Payne family The Hope Park plantation was founded in the 1750s by Edward Payne, a
justice of the Fairfax County Court from 1764 to 1785 and builder of Payne's Church (completed in 1778). Payne served with
George Washington and
George Mason on the
Truro Parish vestry, and Washington occasionally visited the Paynes at Hope Park. Payne constructed a small grist mill, probably on Piney Branch which ran through the Hope Park property. A mill would have been an important adjunct to the plantation. Until relocating to Hope Park sometime between 1791 and 1793, the couple resided at Custis's Abingdon plantation overlooking the Potomac River. Estates along major waterways found transport and communication easier than those in the interior of Fairfax County such as Hope Park, so the Stuarts initially lived at Custis' Abington plantation on the
Potomac River on the grounds of
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, before moving to Hope Park. Stuart was an
Alexandria physician and planter who served several terms (part-time) as one of Fairfax County's representatives in the
Virginia House of Delegates. On January 22, 1791, then President Washington appointed Dr. Stuart as the member representing Virginia on the first board of Commissioners of the Federal City, and he served for almost four years. While two Custis siblings, Eleanor Parke Custis and
George Washington Parke Custis, lived at
Mount Vernon,
Philadelphia, and
New York City, with George and Martha Washington, they also visited their mother at Hope Park. Dr. Stuart handled the financial accounts of his stepchildren, and also raised his stepdaughters (President George Washington's step-granddaughters)
Martha Parke Custis and
Elizabeth Parke Custis, who both married at Hope Park. Martha Custis married Thomas Peter on January 6, 1795, and Elizabeth Custis married
Thomas Law on March 20, 1796. The Custis/Law union was a short one and ended in divorce in 1806. Most likely under Stuart's ownership and before the Stuart family relocated to
Ossian Hall in 1804, a second mill and was constructed on the west bank of Piney Branch, as well as an adjacent
miller's house. Their precise dates of construction remain unknown, but in a sale notice in 1815 (a year after Dr. Stuart's death) it was advertised as being "in complete repair". The Hope Park mansion house and the mill were photographed by the
Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in the 1930s. Detailed measured drawings of the mansion house were made in the 1930s, and of the mill in the 1970s; all can be viewed on the Library of Congress website. A plaque from the U.S. Department of the Interior commemorating this activity sits in the mansion house. As of the time of this article's composition and subsequent to the Barnes' tenure, ownership of the Hope Park mansion house (and its fluctuating acreages due to sales or inheritances) has been held by, the Newmans, Zimmerman, the Mattinglys, the Flints, and the Warhursts. The Hope Park mansion house, as it has evolved over the years, remains in use as a private residence and shares a seven-acre lot with a grand modern home about a mile from the mill and miller's house. Until 1976 when the remaining 82-acre Hope Park "Mansion House Tract" was subdivided, the address of the mansion house was 11807 Pope's Head Road. Lloyd and Jo Ellen Flint named the old farm lane from Popes Head Road to the mansion house Quiet Brook Road. Quiet Brook Road was extended beyond the mansion house and a new branch in the road was created and named Bob's Ford Road to provide access to lots at the back of the tract. At that time, the mansion house address became 5709 Quiet Brook Road. == References ==