Hope Park was an 18th and 19th-century plantation in Fairfax County in the U.S. state of Virginia, where Dr. David Stuart (1753–1814), an old friend of and correspondent with George Washington lived with his wife, (Washington's former stepdaughter-in-law) Eleanor Calvert Custis (1758–1811), and family. It was approximately southwest of Fairfax Court House (now known as the independent city of Fairfax).
History
Payne family
The Hope Park plantation was founded in the 1750s by Edward Payne, a justice of the Fairfax County Court from 1764 to 1785 and builder of Payne's Church (completed in 1778). Payne served with George Washington and George Mason on the Truro Parish vestry, and Washington occasionally visited the Paynes at Hope Park. Payne constructed a small grist mill, probably on Piney Branch which ran through the Hope Park property. A mill would have been an important adjunct to the plantation.
Stuart family
Dr. David Stuart purchased Hope Park plantation in 1785, two years after marrying General Washington's widowed daughter-in-law described below. Stuart was an Alexandria physician and planter who served several terms (part-time) as one of Fairfax County's representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates. On January 22, 1791, then President Washington appointed Dr. Stuart as the member representing Virginia on the first board of Commissioners of the Federal City, and he served for almost four years. By 1789, Stuart was one of the gentleman justices for the Fairfax County Court, normally a lifetime appointment. The Virginia General Assembly named Stuart a trustee by for the towns of Centreville in 1792 and Providence (later known as Fairfax Court House, and then Fairfax) in 1805, and he also served as a trustee of a school in Centreville.
In 1783, Stuart married Eleanor Calvert Custis, the young widow of John Parke Custis and thus daughter-in-law of Martha Washington and stepdaughter-in-law of George Washington. Until relocating to Hope Park sometime between 1791 and 1793, the couple resided at Custis's Abingdon plantation overlooking the Potomac River. Estates along major waterways found transport and communication easier than those in the interior of Fairfax County such as Hope Park, so the Stuarts initially lived at Custis' Abington plantation on the Potomac River (on on the grounds of Ronald Reagan National Airport), before moving to Hope Park. The Stuarts regularly received George and Martha Washington as guests at Abingdon as well as at Hope Park plantation, and were frequent guests at Mount Vernon. Because of the close relationship between the Stuart and Washington families, Hope Park is mentioned frequently in Washington's correspondences and diaries.
While two Custis siblings, Eleanor Parke Custis and George Washington Parke Custis, lived at Mount Vernon, Philadelphia, and New York with George and Martha Washington, they also visited their mother at Hope Park. Dr. Stuart handled the financial accounts of his stepchildren, and also raised his stepdaughters (President George Washington's step-granddaughters) Martha Parke Custis and Elizabeth Parke Custis, who both married at Hope Park. Martha Custis married Thomas Peter on January 6, 1795, and Elizabeth Custis married Thomas Law on March 20, 1796. These elder Custis daughters moved to Hope Park and lived there with their mother, stepfather and many half-siblings. Peters was the son of a successful Georgetown merchant, and Law was the son of Edmund Law, Bishop of Carlisle, and the younger brother of Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough, George Henry Law, later Bishop of Bath and Wells, and John Law, a Church of Ireland bishop. The Custis/Law union was a short one and ended in divorce in 1806.
Most likely under Stuart's ownership and before the Stuart family relocated to Ossian Hall in 1804, a second mill and was constructed on the west bank of Piney Branch, as well as an adjacent miller's house. Their precise dates of construction remain unknown, but in a sale notice in 1815 (a year after Dr. Stuart's death) it was advertised as being "in complete repair". Preservationist Russell Wright studied the mill in 1972 and believed it built circa 1800. Then known as "Hope Park Mill," it became a neighborhood mill, serving several nearby plantations in central Fairfax County.
