History of Dodona Manor

The Episode

Welcome to this episode of “Now & Then at Dodona Manor.”

In this episode, we will visit a part of Dodona Manor that the public rarely gets to see: the attic. We chose to present this space as a window through which we can view the history of the house and the place that George and Katherine Marshall called home. 

This tour through General Marshall’s attic reveals some of the many secrets that this historic house has to offer. Like most old houses, Dodona Manor has changed in size, shape, form, and style in its history of over two hundred years. 

Questions for Thought and Discussion

In 1805, John Drish purchased eight acres at the top of a knoll just east of Leesburg for $960 on land that had originally been owned by Landon Carter, son of Robert “King” Carter. The Carters have a long history in Virginia: King Carter’s grandson, George, owned Oatlands Plantation, another Leesburg landmark south of town on U.S. 15. While the grand mansion at Oatlands was being constructed, it is likely that an early nineteenth-century, two-story, two-room brick building already stood on the property that Drish purchased.

Between 1805 and 1826, Drish enlarged both his family and his home. He constructed an elegant, two-story Federal-style residence that adjoined the earlier building. 

The Federal-style structure is noted in the 1826 deed to Wilson J. Drish and in the 1829 deed to Fayette Ball, whose elder brother, George Washington Ball, was a nephew of George Washington. Both the 1829 sale price and the building’s footprint, identified as the “G. W. Ball residence” on an 1856 map of Loudoun County, clearly indicate the presence of a substantial building. This suggests that the attic featured in the video is that of the Federal-style residence.

By 1856, Ball had sold the land and house, then known as Oak Hill, to Reverend Charles Nourse for $5,250.

Reverend Nourse operated Leesburg Academy, a finishing school for girls, here in the house. He was the principal of the boarding school that taught young girls from wealthy families the manners and etiquette of upper-class society. The residence underwent two major alterations: a two-story brick service ell was added on to the east side, and the early nineteenth-century building was fully encapsulated by hallways and a third-floor addition on the north side to create more bedrooms for the boarding students. To allow for additional natural lighting inside the house, Nourse left the original exterior windows of the early nineteenth-century structure intact. Today, you can stand in the hall and see the original exterior wall and windows of the original structure incorporated into the present interior. 

After only three years of operation, the imminent threat of the Civil War caused a decline in the school’s attendance that eventually forced it to close in 1859.

An advertisement in the 1859 edition of The Democratic Mirror of Leesburg announced that the house, known at the time as Oak Hill, was for sale. This advertisement describes a sixteen-room house with good cellars and several outbuildings, including carriage house, icehouse, meat house, cow shed, stable and servant quarters. However, records indicate that by the early 1900s most of those structures had been demolished. It is likely that they fell into disuse, and the cost of upkeeping them outweighed the need for them.

The property was sold several more times as Oak Hill before Yvon and Ella Pike purchased what was then 3.52 acres for $6,000 in 1907. The couple combined their names and renamed the home “Elvon.” 

For twenty-eight years, the Pike family enjoyed Victorian-era Leesburg and their charming property. They added a full-length, cast iron porch that was popular at the time to the front façade of the home, completely changing its original, Federal-style look. (We will learn more about the Pike residency in future episodes when we uncover the secrets of the Pike family scrapbook.)  

The Pikes sold the property to Northcutt and Marcia Ely in 1935. Northcutt Ely was a prominent lawyer in the Herbert Hoover administration and thought that this grand home and choice location would impress his prominent political guests. 

The Elys, as well-educated people, chose a name for the property that reflected their knowledge of Greek culture. The Temple of Dodona was in northwestern Greece, and its Oracle of Dodona was the oldest Hellenic oracle, dating to the second millennium B.C. Homer described Dodona as an oracle of Zeus, where ancient priests would use the rustling of the white oak tree leaves to interpret messages from the god himself. Standing among the prolific white oaks on his property, Ely perhaps heard the whisperings of Zeus in the leaves and adopted the name “Dodona Manor” for his home. During their six years of ownership, the Elys added electricity, central oil heating and indoor plumbing. 

