Chestnut Hill near the Point of Rocks, so long identified with the Mason Family, is another of the mansions built about 1800. Samuel Clapham, the son of the second Josias Clapham, was the builder on land he had acquired in 1796 from his father. It came to Thomas F. Mason through his marriage to Betsey Price, a granddaughter of the second Josias as related in Chapter VII. It is now owned and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Coleman Gore.
Rockland, four miles north of Leesburg, was built by General George Rust in 1822 on land acquired by him in 1817 from the heirs of Colonel Burgess Ball and is unique among the county's old estates in that today it still is owned by a descendant of its builder, Mrs. Stanley M. Brown, who before her marriage was Miss Elizabeth Fitzhugh Rust, the only child of the late owner, Mr. Henry B. Rust. Mr. and Mrs. Brown, with their children, spend each summer at Rockland. The 419 acres of the present estate border for a long distance on the Potomac and are regarded as equalling in fertility any land in the county. During the War Between the States the old house witnessed the alternate passing and repassing of the armies of the North and South in front of it along the old Carolina Road. Hospitality and gracious living have long been synonymous in Loudoun with the very name of Rockland.
[Illustration: GENERAL GEORGE RUST (1788-1857). The builder of Rockland.]
The plantation that became Exeter was inherited by Mary Mason Seldon; a sister of Thomson Mason, from their mother Ann Thompson Mason. This Mary Mason Seldon married, first, Mann Page and upon his death took as her second husband her first cousin Dr. Wilson Cary Seldon who, born in 1761, had served as surgeon in a Virginia artillery regiment during the Revolution. Though she had children by Page and none by Seldon, the latter secured this land and between 1796 and 1800 built the main frame dwelling with its pleasing design and interesting detail. The large brick extension in the rear was added by General George Rust about 1854 during his ownership of the estate. By his second wife, Dr. Seldon had a daughter, Eleanor, and it was at Exeter on the 16th February 1843, that she married John Augustine Washington, the last of his family to own and occupy Mount Vernon. When the War Between the States broke out, he at once volunteered for service, became an aide on the staff of General Lee with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was killed in a small engagement, which otherwise would have been unimportant, at Cheat Mountain, now West Virginia, on the 13th September, 1861. In 1857 Exeter was purchased by the late Horatio Trundle. It was inherited by his son Mr. Hartley H. Trundle who with his family resides there.