Evening Star Newspaper, December 15, 1929, Page 101

‘ F iction l The Sunday Star Magasine WASHINGTON, D. C., SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, e Features l 24 PAGES. The ivy-covered brick wall around the grave of Mrs. Mary Randolph on the hillside at Arlington. HO was Mrs. Mary Randolph, the first person to be buried in Ar- lington and whose grave is in- closed within an ivy-covered, brick-walled vault, about 100 cet north of the Custis mansion? e ;fhg War Department wants to know. Con= as appropriated $100,000 to restore Ar- fiegs:o: Hmlt)spe pthe “restoration” is now in progress under the watchful care of the Quar- termaster general of the Army. Workmen are busy ripping up all board floors, pulling down latter-day partitions, reconstructing adjacent outbuildings that were once slave quarters, storehouse, kitchen and laundry. The old mansion, built by George Washington Parke Custis, grandson of Martha Washington and adopted son of the general, resounds through- out with the sturdy blows of the carpenters’ hammers, and the white-clothed painters are much in evidence. But the oldest grave in Arlington—except possibly of some slave—remains as much a mystery as ever. When the restoration of Arlington House is completed and the old mansion stands as it was in the heyday of its reign as one of the finest private homes in America, will the War Department still have to confess that it does not know who was Mrs. Mary Randolph and how she came to be the first person to be buried in the Custis family’s front lawn? When the carpenters and painters have left and the period furniture has been placed in the high- vaulted, spacious rooms where Lafayette was a guest in 1824 and where blushing Mary Custis became the bride of handsome Licut. Robert E. Lee on June 30, 1831, will there be no bronze tablet beside the grave of Mary Randolph to tell of the relationship which occasioned the distinction accorded to her in death back in 1828, over a century ago? (CONGRESS can spend twelve or fifteen mil- lions of dollars and five years of an army of workmen's toil to build the most beautiful upon a smaller, rectangular, brick wall about eighteen inehes high. Who Was Mrs. Mary Randolph, the First Person to Be Buried on the Famous Estate? The War Department Seeks Answer to the Question—Ivy-Coveredy Brick-Walled Vault Is North of the Mansion—The Burial Took Place One Hundred and One Years Ago. BY ENOCH AQUILA CHASE. memorial bridge in the whole world, to link Arlington with Lincoln’s shrine, facing each other across the historic Potomac, but no one alive today seems to be able to clear up the mystery of Mary Randolph’¢ grave. 'Who was she? The War Department wants to know, because Arlington has become a national shrine, second only to that first shrine farther down the Potomac at Mount Vernon, where lies all that was mortal of him who is now immortal, and no item of information touching the past glories and history of Arlington House estate is to be ignored in the progress of the restora= tion. It is thought that there must surely be some person, somewhere in the South, who can solve the mystery, but how to find that person is the question that vexes. Southern families of famous names, historians, authors of well known books, the Association for the Preserva- tion of Virginia Antiquities, have been con- sulted; files of old newspapers have been searched, as well as the records of the register of wills, but all in vain. Just who was Mary Randolph is still an unknown item of the his- tory of Arlington, America’s Valhalla, where sleep with her a legion of the heroic dead of our Army and Navy, and where millions of people make pilgrimage to bow their heads before the tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Great World War. The last grave in Arlington National Ceme- tery is today—almost every day, and some- times three and four tipes a day—as some distinguished general or admiral, some sergeant, corporal or private, heeds naught of the crash- ing three volleys and the bugle blowing taps for him the last time; but Mrs. Ran- dolph’s grave was the first in Arlington. When they laid her away on the 24th of January, 1828, little did her relatives and friends dream of the days to come in another century, when the old plantation would become & world- famous plot of sacred ground—a mecca for patriotic Americans. The dignified epitaph carved on the white marble slab covering Mrs. Mary Randolph’s tomb does not help very much to solve the mystery. She was evidently of importance to the Custis family. Although a hundred years of storms and sunshine have beaten down upon that tomb, open to the sky of Heaven, the inscription is still clearly legible. And this is what it tells to all who read: SACRED to the memory of MRS. MARY RANDOLPH her intrinsic worth needs no eulogium The deceased was born the 9th of August 1762 at Ampthill near Richmond Virginia, and died the 23rd of January 1828, in Washington City, a victim to maternal love and duty. As a tribute of filial gratitude this monument is dedicated to her exalted virtues by her youngest son, Requiescat in pace! ‘HE carving upomn this white marble was done by J. P. Pepper, whose name in small letters can still be read in the lower right- hand corner of the stone. It represents the highest skill of the monument cutter’s art, and was, of course, hand-chiseled. A little more than a year ago it was thought this noble epitaph had vanished from the white marble forever. Time had seen to it that the lettering had become filled with dust and leaf-mold, so that scarcely & word could be read. But Robert Dye, superintendent of Arlington Ceme= The White marble slab, upon which is carved the epitaph, reste Drawing by J. T. Berryman. tery, tenderly brought them back to the light of day. The marble was very carefully cleaned and scrubbed almost pure white once more, As the letters again became readable after their long sleep beneath the accumulation of the years, Mr. Dye said he was amazed to discover that the task had been begun and finished om the exact one-hundredth anniversary of the old lady's death, January 23, 1928. Just who was Mrs. Mary Randolph has been a question for many years, but theorizing does not answer it. Every item of historic interes$ in the Nation’s largest and most beautiful milie tary cemetery should be authentically estales lished. Even if the present generation ma@ think of Arlington’s early history as something quite ancient, the history of Arlington is young compared with what it will be as the years glide on and on; a hundred years again and again. When the present four hundred and eight acres of the great National Cemetery are filled with graves, and the War Department finds it must request the Department of Agrie culture to give up the Arlington Experimental Farm down on the river shore, across the old road over which Washington and Braddock marched their British soldiers from Alexandria on the ill-fated expedition to capture Fort Duquesne, so that America’s illustrious dead may still find their last resting place in Arling- ton, must the question still vex the quarter- master general and the historian“Who was Mary Randolph?” Old Wesley Norris, George Washington Parke Custis’ slave valet, who died about twenty-five years ago at nearly one hundred years of age, might have known, but if he did the fact has never been recorded. “Uncle Jim"” Parks, the “last of the home folks,” who died last August 21, and is buried in Arlington under a special permit from the Secretary of War, did not know; and Uncle Jim, with his nearly a cene tury of life in and upon Arlington House estate and the National Cemetery, knew and remem= bered almost everything else that was asked of him. James Parks remembered seeing, when he was a boy, both his mistress and his old master buried beneath their own trees not far