In the spring of 1941, it is said that Katherine Marshall was driving through Leesburg when she saw the “for sale” sign in the lawn of this property. It was love at first sight, and she paid $10 in earnest money to secure the house as a retreat from their public life in Washington. They made a down payment of $4,000 and eventually paid $16,000 for the property. While Marshall was away in England for an important meeting with Winston Churchill in the spring of 1942, Katherine made numerous improvements to the house and grounds, and happily showed these to her husband when he returned. 

Marshall was a student of history who appreciated the historic character of this fine old house that Katherine selected, and they enjoyed its location at the gateway overlooking the heart of the town of Leesburg. While he was away in England for an important meeting with Winston Churchill in the spring of 1942, Katherine made numerous improvements to the house and grounds, and she happily showed these to her husband when he returned. Marshall said, “This is Home…a real home after forty-one years of wandering.” 

During their residence here, the Marshalls made a few interior cosmetic changes to the home, including new wallpaper for the living, dining and breakfast rooms, and fresh paint for the trim and walls in other rooms. They also added the stone patio and its covering. One space that has remained relatively untouched for nearly two hundred years is the attic. 

The photo shows the attic of John Drish’s Federal block addition that was built in the early 1820s. Highways and mass production of building supplies were not developed until later in the eighteenth century, so almost everything in the attic was made in Loudoun County by local craftsmen and builders. 

The huge red oak rafters that hold up Dodona’s characteristic gabled roof were likely cut in the nearby town of Waterford in one of Loudoun County’s oldest and largest sawmills. Drish’s builders purchased this lumber at nearby J.R. Grover’s lumber yard in the 1820s. 

We can date when lumber was cut by looking at marks left in the wood. The thin, parallel lines through the grain were left by a huge circular saw when it cut the wood. Circular saws started to crop up in Loudoun County as early as 1733 and steadily grew in number throughout the Industrial Revolution in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.

Each rafter is of equal size and spaced evenly along the length of the roof. These are called common rafters and were widely used in the South because they required less carpentry work.

How is the roof held together? We might expect to find a nail affixing the rafters together where they meet at the ridge, but instead we find a cone-shaped piece of wood called a trunnel. Think of it as a wooden nail. The ends of the two rafters are carved into a mortise and tenon, and then slid together and connected by a trunnel. Over time, the wood fibers naturally expand to give it a tight fit. On either side of the ridges are two sets of Roman numeral called carpenter’s marks. These marks were used when pairs of individual timbers were joined with custom-fitting cuts to match their individual irregularities. All of these rafters were pre-assembled on the ground, marked with numerals, and taken apart to be carried to their current positions. Once they were properly placed, they were joined in a perfect fit.

Carpenter’s marks were also used to join together the rafter and the horizonal supports called collar ties. These ties help to create a stable truss system that allows this space to stay open. Triangles are the strongest shape in architecture, which is why they are used for roofs such as these, bridges, and across large, open spaces. If you look at the ends of each collar, you will see a v-shaped cut that allows it to lock into the rafter. This is called a half dovetail lap and is held to the rafters using machine-cut nails. Next to these joints are a large number of nails protruding through the exterior of the roof to the interior.  

Can you guess why these nails are here? They hold down the original wood-shingled roof of the house. The square pieces of wood directly above them are the layers of shingles that made up the roof when this part of the house was built in the 1800s, long before the signature red, standing seam metal roof of today. We believe the metal roof was added by the Pike family during their residence in the 1880s.

An attic can also be a place to discover what is hidden behind the walls throughout the rest of the home, especially pipes. The size and placement of the big black pipe featured in this photograph suggests that it was used as a waste vent stack. It would be used to release gasses into the air to keep them from becoming trapped inside the house.

This other pipe is made of cast iron and was installed during the Ely residency with the indoor plumbing. We believe the Elys added bathrooms to the house in the 1920s. Unfortunately, cast iron corrodes over time, and so the Marshalls had to replace a piece of the vent stack with galvanized piping sometime in the 1950s.

Although construction materials have changed over time, the basic idea behind what keeps buildings up remains the same. Like this attic, Dodona Manor retains most of its early nineteenth-century architectural details, while the interior furnishings and decorative arts reflect the culture of the 1940s and 50s when the Marshalls lived here.

Thank you for joining us as we peeled back the layers of history this house reveals. You can see why George and Katherine called this home. The next time you hear oak leaves whispering in the wind, perhaps you will think of Dodona Manor and the many great minds that have walked under these rafters.