At the Sully Historic Site, No Runway Necessary

At the Sully Historic Site, No Runway Necessary

By Joe Motheral

The Sully Historic Site in Chantilly, also known as the Sully Plantation, has come a long way since original planners of Dulles Airport in the late 1950s wanted to build a runway on the property, until wiser heads prevailed.

The 130-acre site now includes the main house, six outbuildings, a Visitors’ Center and grounds located in Chantilly off Route 28. It was built by enslaved people in 1794 for Richard Bland Lee, an uncle of Robert E. Lee. The Lee family lived there until 1811 when the property went through a succession of owners until 1959, when the Federal Government deeded it to the Fairfax County Park Authority.

Slave quarters at Sully Historic Site.

The Sully House in the spring.

The runway plan was vigorously opposed at the time by the owner, Frederick Nolting, a former ambassador to Vietnam, along with local historian Eddie Wagstaff and the Society of the Lees of Virginia. Wagstaff later endowed the Sully Foundation that still provides support for the site. In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation making Sully a national historic site.

Carol McDonnell, the site manager, said it remains a popular attraction for a wide variety of visitors.

“We’ve had people like Senator Mark Warner take a tour, as well as Sasha Obama when she was in the second grade,” she said. “Of course when the Lees had the house, James Madison was a guest.”

Richard Bland Lee was Northern Virginia’s first congressman and had much to do with moving the nation’s capital from Philadelphia to Washington.

Why the name Sully?

“We don’t know for sure,” McDonnell said. “But Richard Bland Lee studied French agriculture and political writing, and there were memoirs of Maximilien de Bethune, first Duke of Sully in France. There is also a Chateau de Sully, built in the late 14 th century, on the banks of the Loire River. Early Americans were very much into French culture. An example of this connection is the name Chantilly, where Sully is located.”

Originally, Sully was farmed by as many as 40 enslaved people owned by Lee and managed by an overseer. Five of the original buildings have survived and the Authority built representative slave cabins. There is a kitchen/laundry with a covered walkway to the main house, a smoke house, and a stone dairy.

The farm originally raised tobacco, but eventually switched into diversified edible crop rotation: timothy grass, clover, apples, peaches, wheat, and rye, among others.

The main house was described in a letter to his wife by then owner Stephen Collins in September, 1794.

“It is a very clever house,” he wrote. “Has an elegant hall 12 feet wide and handsome staircase and two very pretty rooms on the first flore(sic)…two large and one small chamber in the second story and one handsome and large chamber in the third or garitt story and another good lodging room besides.”

During the Civil War, the Sully House served as a temporary resting place for the wounded. Letters and various sources mention hearing the gunfire from the Ox Hill battle and that of Manassas. All that history, as well as extensive information on the enslaved community, is available during tours and in Sully House exhibits.

To arrange a tour, visit www.fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/sully. Tours are conducted Thursday through Sunday.