Up in Arms: A Family’s Service

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Vintage engraving portrait of G. Washington Peter c.1810-1820 in military regalia

Portrait of G. Washington Peter c.1810-1820 Engraving (Tudor Place Archive)

TUDOR PLACE TIMES | SUMMER 2024

From the early days of the United States of America through the Korean War, the Peter family proudly served in the armed forces. Through these 150 years, sons, and later daughters, were guided by a strong familial connection and an overall sense of patriotism to serve their country. These military stories are kept alive by the objects they left behind, preserved by later generations of the family.

From the early days of the United States of America through the Korean War, the Peter family proudly served in the armed forces. Through these 150 years, sons, and later daughters, were guided by a strong familial connection and an overall sense of patriotism to serve their country. These military stories are kept alive by the objects they left behind, preserved by later generations of the family.

 

The Beginning: Major G. Washington Peter

G. Washington Peter, born 1779, was the younger brother of Tudor Place’s first owner, Thomas Peter. Early in his life, he had a desire to join the military, running off at just 15 years old to try to join the Maryland troops and help defeat the Whiskey Rebellion. Though
he was sent home by George Washington from the Whiskey Rebellion, it would be through Washington’s recommendation that Washington Peter received his first commission to 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army from President John Adams. While there seems to be no trace of this commission, his later commission to Captain from Thomas Jefferson is well preserved and complements his later letters while he was serving as the commanding officer at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where he set up the first light artillery unit in the country. After leaving Fort McHenry, he later resigned his commission to protest the sale of his unit’s horses, but his drive for service never stopped. He organized a unit of the Georgetown Militia which was one of very few units to return fire with the British at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 14, 1814 before their march on Washington(1). Though his military service came to a close, George Peter held onto a seating chart from the 19th Congress where he served as a representative from Maryland where he worked alongside prominent future leaders including Sam Houston, James Buchanan and James Polk(2).

Family Tragedy: Captain William G. Williams

Captain William G. Williams found love with America P. Peter, one of the daughters of Thomas and Martha Peter right after he graduated from the Military Academy at West Point in 1824. From there he was assigned as a Topographical Engineer in Buffalo, New York. At the start of the Mexican American War in April 1846, William Williams was under the command of General Zachary Taylor whose unit was brought to Mexico. In September 1846, Taylor’s unit, including Captain Williams, was in Monterrey, Mexico. On September 21, Captain Williams was sent on reconnaissance mission and found himself in an unfortunate position when the Mexican troops started firing from Fort Teneria. General Braxton Bragg explained the story of Captain Williams’ death in a letter that included a map to Captain Williams’ son Laurence Abert Williams in 1854. He wrote in high regard of the Captain at the end of the letter saying “most nobly did he meet his fate, forgetting himself and his suffering when the cause required”(3). Accompanied by his sword, portrait and buttons from his Topographical Engineer Uniform the story of a man who gave his life for the United States at 45 years old resonated and was preserved through the family line.

Women in the War: Agnes Peter and Caroline Peter

In World War I and II, women were not able to serve on the front lines, but many women found ways to contribute to the war effort on the home front. Agnes Peter, Armistead Peter Jr.’s sister, enrolled in a boarding school in Tarrytown, New York which taught her skills like typing, driving and automobile repair. When the program concluded in summer 1918, Agnes was ready to travel to Europe to put her skills to use, but by the time her paperwork arrived, the Armistice had been signed. Yet, Europe still needed help after the war. Since she had all of her paperwork, Agnes traveled to France under the YMCA and helped people and communities there until 1921. Agnes’ passport with its cancellation stamped in 1921 shows her dedication to the work she was doing alongside the ribbons and honors she received for her humanitarian work in France(4). It was women who provided crucial humanitarian work to help countries and families rebuild following the turmoil of war. Agnes might not have been a soldier, but her wartime dedication and passion followed her family legacy of service. Caroline Peter, wife of Tudor Place’s final owner, Armistead Peter 3rd, served in a similar role as a nurse for the American Red Cross during both World War I and World War II(5). She served in these roles at the same time her husband, Armistead Peter 3rd, was serving in the U.S. Navy. As the last private owners of Tudor Place, Caroline and Armistead continued the family legacy of patriotism and service as they both served during those wars. The Peter family, over more than a century, proudly embraced military service and a deep love for their country that was preserved through generations.

