As so many houses in those days, this one had grown across the generations. The oldest part of the house, according to family lore, was the miller’s house on the Field’s plantation before the “late great unpleasantness between the states.” When I was a lad you could still see the bowl of what had once been the millpond behind the barn, with the branch running right through it. As you entered the woods called Buzzard’s Roost, the high banks on either side of the branch were what was left of the dam. The water had thus been forced up and over in a spillway that channelled it to the drop where the actual mill wheel sat. Mom said the ruins of the mill wheel were still visible when she was a girl. It had long since gone by the time I came on the scene.
The old Mastin house sits at the top of the hill to the south of the branch, with its barn perched right on the edge of the gentle slope. The Rappahannock River hid behind the fields to the north, though another old house that sat on the north shore of the river, just outside Summerduck, could clearly be seen. I believe it belonged to the Rivercomb family, about whom my mother had some unpleasant stories. The two houses both faced the sunset, as though to studiously avoid acknowledging one another. There was no other house visible from the Mastin place when I was child, though several other houses were nearer, all entwined in my family’s story.
As to the house itself, the old miller’s house was but a downstairs room, above it a bedroom with sloping ceilings on either side, and a hall with a staircase to connect them. That was the extent of the place originally. When I first remembered the house, my grandfather Joseph Thomas Mastin and my cousin Gary Walker slept in the downstairs room, while Aunt Emma and Uncle Jim and cousin George had the room above it. I do not know when James Henry Mastin moved in. But sometime after assuming residence, he began to expand the place to make a more suitable home for his family.
James Henry sadly had never known the father for whom he was named. The elder James had taken cold after falling into the river while working on the canal, and died in 1857. He was just 30 years of age. My grandfather’s father was born in May of that year. I do not know whether he was born before or after his father’s death, but it must have been a dreadful time for his wife Catherine Ann. Her testament and psalms sit with me here in the room where I write this, and she has marked especially Psalm 116: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
Though he died over a century before I was born, I can still see his face. His wife Catherine apparently had a likeness commissioned in charcoal so that her two boys, Thomas and James, would know what their father looked like. I am certain my great grandfather hung the picture proudly in the old house, possibly over one of the mantels. My mother inherited it and the portrait was always in the attic of the house I grew up in. A little wreath of Catherine’s hair, beautifully blonde, had been braided and affectionately affixed to James’ lapel, right over his heart. He was a bearded man with a kind face. My mom always said that the Field family did not exactly approve of the marriage, and referred to him as “that dam(n!) contractor.” The 1850 census revealed him to be in possession of some 300 acres, 5 horses, 4 milk cows, 6 cattle, and 26 swine. He was thus not a poor man, but apparently the Field’s were a bit proud. Still he was Catherine’s great love and she never married again, choosing to raise her two sons alone. Her oldest son, Thomas, went on to be a Methodist minister and founder of a children’s orphanage in Richmond. My grandfather’s father married Betty Emmons and settled down to raise his children: Anne, Joseph Thomas, and Julia Lee in the home that he expanded. I believe that Julia Lee (my Aunt Gee) must have had the smallest upstairs room. She was the youngest by several years. Oddly enough, she ended up marrying Cleveland Embry, and lived in the Embry home when first married. They later sold that place, and Joseph Thomas helped my father’s parents to purchase it. It was where my dad and his brother were raised.
The front part which he put up consisted originally of two downstairs rooms, with a hall and stairwell running through the middle. The hall is large, and I remember my aunt keeping a desk there where she wrote to her friends in the evening. That would be Aunt Fanny Martin. She and her husband returned to the house when Uncle Leon was diagnosed with cancer. I remember him building a large storage house to store their furniture in that didn’t fit in the house. He finished it shortly before his death. Old folks always seemed to come home there to die. Aunt Gee (Julia Lee) did as well. She died in the house she had been raised in.
On the upper floor in the front of the house, you stepped down to the left into a large bedroom (which Aunt Fanny used), there was a very small bedroom in the middle space (where my cousin Sue slept), and to the right was another large bedroom reserved for guests.
By the time I was a lad the house had expanded again: there was a kitchen (I think originally there was a separate “summer kitchen” as well), and sometime in the early 20th century, my father’s father, Chancellor Weedon, had built a large dining room for the Mastin clan beside the kitchen. It held a massive table, where my aunt always seemed to feed a troop, always with first my grandfather and then my uncle praying: “Give us grateful hearts, our Father, for all Thy mercies and make us ever mindful of the needs of others, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Above the kitchen, when I was a boy, you could see a second story, with a little room, but there was no access to it, though it had a window. I think stairs had originally been where the pantry was in those days. Also, sometime in the 20th century, an indoor bathroom was included, though the two-seated john was still available, backing onto the pigpen. And later still, the house expanded yet again. The kitchen and dining room were redone and two rooms and a bath were added above them. And this is the shape it has today: six bedrooms, three sitting rooms, a kitchen and dining room, a front porch, a screened-in porch, and the back porch.
The house when I was very young was weathered on the outside. Aunt Fanny had it covered in aluminum siding after she moved back. I remember my dad telling her: “Francis, you are just covering over your problems.” Still, the siding looks pretty good some 60 years later.
