Veteran buys historic Brownsville property with unmarked graves
The historic James W. Jeffries house in Brownsville was reduced to rubble by Feb. 28.
A detail of a map used by President George Washington shows the location of Fort Burd (spelled incorrectly on the map) in the area where Nemacolin Castle and Town Square can be found today in Brownsville.
At left, the historic James W. Jeffries house in Brownsville was reduced to rubble in late February. Above, Tombstones marking empty graves of Brownsville founder Thomas Brown and two slave drivers who claimed to have been relatives of President George Washington can be found today behind Christ Episcopal Church in the Mon Valley borough.
The property off Front Street in Brownsville where the bodies of the town founder and two traveling slave drivers who falsely claimed to be brothers of President George Washington were buried in the 19th century.
The historic James W. Jeffries house at 126 Front St. in Brownsville before the building was demolished in late February
An 1865 map of Brownsville shows a cemetery off Front Street, just beyond the Town Square and next door to Nemacolin Castle.
BROWNSVILLE – A Vietnam War veteran from Florida didn’t know he was purchasing the unmarked grave of the founder of Brownsville when he bought a neglected, historic house in the borough in January.
Joe Terry also was unaware there was a 19th century potter’s field on that property, which also contained the graves of two slave drivers who falsely claimed to have been related to President George Washington and fell ill and died while in Brownsville.
“The county says there is no cemetery there,” Terry said. “My deed says nothing about a cemetery.”
However, an 1865 map of Brownsville shows a cemetery beside the James W. Jeffries house Terry purchased from Fayette County at a bargain price.
And records at the historic Christ Episcopal Church in Brownsville show town founder Thomas Brown’s tombstone, but not his casket, was removed from the potter’s field and relocated to the church cemetery in the 1940s, said Mark Kovscek, the church’s archivist.
“There’s no doubt in my mind the bodies of Thomas Brown and those of the two Washington guys are over there somewhere,” Kovscek said Friday.
The tombstones for Archibald and John H. Washington, who died in 1818, were relocated from the potter’s field at 126 Front St. to Christ Church sometime in the 20th century, according to the church’s records, Kovscek said.
The Washingtons, who boasted of being brothers of the nation’s first president, contracted typhoid fever from a physician in Brownsville, and died there while transporting 100 slaves from Virginia to Kentucky.
Kovscek said most residents in Brownsville at that time were Quakers and opposed to slavery. He said the slave drivers were buried in the potter’s field for the poor because Brownsville’s churches refused to bury them in their cemeteries.
Brown was a businessman who laid out the town about 1785, and he died 12 years later at a time when there probably were no local church cemeteries. He set aside a large lot to be used as a public square bordering the potter’s field and the neighboring lot where the Jeffries house was constructed about 1843.
The old cemetery later was “enclosed” into the Jeffries property, according to the 1904 book, “Hart’s History and Directory of the Three Towns,” by J. Percy Hart. Hart also placed the location of the cemetery and house in the same locations where they appear on the 1865 map of Brownsville, and he also noted Brown was buried there.
The Jeffries house was demolished Feb. 28 under the terms of the contract Terry reached with the Redevelopment Authority of Fayette County to purchase of the property, he said. It sold for $1,000.
Terry said his decision to demolish the house angered local preservationists, but its interior was too dilapidated to restore without investing a large sum of money.
The house was sold in 1922 to a funeral home, and it was vacant for more than a decade when Terry took ownership of the property. Fayette County took the property through eminent domain from developer Ernest Liggett of Pittsburgh, whose plan for redeveloping the borough fell through. Local historians believe the Jefferies property was once part of Colonial Fort Burd dating to 1759.
Terry said he fell in love with Brownsville while spending summers there as a child with his grandmother, and he wanted to move back to the borough.
He said he has been renovating the carriage house on the property to be used as his residence, possibly by July.
Terry said he had investors interested in turning the large house into a bed and breakfast, but when he “went through the door my heart sank.”
Vandals had repeatedly broken into the house and destroyed or removed everything of value, he said.
He said he has great respect for cemeteries and will consider using radar to search for any graves on the property.
“If there are bones there I will fence it in and put up a plaque,” he said.
He also plans to remove trees that obscure a panoramic view of Brownsville and the Monongahela River valley.
“I’m going to have a large flagpole and illuminate it so when you come across the (Lane-Bane Bridge) you’re going to see that flag.”