Freestone Point on the Potomac River

The Freestone Point, now a tall bluff overlooking the Potomac River, has seen a lot of fighting during the Civil War, shipping of goods, and even entertainment in the form of a casino.

“At the point of the rock,” or Freestone Point, was the translation of the American Indian word Neabsco. Neabsco is an actual road today leading to the Leesylvania State Park. The word describes the land known as Freestone Point. In 18^th century maps Freestone Point is indicated as a landmark to river pilots who navigated the Potomac.

During Colonial times Freestone Point was quarried of sandstone which was easily cut and transported on the river as an inexpensive and abundant building material which colonists saw it as “free stone,” hence the name.

Henry Lee and Lucy Grymes Lee used such sandstone as foundation for their manor house and other buildings when they established the Leesylvania Plantation around 1750. (Museum Archives)

The Leesylvania Plantation was located on lands between the Neabsco and Powells Creeks and was used primarily to grow tobacco. The Lee family used fifty-five slaves to grow tobacco from December to September to complete the difficult cultivation process. Ploughing the soil, planting the seeds, watering them and watching them bud, weed them by using a hoe to break the soil, and removing plant pests, was demanding work. After the plants ripened in August, the leaves were cut and hung upside down to dry. After six weeks of drying the leaves were packed into large wooden barrels called hogsheads. These barrels were rolled down the hill to wait for ships to be loaded and sent overseas to the market.

When the river was blockaded during the Civil War, cannons were placed on the bluff, shelling the passing ships below. There is one cannon still positioned in the original location, but it is unclear where this cannon originated.

Gen. Robert E. Lee ordered the blockade of the Potomac River on August 22, 1861. Artillery positions were built along the six-mile-front that would control the sailing channel passage to the Union capital, Washington, D.C. One such position was the land of his ancestral home, Leesylvania, known as Freestone Point.

Freestone Point served as a decoy while the essential batteries were placed down river at Possum Point, Cockpit Point, and Evansport.

The Potomac River channel hosted “A Pacific Paradise on the Potomac” on the S.S. Freestone, a gambling ship, as a recreational resort and casino even though it was illegal to gamble or sell alcohol by the glass in Virginia at that time. The ship was moored in Maryland by what is now the fishing pier. This pier is clearly marked today about 1/3 of the way as Maryland waters. It was not illegal to gamble or sell drinks in Maryland then.

The S.S. Freestone had 200 slot machines on deck, a restaurant on the second deck, and a cocktail lounge on the third deck, decorated in Hawaiian décor with music and dancing. A former steamer, the boat had been turned into a floating casino.

On opening day, July 20, 1957, “live music was provided by Johnny Long and his orchestra, water ballet, water skiing exhibitions, races by sailing craft, fireworks, and a beauty contest to crown the Queen of Freestone Point.”

Walking on the fishing pier today, there is a lot of banter and laughter in Spanish coming from the regular fishermen who come to catch the weekend dinner for their families. Nobody knows the history of the park or the family that donated the land for their enjoyment.

The Woods Still Stand Witness to Our History

Trail to Freestone Point

Photo: Ileana Johnson, May 2019

Leesylvania’s woods and hills met me with a lush green embrace of solitude and peace and the drifting fragrant smoke of the waterfront barbecue grills. The thick forest lies on a small peninsula overlooking the Potomac and Occoquan Rivers, rich with American history, fauna and flora.

Leesylvania is now a state park with a fishing pier and a picnic area much beloved by Central American residents and their families. The laughter of children bathing in the Potomac River echoes through the thick forest. Some of the mature trees giving us a welcoming cool shade grew first as tiny saplings in the Lee family garden.

The bumpy hill leads up to the Confederate gun battery, the gravesite where Henry Lee II and his wife Lucy Grymes were buried. Closer to the bottom of the hill are the chimney remains of the former home of the Fairfax family.  Henry Fairfax purchased the property from the Lee family in 1825 and lived there until 1910.

Fairfax home chimney  

The Freestone Point, named after the porous quarried rock, juts out over the Potomac River, overlooking the current park’s fishing pier. On rainy days, tree roots ooze out mud below, washed out by a sudden deluge.

