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In Mercy Street, James Green, Sr. is "the patriarch of the Green family and keeper of its fortune" who is trying to balance his business interests and his family's Southern loyalties. "His schemes to avoid signing the Oath of Allegiance and provide coffins for the Union army eventually land him in trouble when a new provost marshal comes to town."
Actor Gary Cole describes James Green Sr: “If there’s a basis of his character, at least early on, it is to make the best of an undesirable situation. But he starts out with the attitude that there is really nothing he can do about it, that it is out of his hands. And in order to hang on to what he’s got, his first choice is to appease and work with and try to charm, if you will, the enemy while still maintaining some kind of integrity. And as the story goes on, that’s what becomes more difficult for him to do, both for himself and for his family. His relationship with his son [James, Junior] is filled with a lot of tension. His son feels a deep kind of anxiety, regret and even bitterness for not being able to serve in the conflict due to a physical handicap, while James, Sr. is more interested in him staying to help with the businesses. So you have this family in a captured community, and even though they are at the moment allowed to live on the premises, they do so with everyone else sharing it. So he has to spend a lot of his time saying things he doesn’t truly believe in and just kind of capitulating.” |
... he starts out with the attitude that there is really nothing he can do about it, that it is out of his hands. -- Gary Cole on James Green Sr.
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James Green Senior as he was in real life
Carlyle House, where the Green family lived, in 2009 (Wikimedia Commons)
The richest man in town, James Green Senior owned a luxury hotel (Mansion House) that was one of the best on the East Coast, a large oats-producing farm, a coal wharf, and a lumber yard. He was also an entrepreneurial investor in many of the progressive infrastructure and manufacturing initiatives that were galvanizing Alexandria in the 1850s. He had recently transferred his high-tech export-oriented furniture factory employing twenty-six hands to his adult sons John and Stephen (Green and Brother Furniture).
James Green also bought real estate, both rural and urban: he owned properties in New York City and in country Virginia, and many properties in Alexandria, including the historic Carlyle House. James had owned three slaves in 1850 and had manumitted (freed) one. Ten years later he probably owned a twenty-six year old “mulatto” African American man; he certainly “rented in” sixteen other enslaved people, male and female, to work in his hotel. The factory workforce ran on free labor, as did the oats farm.
James was a pillar of the community, and a patriarch – the father of nine, now young adults mostly married, and a grandfather of half a dozen, with several new arrivals each year. He was married to Jane Muir Green, the daughter of the other major furniture manufacturer in town and the mother of all his children. Their youngest child, Alice, died suddenly in 1860, devastating both parents. The two youngest daughters still at home, Lydia and Emma, would have comforted them.
James was politically influential and well-networked, and had some formal involvement with politics. In 1854 he was elected to Alexandria’s Common Council as a Whig, but became less involved after that. He didn’t stand up to declare his vote choices in the 1859 election, but all three of his sons did and shouted out the names of the Opposition candidates, opposing the surging Democrats, increasingly defined by militant pro-slavery views. The threat of war seems to have again propelled James into more overt political activities. He once again voted with Stephen and John in the 1860 and 1861 municipal elections, calling out his support for Opposition candidates, even when his sons strayed to support a Democrat for a local office. The men James associated with were also Opposition supporters. This included his good friend and brother-in-law Stephen Shinn, who assisted the Federal authorities overseeing Alexandria during the Civil War.
James Green also bought real estate, both rural and urban: he owned properties in New York City and in country Virginia, and many properties in Alexandria, including the historic Carlyle House. James had owned three slaves in 1850 and had manumitted (freed) one. Ten years later he probably owned a twenty-six year old “mulatto” African American man; he certainly “rented in” sixteen other enslaved people, male and female, to work in his hotel. The factory workforce ran on free labor, as did the oats farm.
James was a pillar of the community, and a patriarch – the father of nine, now young adults mostly married, and a grandfather of half a dozen, with several new arrivals each year. He was married to Jane Muir Green, the daughter of the other major furniture manufacturer in town and the mother of all his children. Their youngest child, Alice, died suddenly in 1860, devastating both parents. The two youngest daughters still at home, Lydia and Emma, would have comforted them.
James was politically influential and well-networked, and had some formal involvement with politics. In 1854 he was elected to Alexandria’s Common Council as a Whig, but became less involved after that. He didn’t stand up to declare his vote choices in the 1859 election, but all three of his sons did and shouted out the names of the Opposition candidates, opposing the surging Democrats, increasingly defined by militant pro-slavery views. The threat of war seems to have again propelled James into more overt political activities. He once again voted with Stephen and John in the 1860 and 1861 municipal elections, calling out his support for Opposition candidates, even when his sons strayed to support a Democrat for a local office. The men James associated with were also Opposition supporters. This included his good friend and brother-in-law Stephen Shinn, who assisted the Federal authorities overseeing Alexandria during the Civil War.
Mansion House Hotel, 1860 (Library of Congress)
The source of the Green fortune was the fabulous, innovative furniture factory that James had inherited from his immigrant father as a young man. Not only did the factory produce beautiful furniture, including upholstered items, Green and Brother also dealt in the newly fashionable metallic coffins.
Throughout the 1850s the Greens had a country home three miles from Alexandria, The Grove, where they lived much of the time, and entertained visiting friends and relatives. When they needed to be in Alexandria they would stay at the hotel or, perhaps, Carlyle House which was part of the hotel, at least for census purposes. They sold The Grove in 1860 (and bought it back in 1868) and must have moved to one of their other properties, perhaps Carlyle House. In late 1861, when Mansion House Hotel was taken over to become a military hospital, they moved into their old family home next to the furniture factory, on Prince Street.
