George William Carlyle

George William Carlyle was born 27 May 1766 at 121 North Fairfax Street Place 121 North Fairfax Street Stone Georgian mansion built in 1753 by Scottish merchant John Carlyle; headquarters in April 1755 for General Edward Braddock's Congress of five royal governors planning the … , the only surviving child of John Carlyle Person John Carlyle b. 1720 · d. 1780 Scottish-descent merchant born in Carlisle, England, in 1720; one of the eleven founding trustees of Alexandria in 1749, and builder of the stone Carlyle House at the head of what … and his second wife Sybil West Carlyle Person Sybil West Carlyle Second wife of ; daughter of Hugh and Sybil (Harrison) West. Mother of , the fifteen-year-old cadet in Lee's Legion killed at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in 1781. ^[1] Source 1 R. H. Spencer, "The Carlyle Family" (W&M Quarterly, January 1910) Book . He inherited the Carlyle House on his father’s death in October 1780 but held the title only briefly.

In February 1781, at fourteen, he joined the army as a cadet in “Lee’s Legion” — Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Lee’s independent partisan corps (Light Horse Harry Lee, father of Robert E. Lee), which “covered the rear of General Greene’s Army, giving occasional opportunity for Tarleton’s Dragoons to measure swords with the Virginians” ^[1] Source 1 R. H. Spencer, "The Carlyle Family" (W&M Quarterly, January 1910) Book .

He was killed at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina on 8 September 1781, at fifteen, in one of the last major engagements of the Revolutionary War in the southern theater. Henry Lee himself wrote in his Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States: “The gallant young Carlyle of Alexandria, a cadet in the Regiment, was killed and half the corps destroyed” ^[1] Source 1 R. H. Spencer, "The Carlyle Family" (W&M Quarterly, January 1910) Book . Philip Freneau, pronounced by Sir Walter Scott “as fine a thing as there is of the kind in the English language,” wrote of the engagement:

“At Eutaw Springs the valiant died: Their limbs with dust are covered o’er, — Weep on, ye Springs, your tearful tide; How many heroes are no more!”

The Carlyle House then passed to his nephew John Carlyle Herbert Person John Carlyle Herbert b. 1777 · d. 1846 Eldest grandson of via his mother and his father ; held from 1781 to 1827, the longest single ownership in the house's history. Member of Congress from Maryland 1816-1820. , son of his elder half-sister Sarah Carlyle Herbert Person Sarah Carlyle Herbert Eldest daughter of and ; her marriage to carried into the Herbert family. Mother of (held the house 1781-1827) and (m. Thomas 9th Lord Fairfax 1800); great-grandmother of . . Spencer notes that, had he lived, George William “would have been entitled to the dormant baronage as Lord Carlyle, after the death of his first cousin Rev. Joseph Dacre Carlyle, B.D., the oriental scholar, who died without male issue in 1804” — the male line of John Carlyle of Alexandria ended at fifteen on the Carolina battlefield ^[1] Source 1 R. H. Spencer, "The Carlyle Family" (W&M Quarterly, January 1910) Book .