Confederate guns were placed here during the Civil War. In the early years of the war, General Robert E. Lee ordered a blockade of the Potomac River in order to cut off the Union’s access to Washington DC. The 32-pound cannons positioned here were part of the blockade that lasted almost six months.

Freestone Point drawing (Park archives)

The well-preserved northernmost battery at Freestone Point was used as a decoy while more effective batteries were placed down river at Possum Point, Cockpit Point and Evansport.

When in September 1861 Freestone Point was fired upon, Sgt. Walter Curry of the Washington Mounted Artillery of Hampton’s Legion wrote in his diary, “… as soon as the eleventh shot was fired, our Guns opened on the Lincolnite men of war which were floating majestically on the Broad Potomac.” The Confederates closed the commercial traffic on the Potomac by December. The blockade did not end until March 9, 1862.  (Leesylvania State Park Archives)

Close to the cemetery there are traces of the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroad tracks that used to carry necessary supplies to run a large estate growing corn and tobacco.

No trace remains today of the Lee’s ancestral home. Henry Lee II raised eight children here with his wife Lucy Grymes, including Light-Horse Harry Lee—Revolutionary War colonel, Virginia Governor, and father of Robert E. Lee. The Lees have left their imprint in the history of these lands and in the names of our modern landmarks.

Richard Lee, the original immigrant from England, was so determined to succeed in the New World that he became, in less than twenty years, an affluent fur trader, a colonel in the Virginia military, and a planter with prosperous land holdings and slaves. He owned fifteen thousand acres of land, more than any other man in the colony of Virginia. He was the colony’s attorney general and a member of the House of Burgesses.

In his old age, the “original Immigrant” returned to England, but his heirs were to come back to northern Virginia upon his death. Subsequently, generations of Lees made their homes and fortunes in Virginia after 1664.

Henry Lee II received from Henry Lee’s will in 1746 all his plantations and land in Prince William County at Freestone Point and at Neapsco (now called Neabsco, Doeg Indian for Point of Rocks) and Powell’s Creek.

The tobacco growing on the plantation was so lucrative that it was shipped to London from the wharf in Dumfries, three miles down from Freestone Point. Dumfries was the commercial hub in Prince William County. Today it remains the oldest incorporated small town in Virginia.

Henry II married in 1753 a “lowland beauty” named Lucy Grymes who is said to have been so popular with men of marrying age, she even became the object of marital aspirations of a young boy named George Washington.

Henry II cleared the land in Prince William County and built a new estate, Leesylvania (Lee’s Woods) the same year he married Lucy.  Modest by standards set by other plantations in the colony of Virginia, Leesylvania was built of brick on a stone foundation, with “double-tiered porticos wrapped around the front and rear of the building,” with twin chimneys, “two and half stories tall.” The home burned in 1797 and there is no image left of it.

Henry Lee was “the first citizen of Prince William County” in his capacity as its attorney general and militia commander. Washington asked him in 1755 to provide 100 men on horseback from Prince William County and bread provisions to “assist in the protection of our Frontiers.”

Henry Lee III monument

Lucy and Henry Lee lost their first child, a daughter. A year later, in 1756, another child was born of their union, Henry Lee III, a son who eventually became the famous Light Horse Harry (1756-1818). A statue at the foot of the rocky hill commemorates the revolutionary war hero and father of General Robert E. Lee.

View of the Occoquan River from the forested bluff

Photo: Ileana Johnson

Henry Lee III grew up riding horses, raising ponies, fencing, and practicing his marksmanship. Influential Virginians were frequent visitors at Lee’s Woods, dining and lodging there, including George Washington on his frequent trips from Mount Vernon estate to Fredericksburg and Williamsburg. (Ryan Cole, Light-Horse Harry Lee, The Rise and Fall of a Revolutionary Hero, 2019)

Henry Lee III was a cavalry commander (1776-1781), was awarded Congressional Medal in 1779, member of the Continental Congress (1786-1788), governor of Virginia (1791-1794), and member of the U.S. Congress (1799-1801).

Walking through the dense forest trails, I am in awe as my steps retrace the long-gone steps of so many famous American men and women who blazed this path through history, instrumental in the shaping of our country today.

Field of Dreams in Leesylvania State Park

Photo: Ileana Johnson