Vienna, VA - 6/30 - 7/3/16

We spent 4 days visiting my brother Gary and his family in Vienna, VA.  We arrived on Wednesday.  We spent Thursday just relaxing as my brother and his wife, Kerry, were both working and we could use a break.  On Friday we visited the old downtown areas of Vienna and Fairfax.

The first house in what is now Vienna was built in 1767 but the town was originally know as Ayr Hill.  The name was changed in the 1850s when a doctor moved to the town on the condition that the name be changed to Vienna.  Here are a couple of photos of an old country store in the downtown area.

This is Freeman's Store which was built in 1860.  It served as a general store and post office and the upstairs was used as a boarding house.

This is the post office area in the store.

From Vienna, we drove south to the city of Fairfax.  Fairfax was founded in 1805 under the name Providence.  It wasn't renamed Fairfax until 1874.  The oldest house in the city is the Ratcliffe-Allison House which was built in 1812.  Here is a photo.

The oldest part of the house is on the right side.  Just a couple of doors down was the Draper House which is the second oldest being built in 1821.  Here it is.

Here is the old town hall.  It dates from 1900 and was built by a local citizen as a gift to the city.

One of Fairfax's claims to fame is that the very first land battle of the Civil War took place in front of the county court house on June 1, 1861.  The court house was built 1800 and was the target of several clashes between the Union and the Confederacy.  Here is a photo of that court house.

And here is a photo of the inside.

During that first battle, the officer leading one of the Confederate units, the Warrenton Rifles, was killed.  Ex-Governor "Extra Billy" Smith who lived in a house across the street from the court house ran out to take command of the unit.  The house is the Joshua Gunnell House and dates from 1830.  Here is a photo.

Here is a photo of the old county jail which was originally built in 1802 but this present version dates from 1885.

Late Friday night my niece, Emily, and her fiance, Jay, arrived after driving up from the Winston-Salem, NC.

My brother is a member of the Optimists and as a fund raiser they run a farmer's market on Saturday mornings.  My brother was on tap to help set up the market this week so after breakfast we headed over to check it out and see how he was doing.  Here is a photo of the farmer's market.  It's small but had some great stuff.  We ended up having a second breakfast as they had a stand making omelet crepes that were really good.  We also picked  up some really good produce.

We brought all of that produce back to Gary's and used it with dinner.  Here are my sister-in-law, Kerry, my niece, Emmy, and her finance, Jay, discussing how to cook kale.

On Sunday we visited the historic section of Alexandria.  The first English settlement in the area dates from 1695.  Then in 1730 a tobacco inspection station with a couple of warehouses was built.  The actual town was established in 1749 and initially was called Belhaven but this name fell out of favor in the 1750s and the name Alexandria was adopted.  Here we are in Alexandria with Kerry, Gary, Emmy and Jay having a discussion of earth shaking importance on a street corner.

Here is another photo of my niece, Emmy.

One of the more interesting places to visit in Alexandria is an old apothecary shop.  This shop was established in 1792 and run by family members until 1933 when they went out of business and locked the front door and left it as it was.  It has been since purchased and restored as a museum.  Here we are entering.

Here is the retail area where all of the ingredients that the pharmacist used to compound medication are on display just the way they had been used thru the 19th and into the 20th century.

This case displays some of the products they sold including perfumes and shoe polish.

And here are some of the patent medicines they carried.

Then we went upstairs they manufactured various medications.  Note the storage draw marked for "Dragon's Blood".  It's actually the dried sap of a tree.  Almost all of the materials used in the production of medications were obtained from plant sources.

Here is where they molded and packaged pills.

One of the products they manufactured was Allen's Red Tame Cherry soda and here is the advertising for it.  Remember that Coca Cola was also invented by a pharmacist.

They also made paint and here are the color chips.

The other site we visited in Alexandria was the old torpedo factory.  During WW 1 and WW 2 there was a factory on the Alexandria waterfront that made torpedoes for the US Navy.  Today it's an arts and crafts center.

After we left Alexandria, we met up with my niece Adrienne, her husband and their two boys to go out to dinner.

Tomorrow morning we are on the road again and will be headed to Dayton, OH.