– Alex Brandis, Spring 2024 Collections Intern

Source List:
1. MS-4 Finding Aid; Major George Peter Biographical Sketch
2. House of Representatives Seating Map, 19th Congress by A.J. Stansbury 1825 (MS4, Box 3,
Folder 22, Document 3)
3. Braxton Bragg to Laurence Albert Williams Describing the Battle of Monterey, September 24,
1954 (MS12, Box 1, Folder 7)
4. Agnes Peter’s World War I United States Passport, 1918
5. MS-22 Finding Aid; Caroline Ogden-Jones Peter Biographical Sketch

Rethinking the story of Orton Williams and Walter G. Peter

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by David White, Docent

The history of Tudor Place includes unresolved questions. One such mystery concerns two Peter family cousins—Orton Williams and Walter Gibson Peter—Confederate officers who were convicted by a Union court martial of being spies and hanged. To this day there are questions of whether they were indeed spies or were engaged in some other mission.

Read the full article here.

How one man built a booming tobacco business in Montgomery County

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The Peter family’s origins in Georgetown can be traced back to family patriarch Robert Peter. Born in 1726 at Crossbasket Castle, the Peter family’s ancestral seat near Lanarkshire, Scotland, Robert Peter arrived in the Maryland colony by 1746. His son, Thomas would marry Martha Parke Custis, one of the four grandchildren of Martha Washington (and step granddaughter of George Washington), and become the owners of Tudor Place in 1805.  Learn more about Peter family history in this article that appeared in Bethesda Magazine. 

 

Bethesda Magazine

By Mark Walston
If wealth in 18th-century Montgomery County was measured in land, then the richest man in the county was Robert Peter. Born in 1726 near Glasgow, Scotland, Peter came to America in 1746 as a representative of the Glasgow firm of John Glassford and Co., the Washington, D.C., area’s most prominent tobacco firm, according to the website for Tudor Place, the palatial Georgetown estate built by Peter’s son Thomas (it’s now a museum). Peter initially began his import/export business in Bladensburg, Maryland, with warehouses and weighing stations built in the busy port on the Patuxent River. Eventually Peter helped establish trade centers in nearly every town along the Potomac River.
To read the full article, click HERE

Jockeying for Position: Horseracing among the Early Washington Elite

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The elite of early Washington talked politics at the Jockey Club and horses in the U.S. Senate Chamber. The most famous horses in American history, like Secretariat and Man o’ War, are tied to some of the most famous men in American history.  Join Tudor Place Curator Rob DeHart and Dr. Lindsey Apple, historian and member of the Advisory Board of Ashland, The Henry Clay Estate in this dynamic discussion about the early DC horse racing industry and correspondence between Tudor Place’s Thomas Peter and Secretary of State Henry Clay of Kentucky about the sale of a prized racehorse.  Learn how Henry Clay, Thomas Peter and their contemporaries like Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren jockeyed for position — mixing politics, business and pleasure.

Photo collage: Ephemera, Tudor Place Archive; The Farmer of Ashland engraving of Henry Clay, Henry Clay Memorial Foundation.

Click to watch video.

The Royal Visit: “Two burning, boiling, sweltering, humid furnace-like days in Washington”

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United Kingdom king george VI and his wife queen elizabeth standing at top of stone steps with dignitaries
The King and Queen’s arrival at the British Embassy garden party, June 8, 1939. Press photograph now part of the Tudor Place Collection.

As Great Britain prepared for World War II, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made an historic visit to the United States. A 1939 party invitation in the Tudor Place Archive led to research by Curator Grant Quertermous; here is his article with the story of the royal visit to Washington, DC and how that involved members of the Peter family.

Read the essay.

Tudor Place and the Civil War Home Front

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Original research, undertaken in 2013 and expanded in 2019, describes the travails and business operations of Britannia Peter Kennon, Tudor Place’s second owner, when she navigated between the threats of the North against the South, working to save her family’s estate from confiscation and penury during the Civil War. The essay for the first time identifies the Union officers, surgeons, and others who boarded at Tudor Place during the conflict, and describes how a household of owners, boarders and servants, including some previously enslaved, survived and coexisted in wartime.


