Thomas Wadlington

Thomas Wadlington (1715-1777)

 Builder of the Owner House at Clermont, Clermont as an 18th-century superstore

In 1753, Thomas Wadlington, a mill owner and planter from Fairfax County, who lived in the neighborhood of Belvoir Manor and Mount Vernon, 75 miles away via the Fairfax Road from Alexandria to Winchester, bought Clermont from Thomas Vance. Thomas Wadlington was not a stranger. He was a fellow parishioner of George Washington’s at the Pohick Church, their local Fairfax parish, and he had served as the “marker” on two surveys Washington did in 1751 in the vicinity of Clermont. His fellow survey crew member on those two surveys was the “chain carrier”, William Crawford. Crawford was the son-in-law of John Vance, from whom Wadlington bought Clermont two years later in 1753.

When construction began in 1755 on Thomas Wadlington’s house at Clermont, he and his wife, Sarah Wyatt, had seven children who lived, five boys ranging from four to nineteen, and two girls, thirteen and seventeen, all born between 1736 and 1751. Their new house, a typical story and a half Chesapeake house (now the oldest in Clarke County), 30 feet by 20 feet, with a root cellar underneath, was finished in 1756. There were three rooms on the ground floor, including the largest, the “hall” where most family life was carried on, and two smaller “chambers”, with a stair to the second floor, which originally seems to have been one large room, with dormer windows. It probably would have been served by a detached kitchen, a smokehouse, and housing for the people he enslaved, including those who ran the farm and the store, did the domestic work, and had probably helped build these buildings.

Conjectural drawing of the North (front) elevation of the Owner House at Clermont was first constructed in 1755-1756 by Thomas Wadlington.

At Clermont, Thomas Wadlington became a very successful merchant. His store started perhaps as early as 1756, when he sold leather during the French & Indian War to his friend George Washington for moccasins for the Indian allies at Fort Loudoun (which Washington was building 1756-58 in Winchester). The store had one of the most extensive inventories and services next to those at Alexandria and Fredericksburg, Virginia. An archaeological study was done at 18th-century Audley Farm across Rt. 7 (the Fairfax Road) from Clermont has located Wadlington’s store on Buckmarsh Run, along which the Fairfax Road ran at the time, north of its current location along Clermont’s northern boundary. This was part of 36 acres Wadlington himself got from Lord Fairfax and added to Clermont, a narrow spear of land connecting the original Clermont grant north to Buckmarsh Run, today the entrance into Audley.

North front of Owner House at Clermont, 1755-56 section, completing rehabilitation in 2025.

The store’s account books for the years 1758-61 have been found in Duke University’s library, listing many landowner clients from the region, including Clermont’s previous owner, John Vance, and its next owner, Edward Snickers. Over 20 fabrics from bed ticking to luxury fabrics from Europe, the Middle East and China were carried, plus many sewing accessories, building supplies (nails, glass, barrel staves, leading), hunting/military items (guns, gun flints, powder, shot), household items (pans, pots, furnishings, rugs, blankets), agricultural items such as sheep shears, plus services such as hauling goods, coopering, and weaving.

Like Clermont’s next owner, Edward Snickers, who also had several businesses, Thomas Wadlington successfully rose from yeoman and then mercantile status to growing wealth and position on the frontier of Virginia, in an upwardly mobile society. In 1764, he was sworn in as a gentleman justice for Frederick County, and by 1766, he was a member of the vestry for Frederick Parish and churchwarden, marking his rise to the top of the local social hierarchy and rubbing shoulders with its largest landowners.  By 1767, he was looking for larger opportunities at lower prices and bought 800 acres in Newberry County, South Carolina. In 1770, he sold Clermont to another entrepreneur, neighbor, friend, and customer, Edward Snickers, and moved on.