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i EE POTOMAC (AND: RAP PALA NN OIC K a el SN ————— —— a SS Nt land, went to the youngest son, Richard Taylor, who sold it, and for the first time the estate reverted to an outsider, Mr. Smith, who, in turn, sold Fall Hill to Colonel Hellier. In 1909, upon the death of Colonel Hellier, Fall Hill came into the possession of the original family again, through Captain Murray Taylor, eldest son of Dr. Taylor. At the present time, his daughter, Mrs. Bessie Forbes Robinson, is chatelaine of the old place, which descends by entail to her daughter, Butler Brayne Thornton Robinson. Though the garden, which suffered cruelly during the war, has been replaced to a great extent by modern shrubs and vines, the steep terraces. and the thousands of naturalized jonquils, which make them glitter like gold in the spring, give a very good idea of what the spot once was. The driveway around the grass circle in front of the house is still lavishly bordered with jonquils, and ends at an old-fashioned stone carriage block quarried at Fall Hill. Mrs. Charles Selden, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. J. R. Taylor, who once lived there, says of the old garden: “A broad gravel walk once led from the carriage block to the house, and from there followed the course of the lawn overlooking the Rappahannock River. ‘The terraces which fall from the front of the house are bordered with jonquils of many varieties, and thousands of dattodils grow in large beds under many of the trees on the lawn. “On the first terrace, which begins at the brow of the hill, some of the trees which once stood there are still left, though the trellises and arbors, covered with roses and Virginia creeper, that were at one time scattered over the lawn, have disappeared. ‘Extending through the original flower garden at the rear of the house was a wide gravel path, bordered with masses of cowslips and hyacinths which bloomed beneath spiraea, pyrus japonica and magnolia conspicua. Microphyllae and damask roses were also in these borders, and beyond them were large beds of hundredleaf roses.” [215 ]