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Many Admirers… But Still a Widow: Reflections on Britannia Peter Kennon’s Widowhood

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Nora Pehrson explains the origins of her essay on Britannia, written while interning here during her senior at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C. Nora now attends Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

I was drawn to Britannia’s story because of an abiding interest in women’s history. I wanted to situate  Britannia in the broader context of her time. Around the time that Britannia was on the marriage market, the abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights Sarah Grimké wrote “Letters on the Equality of the Sexes,” in which she asserted that the American woman was “a cipher in the nation” because marriage rendered her invisible in the eyes of the law.

I decided to look at how widowhood might have represented a challenge to the cult of domesticity and especially to coverture laws, which took away a woman’s legal rights upon marriage. Although there are no definite answers to the questions that I began with, my research revealed Britannia’s decision to remain a widow allowed her to own and control the estate, which, remarkably, remained in the same family for six generations. Her “tenacity and perseverance,” Armistead Peter 3rd  declared,  “did as much as anything in the world to preserve this house to the present day.”

Offered through DC Public Schools and taught by the inimitable Cosby Hunt of the Center for Inspired Teaching, Real World History brings together students from across the city to explore a topic of American history in depth and learn what it means to be a historian. After a semester of reading primary sources, conducting oral histories, and making site visits to archives and museums, students go out into the world and serve as interns at various cultural sites throughout DC. During my time at Tudor Place, I did self-guided research and developed my own tour of the house as a docent. Working with the Education Department under the supervision of Laura Brandt was an amazing opportunity to learn how historic house museums operate and, especially, how to make the stories of the house come alive for the public.

When I arrived at Tudor Place as its first high school intern, I was intrigued by Britannia’s story. Why might she have chosen widowhood over marriage? In a time when the social status of women was so closely connected to the status of their fathers or husbands, why didn’t Britannia remarry? What might her motivations have been? These questions formed the basis of my research project for Tudor Place and the culmination of a year of an extracurricular class called Real World History.

Every visitor who takes a tour of Tudor Place learns the basic outline of Britannia Peter Kennon’s life. Born at Tudor Place in the early years of of the New Republic, Britannia lived for nearly a century. Her decades-long ownership of Tudor Place (from 1854 to 1911) preserved its history and legacy for future generations. Britannia carried out her vision essentially singlehandedly: She was widowed fourteen months into her marriage and never remarried.  “Although she had many admirers,” after being widowed in 1844, as her great-grandson Armistead Peter 3rd recalled, she chose to remain single for the rest of her life.

Remembering Austin Kiplinger, Tudor Place Champion

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT
November 23, 2015 Mandy Katz
  Director of Communications
  ph: 202.580.7329

This is a charmed place. It just raises your spirits whenever you’re here. And I feel that way and I have felt that way for many years and I’m continuously reminded that there is a continuity in life, and the more we know about it, the better we can cope with changes that are coming… 

— Austin Kiplinger, Honoree, 20th Annual Tudor Place
Spring Garden Party, May 2012

The board and staff of Tudor Place mourn the loss of Trustee Emeritus Austin H. Kiplinger, known as “Kip,” who died November 20 at age 97. His passing leaves a void among lovers of D.C. history. His enthusiasm for preservation and gleanings from our shared past will be sorely missed.

“Working with him for 15 years, I found him to be gracious, ebullient, and generous in sharing his love for the history he knew so well of this city and of Tudor Place,” said Leslie Buhler, Tudor Place Executive Director until October 2015. “He connected the past to the present in very real terms,” she added, praising his “extraordinary memory, sparkle in his eyes, and thirst for knowledge.”

Mr. Kiplinger championed Tudor Place since the museum opened in 1988. He first delved into its history after he and his wife purchased Montevideo, a dilapidated 1830 house in Montgomery County, Maryland, in 1958. Montevideo’s builder, John Parke Custis Peter, was the son of Martha Parke Custis and Thomas Peter, the founders of Tudor Place. Peter built Montevideo to match the Federal-style center block of Tudor Place, his childhood home. His parents’ graves and those of two of their children remain on the property.

With painstaking attention to detail and sound preservation practices, Mr. Kiplinger restored Montevideo, raising his family there with a keen shared interest in its past and its “parentage” at Tudor Place, Ms. Buhler noted. When Tudor Place opened to the public in 1988, he joined the foundation’s Board of Trustees, becoming president two years later and serving in that role for eight years. He continued to support the museum for the rest of his life. Tudor Place celebrated his lasting leadership and commitment in 2012 by naming him honoree of  the 20th Annual Spring Garden Party.

