the Reverend Mr. Maffitt at some time preceding 1805. [58] This again would suggest that Maffitt had a school at Chantilly, close to Richard Bland Lee's home at Sully. Another biographer mentions that

Edmund Jennings (Lee) was born at Alexandria, then in the District of Columbia, on the 3rd of May, 1797.... Mr. Lee received his earliest educational training at the school of the Rev. Mr. Maffitt in Fairfax, a school of high repute at that day. [59]

Unfortunately no dates or locations are given by the letter-writer or the biographer.

In his history of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House, William B. McGroarty described Maffitt in a footnote as "a Presbyterian minister who conducted a school for boys in Fairfax County near Alexandria." [60] Neither Chantilly nor Salona was very close to Alexandria.

A letter from A. C. Stuart to Elizabeth Collins Lee in 1805 states that:

Mr. Maffitt intended to leave the place where he now resides and purchase a small farm, that he, Frank (Francis Lightfoot Lee, Harriotte's youngest brother) intended to do the same, that they were to spend their time in the pursuit of agriculture, botany, and philosophy. [61]

Was this wish expressed because Chantilly was not Maffitt's property but that of his stepchildren, because Maffitt was lonely without Harriotte, or because he wanted to give up teaching for farming? Somehow, from the guardianship accounts, it seems likely that Maffitt did not farm the Turberville acres, but rented out whatever he could, while he busied himself otherwise.

Usually the Alexandria Gazette carried announcements of the openings of new schools, but no announcement of Maffitt's school ever seems to have appeared. Because Maffitt performed the marriage of Gazette publisher Samuel Snowden to Mary Longden on January 8, 1802,[62] such an announcement might have been expected. Neither did the Gazette report Maffitt's departure from the Alexandria area.

Probably Maffitt was still living at Chantilly when he married for the second time between 1807 and 1811 before William Maffitt, Jr., was born. His second wife was Ann Beale Carter Carter (1767-1852),[63] widow of Charles B. Carter. Ann, also known as Nancy, was the daughter of Robert Wormely Carter of Sabine Hall in Richmond County, and Winifred Beale.[64] William, Jr., the only child of this marriage, was born in November, 1811, and christened in the Presbyterian Meeting House in February 1812. [65]

In August 1812, Maffitt was appointed a trustee of an academy to be established in Haymarket. Among those serving with him were Ludwell Lee of Belmont, Francis Lightfoot Lee, then living at Sully, and William Fitzhugh of Ravensworth.[66]

Meanwhile, in 1809, James Madison, Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson, had been elected President. On June 18, 1812, Madison signed a declaration of war against England. The causes of the war, sometimes called the Second War of Independence, were basically several aspects of nationalism. Some resentment against the British still smouldered, fanned by British contempt and condescension toward her former colonists. Because many English sailors deserted their ships to sail under American colors, British ships intercepted American vessels and "impressed" their seamen. Furthermore, many American politicians wanted to annex Canada.

Neither the war nor the President was popular with the people, who thought the President weak and called the conflict "Mr. Madison's War." Attempted American invasion of Canada was a fiasco and by August 23, 1814, the British forces were so close to Washington that the clear and present danger of an actual invasion of the American capital seemed imminent.

John Graham, Chief Clerk in the Department of State, and two other clerks, Stephen Pleasanton and Josiah King, packed the valuable public records of the State Department in coarse linen bags which Pleasanton had purchased earlier. These included the original Declaration of Independence, articles of confederation, federal constitution, treaties and laws and many other papers. Stephen Pleasanton found conveyances, loaded the bags into them and took them to a mill 3 miles beyond Georgetown, where they were concealed. Pleasanton spent the night of August 23, 1814, at Salona with the Rev. Mr. Maffitt. The next day, fearing that the mill might be too accessible to the British, who were fast approaching Washington, Pleasanton took the state papers to Leesburg for safety. [67]

Dolley Madison, the President's popular wife, could hear in the President's House the sounds of cannon "from a skirmish at Bladensburg." The President had gone to meet Gen. William H. Winder, commander of the military district, and had left his wife instructions to "take care of my self, and of the cabinet paper, public and private." [68]

Writing to her sister, Lucy Todd, Dolley cooly reported that her husband

desires that I should be ready at a moment's warning to enter my carriage and leave the city.... I am accordingly ready; I have pressed as many cabinet papers into trunks to fill one carriage; our private property must be sacrificed, as it is impossible to procure wagons for its transportation. [69]

She continued the letter on Wednesday, August 24:

Two messengers, covered with dust, come to bid me fly.... At this late hour, a wagon has been procured; I have had it filled with the plate and most valuable articles belonging to the house....

Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very mad