Pennsylvania man visits Colonial Williamsburg house where his ancestors lived 200 years ago
More than 200 years since William & Mary professor, politician and Revolutionary War-era military chaplain Robert Andrews last walked the streets of Williamsburg, his many-times-over grand nephew came to town to get a more personal look at history.
Last week, modern-day Robert Andrews drove from his home on the outskirts of Philadelphia with the hopes of seeing where his four-times great grand uncle once lived and worked.
During the visit, Andrews and his partner, Patricia Grassi of Wilmington, Delaware, visited the John Blair House on Duke of Gloucester Street in the Historic Area. His ancestor once lived there with his wife, Mary Blair, and children.
In July, Andrews, who is descended from Robert Andrews’ brother John, sent an email to the Rockefeller library asking if it was possible to visit the house during a planned trip to Virginia. Andrews, who has been coming to Williamsburg since his honeymoon in 1958, had recently learned about his connection to the house from his daughter, Lorrie, the “family historian.”
“I will have a new emotional attachment to this wonderful place,” Andrews said in the email. “… This would be a great story to tell my family.”
The current residents of the house, Liz Losh, a William & Mary professor, and Mel Horan, a Colonial Williamsburg interpreter, invited Andrews and Grassi for a special tour after hearing about Andrews’ story.
Horan, dressed in his colonial garb, took the couple through the first floor, pointing out the marble fireplace, the original wood floors and even a small door that, when opened, shows a small portal to the house’s original walls.
As the story goes, Horan said, in the early 1920s the house was set to be demolished to make way for a gas station. That never happened, and the house was restored in 1929 after a stint as a William & Mary sorority house during which the school extensively remodeled the interior.
“This was where history happened,” said Horan.
Though the house doesn’t look quite the same as it did when it was built or even when Robert Andrews first occupied it in the late 1700s, its historic footprint still exists, and its stories continue to be told.
According to a digitized historical report on the property by the Rockefeller library, the “property continued in the name of the heirs of Robert Andrews and wife, Mary, until 1843 when George Taylor, husband of Andrews’ granddaughter, Catherine Randolph, became the owner.” The house passed into more hands until finally Colonial Williamsburg took over the property.
Losh and Horan, an interpreter as well as a Haunted Williamsburg storyteller, have been living in the house, which is one of more than 70 private residences in the Historic Area, for seven years. During that time, they’ve certainly been no strangers to people wanting a peek inside their house — and even some unexpected visitors.
But as Losh said, it was a way to “pay it forward” after not too long ago she herself was welcomed into a stranger’s home that was the site of some family history.
For Andrews, who is in his 80s, the visit was everything he’d hoped.
“I was fascinated by the structure,” said Andrews, who was too busy taking it all in to do much imagining about whether his relative had stood in the 1700s where he was standing in the here and now. “I’ve always been interested in family history.”
Sian Wilkerson, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com, 757-342-6616