On that occasion, he recalled first encountering Tudor Place not as a homeowner, but as a boy. “When I was in my teens and a student at the great, distinguished Western High School here in Georgetown,” he told the audience of several hundred gathered in his honor, “I used to wander past this great place up on the hill and wonder about it and wonder what went on behind that gate. And little did I know at the time that a lot of American history went on behind that gate, a reflection of it at least, in five generations of one family.”  (See the video.)

A pioneering publisher and journalist, Mr. Kiplinger recognized innately the importance of knowing history to understanding modern times. At Tudor Place, he said in his Garden Party address, six generations of one family “lived through some of the most tortured times in any nation’s history…  And we can deal with the present and the future better if we know something about the past.”

Tudor Place extends condolences to Mr. Kiplinger’s his son and daughter-in-law, Knight and Ann Kiplinger, his companion, Bonnie Barker Nicholson, and the extended Kiplinger family.

From Our Garden | The Pecan Tree

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By Kellie Cox, Director of Gardens and Grounds

With the season upon us for nutty treats like stuffing and candied pecans, our thoughts turn to an arboreal star at Tudor Place, its widely admired pecan tree.

In our historic gardens, we are fortunate to have a magnificent pecan tree (Carya illinoensis), Washington, D.C.’s, oldest and largest living specimen, according to the Casey Trees Living Legacy Campaign. This 80-foot-plus tree was planted from a seed nut ca. 1875, when Britannia Peter Kennon (Thomas and Martha Peter’s daughter) owned Tudor Place. Britannia planted the nut in the Dining Terrace, southwest of the historic house, from a pecan nut given to her by Maggie Carraher, an Irish immigrant who worked as the Tudor Place cook. Surprisingly, given pecans’ preference for southern climates, the tree has survived and produces fruit to this day.

The pecan tree to my left was planted during my great-grandmother’s lifetime, in the east end of the arbor, by the kitchen. I think that she had expected it to shade the path in front of the house in the afternoon, but they decided that it was a little too close to the house, and it was then moved down to where you now see it. My Father said that it stayed there for many years, practically with out growing at all, probably as a result of cutting the tap root. However, a few years later it started to grow and ever since then has made a splendid growth every year.

— Armistead Peter III

History of the Pecan Tree

The name ‘Pecan’ is a Native American term, translating to “all nuts requiring a stone to crack”.  The history of pecan trees can be traced back to as early as the 1500s. Many people consider the pecan to be one of the most valuable North American nut species, as it is the only major tree nut that grows naturally in North America. One of the earliest pecan tree plantings was documented to around 1711, 60 years before the first recorded planting by colonists in the future United States. The first pecan tree planting on these shores occurred in Long Island, N.Y., in 1772. Towards the end of the 1700’s, pecan trees were planted along the eastern coast, including in the gardens of George Washington (ca. 1775) and Thomas Jefferson (ca. 1779). Their cultivation and commercial planting started in the 1880s, in Texas and Louisiana, and sales of pecans emerged throughout the country. Where Maggie Carraher obtained the nut she gave Britannia is unknown. It may have come from Mount Vernon or a local store in Washington.

Try Communications Director Mandy Katz’s recipe for candied pecans (great for homemade gift-giving!). And visit the historic pecan tree here any Tuesday through Sunday on a walk or self-guided tour of the 5½-acre historic garden for only $3 a visit. We also offer scheduled garden programs throughout the year, including monthly guided garden tours in spring through fall.  Thanks for reading and stay tuned for a new From Our Garden post in December!

BONUS: A recipe for Candied Pecans. Try it!
View previous blogposts

Lives Measured in the Garden: “As Time Goes By”

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· Family and Friends ·

Armistead Peter Jr., the third owner of Tudor Place, cherished the labors and traditions of the estate’s landscape. His grandmother, Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon, inherited the property from its founders, her parents. She taught her grandchildren to honor these forebears and in many ways Armistead Peter Jr. measured out his own life by following the garden’s rhythms and answering its demands. This essay by Archivist Wendy Kail traces intergenerational change within the Peter family through diaries, notes, and the natural history of Tudor Place.

A mid 20th-century view of the Box Knot rose garden, where time’s passing registers on the face of a sun dial from Crossbasket Castle.


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