until 1818. It is thought that Bail built his home on a rise north of the existing spring about 200 yards east of this marker. George Washington, who owned an adjacent tract of land south of Four Mile Run, surveyed his tract on April 22, 1785, in company with Moses Ball.

CLAY AND RANDOLPH DUEL(Commonwealth of Virginia marker)

Route 123, near Fairfax County line

Near here Henry Clay and John Randolph of Roanoke fought a duel April 8, 1826. Randolph had called Clay a “blackleg” in a speech. Both men were unhurt, but Randolph’s coat was pierced by a bullet.

NECOSTIN INDIANS

At parking lot at Roosevelt Island

The Indians living in this area when Captain John Smith explored the Potomac in 1608 were late woodland period Necostins of Algonquian-speaking stock. Smith’s map located a small village called Nameroughquena in what is now Arlington. In 1670 Theodore Roosevelt island was known as “Anacostie’s lie” — the island of the Necostins. Not long after, the Indians moved away as settlement by Europeans encroached upon their fields, hunting and fishing grounds. Traces of even earlier Indian cultures have been found throughout the area.

GEORGE NICHOLAS SEAGMULLER, 1847-1934

5115 Little Falls Road

Seagmuller, a native of Germany, came to America at 23 and achieved success as an inventor and manufacturer of scientific instruments. He lived here at Reserve Hill, the home of his parents-in-law, the Vandenbergs, and contributed in many ways to the development of this part of the county. He advanced funds in 1890 for a much-needed school which was named in his honor and which was replaced in 1937 by James Madison School. He was chairman of the County Board of Supervisors and was influential in locating the County Court House at its present site in 1898. He completed construction of this mansion in 1903. Its stone water tower is a replica of a tower in the walls of Nuremberg.