Transcription
The persons most helpful in giving oral history of the Richard Merchant family, who owned and lived at the residence on the corner of Duke and Caeron Streets, now known as the Weems-Botts Museum, are Mr. Cecil Garrison, Mr. and Mrs. Ruel Waters, Mrs. Annie Shumate. These people were neighbors, friends or relatives, who knew individual members of the family personally. Their contributions helped to make this paper possible.
For almost a century, the Weems-Botts Museum was the home of the Richard Merchant family. Mr. Merchant was considered to be a successful businessman of his day. He is thought to have owned and operated a store on Main Street in Dumfries. Mr. Cecil Garrison and Mrs. Gary West have store bills and receipts made out to Mr. Merchant. Much of his wealth was in the form of land covered with timber, which was gradually disposed of by his widow and daughter after his death in 1906.
Mr. Merchant owned the land where Cecil Garrison, Mrs. McKnight, and Mr. James Bishop now live. He also owend the Henderson House where Rev. and Mrs. A.H. Shumate live today. Skip Cosner's Used Car Lot was once a part of this estate.
Mr. Cecil Garrison, one of the few people in Dumfries that remembers Mr. Richard Merchant, says that he looked the part of a Southern gentleman, with a long beard down on his chest. He always wore a swallow-tail coat and a hat which distinguished him from the general male resident of the town of Dumfries.
Mr. Merchant was a small farmer. He raised cows, chickens, hogs and horses. The barn stood where Mr. Cecil Garrison's home is now located. Between the Weems-Botts house and Mr. Garrison's house was a vegetable garden that Mr. Merchant tended.
The genealogy of the family dates back to the early 1700's. The first Richard Merchent (1752-no birth date given), was a native of Maryland. He married Mary Sweeting July 28, 1723, and they had four children. Old St. Paul's church in Baltimore County, Maryland, has records of the births of the first three children, but the last one was born in Virginia, near Winchester.
The oldest son of Richard Merchant of Maryland, was William Sr. born in 1725-no death date. He married a lady by the name of Priscilla on March 25, 1748, and they had ten children. The third child, William Jr. was the first Merchant to live in Prince William County.Transcriber
Rachel Hughes
