THE house best loved by the
old residents of Elizabethtown
is the Scott House, often referred to as Hampton Place.
For many years, during intervals
sometimes short and sometimes
lengthy, it was the home of General Winfield Scott. the greatest
American general of his day. It was erected at about the
same time as the neighboring mansion on Scott Place,
but owing to a few alterations in its structure in the latter
part of General Scott's life, it does not impress the casual
observer with any great antiquity. Without a history
it might not secure a passing glance. It could best
be described, like the " shy looking house" in " Barnaby
Rudge," as " not very straight, not large, not tall ; not
boldfaced with great staring windows, but a shy, blinking
house, with a conical roof going up into a peak over the
garret window of four small panes of glass, like the
cocked hat on the head of an elderly gentleman of
one eye."
Dr. Barnet, a surgeon in the American army, was
the first occupant. He is credited with introducing vaccination into the town. From what can be learned of him he had many patients who were subject to his whim-whams and humors. It is related that when the British
raided his home, on the day they were seeking the
bridegroom at the Belcher Mansion, they took a fine
string of red peppers from his fireplace, and he bemoaned their loss more than his broken furniture and
smashed mirrors. There is also another amusing tradition that the patient who disturbed him, when in a
crotchety mood, for some imagined ailment was as liable to receive a box on the ear as a phial of medicine. In Dr. Barnet's time the willow-trees which formerly surrounded the house were planted. They were
slips from a tree at " La Grange," and were brought
from abroad by his nephew when on a continental tour.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the house
was sold to Colonel John Mayo, of Virginia, the . father
of Mrs. Scott. Elizabethtown, like Newark, was then
a great summer resort for Southerners, and the colonel,
a true exponent of the elegant aristocracy of Richmond,
kept open house for the neighborhood. His equipages
were always finer, his family's clothes more costly, and
their style of living grander than those of any of his
friends, and like the gentlemen of the old Southern type,
he lived and died satisfied. In those summers of the
long ago Mrs. Scott and her sisters daily went to a little
French school in a house near the creek, now destroyed,
then presided over by Madame Topray, a beautiful
French refugee, whose romance, if she had one, is forgotten. The women among those old French refugees
of Elizabethtown have all come down to us as fair and
beautiful, and they flit through its unrecorded pages like
the scents of lavender or rose-leaves clinging to old garments, --faint, but very sweet indeed. We know they
were welcomed and found peace there, for in St. John's
church-yard there is one headstone that shelters the bones
of the Demoiselle Julie du Buc de Marencille, born in
the island of Martinique, whose brother recommends the
care of her tomb to the " hospitable inhabitants" of the
town.
Although Mrs. Scott blossomed to womanhood in
Elizabethtown, and spent some of the first years of her
married life there with her dashing husband, it is with a
later period that she is always associated, --those lonely
stretches of years when he was away on the fields of
battle, and the glad time when he came home to join
her for good, like Alexander, with no more worlds to
conquer.
We are wont to revert to the scenes of earlier years
in old age, and there are many who walked the shady
streets of Elizabethtown in the days when the South's
secession was being talked over who retain in their memories the picture of a tall old gentleman of commanding figure, with white locks gleaming from under his
hat and an army coat thrown over one shoulder, shaking
his head sadly to groups of friends at the street corners,
and saying, " It will never do! It will never do!"
General Scott was very fond of society, and rarely sat
down to a meal without company. During his periods
of residence at Hampton Place the visitors' roll contained names representing celebrities from all over the
country and abroad, who journeyed to gaze on the
laurel-crowned hero. He was always very fond of the
conversation of intelligent and refined women, and was
especially gallant and courteous to old ladies. From
the time of his young manhood, when touring abroad
and meeting the aged Lady Frankland, our own Rebecca
Franks, one of the Tory belles of the Meschianza, to
whom his graceful compliments were so pleasing, until
his death, he was a maker of pretty speeches. These
were the more appreciated by their recipients, as the
general opinion was that his manners were rather gruff,
owing to a haughty nervous temperament which never
bore contradiction with any show of compliance. A
story illustrating his gallantry is related of a lady, the
widow of one of his former aides, that once, on receiving
the same compliment he had paid her on many occasions,
--"Madam, you are as beautiful as the morning," --she
smilingly replied, "Nay, general, you are a flatterer, for
your sun never gets any higher or lower, --wrinkles and
dim eyes go best, unfortunately, with the evening."
General Scott was a loyal son of his native State,
Virginia, and to a chance visitor at Hampton Place,
who asked if he was born in New England, he is
said to have shown the door. The lovely Virginia
belles who used to adorn his balcony the last summer he
spent in Elizabeth, before his retirement from the army
at the outbreak of the Civil War, are still talked of by
old Elizabethans. To enter his heart one only needed to
talk of old Dinwiddie County, whose every product he
lauded above all others. He was very fond of his
horses and dogs, and quite fitting for the final words of a
soldier and a true Virginian was his last whispered message to his old coachman before death robbed America
of its greatest general at the West Point Hotel in the
spring of 1866, -- " Peter, take good care of my horse."
Among the other distinguished occupants of Hampton Place in later years was Mr. Archibald Gracie, son
of the old New York merchant of that name. The
Gracies were related to the King family, of Highwood,
and President Charles King of Columbia College was a
warm friend and frequent visitor of General Scott. Its
last owner for a number of years has been Mr. R. W.
Woodward, to whose unfailing kindness and interest in
its history many a frequenter of Elizabeth is indebted.
