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At this time his mother moved into the Falls cottage, a commo¬
dious brick house, now in existence near the site of the original
dwelling.
Of the six children of Francis III and Anne Thornton, Francis
IV was the only son. His mother brought to Fall Hull with her
Katina, an Indian woman, who had attended her from her infancy,
who had been given originally to Governor Spotswood by an
itinerant tribe of Indians when he was on one of his many exploring
expeditions to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Francis IV personally
told Colonel James Innes Thornton of Alabama, his son, that he
could remember Katina’s taking him and his five sisters into the
woods and covering them with leaves while she called, with strange
and beautiful cries, the birds of the forest, which would come and
rest around them. Her grave is still well marked among six old
oaks back of the Fall Hill house. After this, Francis Thornton
was always a friend of the Indians, and the latter frequently called
upon him at Fall Hill when they were passing near the place.
In 1837, when Francis Thornton IV died, his family scattered,
and for some years the place was tenanted by the family nurse,
Mammy Nancy. In 1843, his granddaughter, Bessie Forbes, in¬
herited it in part. After her marriage to Dr. John R. Taylor, the
latter, by purchase, added to his wife’s portion many acres of the
original plantation.
In 1868, General Robert E. Lee was a guest at Fall Hill, and
Mrs. Taylor, who then owned the place, called his attention to the
shattered trunk of a tree, the top of which had been shot away ¬
by a Federal cannon. Though rapidly being overgrown with ivy,
Mrs. Taylor was preserving this tree trunk as an object of historic
interest. Instead of showing the interest she expected, General Lee
advised her not to preserve it at all, but to obliterate as far as
possible every trace of the unfortunate war.
Mrs. Taylor died in 1876, and upon her husband’s death in
1882 the property was divided by lot among his four sons and one
daughter, Bessie Thompson Taylor. ‘The house, with considerable
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