221
King Street

The Ramsay House, a gambrel-roofed frame structure of one-and-a-half stories, is conventionally dated to about 1749 and associated with Scottish merchant William Ramsay Person William Ramsay b. 1716 · d. 1785 Scottish-born merchant, one of the original trustees of Alexandria in 1749, and by local tradition the town's first postmaster and first lord mayor. His frame house on King Street … , one of the original trustees of the newly chartered town ^[1] Source 1 HABS Alexandria survey Government record . Local tradition holds that the building was floated up the Potomac from an earlier site at Dumfries, though documentary evidence for that move is thin; what is clear is that it was moved at least once to its present corner.

Ramsay operated as a merchant and later as a tobacco inspector; he served on Alexandria’s board of trustees from the town’s founding and was commonly styled its first “lord mayor,” an honorary title ^[2] Source 2 Miller, Artisans and Merchants, 1991 Book . He died in 1785 and was buried at the 321 South Fairfax Street Place 321 South Fairfax Street Brick Presbyterian meeting house begun in 1775; site of the city's memorial services for George Washington on December 29, 1799, four days before his funeral at Mount Vernon. graveyard.

The house passed through multiple owners after Ramsay’s death and was extensively altered. A fire in 1942 destroyed much of the building; it was reconstructed on the original footprint using salvaged materials. Since the 1950s it has served as Alexandria’s official visitor center.