James was born in 1801 in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. His mother died when he was still a child. William, his father, married again and in 1817 the whole family, including the teenage James, boarded a ship and moved to the United States. This seems a radical move for a man over 40 years of age! But William, a skilled cabinetmaker, must have brought some capital with him and soon established a business, first in Washington, D.C. and then in Alexandria, on King Street. A canny marketer, in 1817, just after setting up business in Alexandria, William donated a set of chairs to his church, St. Paul’s Episcopal.
The death toll was staggering. James’s stepmother died only a year after moving to Alexandria and William married a third time. But he died in 1824 leaving a widow with a new baby and two other small children as well as a teenage son, William Jr, who died the next year, and two adult children – James and his sister Sarah. James would have received a good education in England and would have spoken with an English accent that would have stayed with him throughout his life.
After his father’s and brother’s deaths, James – at 24 years old now the “man of the family”– took over the business. These first years were hard indeed, and then in 1827 – FIRE!
The Alexandria Gazette reported on January 23 that a fire began in James Green's cabinetmaking shop near 112 South Royal Street. It moved at great speed, and a northwest wind carried burning shingles 400 feet to the west, starting a second blaze on Prince Street. Firefighters came from Georgetown and Washington, and a traveling circus company assisted in putting out the fire. Fifty-three buildings were lost, at a cost of $107,277. It was the worst fire in Alexandria’s history.
[A century and a half later, Alexandria Archaeology would find several remnants of Green furniture on the site as well as decorative brass furniture hardware, such as knobs, lock plates and escutcheons.]
Despite this setback, James’s re-built factory became a roaring success. By 1833 his mahogany dining chairs stood literally in state: in the newly-refurbished State Dining Room of the White House.
In the midst of all this chaos and tragedy, James married Jane Muir, daughter of Alexandria’s other major furniture maker, also a British immigrant. John Muir, Jane’s father, was Scottish as was his wife, a needlework expert who taught needlework at one of Alexandria’s four private academies for young ladies.
The Green furniture factory moved in 1834 to the southeast corner of Fairfax and Prince Streets, transforming a three-story brick building used for the storage of corn and wheat into a furniture factory. James brought in the newest technology, installing advanced steam engines for sawing and turning wood. Upstairs was converted into show rooms for local customers. The building’s fine cupola with a clock that chimed out the time to one and all became a proud local institution.
By mid-century, the business reached New York; Washington and Baltimore were important parts of the family’s map, on an almost daily basis. The factory provided furniture for the US government and hotels, near and far, including fine hotels like the Planter’s Hotel in St. Louis, James’ own Mansion House Hotel, and for many of Virginia’s most eminent families, including the Lees.
The buying spree continued: in 1839 James had bought a three-story duplex with dormer windows on Prince Street for a growing family of three boys and six girls. In 1850 he purchased a sixteen-acre track near the Episcopal Theological College three miles from the city center, with views of the Potomac and Washington D.C. The extended Green family remained close and James’s children were friendly with their many cousins, aunts and uncles on both the Green side and the Muir side.
In 1847 James turned his eye to Alexandria’s Ward 2 area and in quick succession bought seven parcels of land around the historic Carlyle House, finally buying the mansion itself and the three-story Bank of Alexandria building. First, the maker of furniture for hotels converted the bank building into a hotel and then, in an audacious move, he expanded the hotel southward, entirely blocking Carlyle House from North Fairfax Street and creating a 100-room, four-story building, the largest in the city. He furnished it with Green and Brother furniture. Green’s Mansion House Hotel, under James’s proprietorship, was easily the largest and most luxurious hotel in town and one of the notable hotels of the east coast. In 1860 James would say to the census-taker that his occupation was now “hotel keeper.” Mansion House Hotel was testimony to James Green’s vision, business acumen, and energy; his plans were long-term, both for his family and his adopted city.
James now became a major employer of slave labor, “renting in” those fifteen enslaved men and women to serve in that bustling establishment. There were also several white domestic servants at Mansion House, a labor force, free and enslaved, that was kept busy cleaning the chambers, serving food, assisting guests and running the stables.
By the late 1850s James was a prominent industrial pioneer and entrepreneur who topped the city in his declared wealth in the 1860 census and was the third richest by taxes paid in 1859. He was a mainstay of Alexandria’s business ambitions. As a capitalist and entrepreneur he had been a director of the Alexander Canal Company and the Mount Vernon Cotton Factory; he had built a coal wharf for transshipping Appalachian coal coming down the C & O Canal into Alexandria. He was one of the incorporators of the Alexandria Water Company. He dealt in both city and country real estate. His lumber yard also sold building supplies.
As a philanthropist, he was a director of the Alexandria Orphan Asylum and each year took in orphans to train in his furniture factory as apprentices. In all, he was a leading force in shaping Alexandria’s economic future.
His children had grown to take their own places in the community. John was married and a father, and now a businessman in his own right, as part-owner of the factory and a home owner. Two of James’ daughters had married into the Stringfellow family of Culpeper – and a third daughter, Emma, was being courted by a third Stringfellow, Frank. James Senior was withholding his consent to their marriage, because Frank could not afford to support a wife, much less James’s daughter.
Trapped in Alexandria
The war changed everything for the Greens as it did for Alexandria. The city took decades to recover; the Greens never did. It would be to the Prince Street house (now numbered 212 and 214) that Stephen and his parents would move after the occupation of their hotel by the US Army. James’ and Jane’s children scattered, as the war deepened: Emma and Stephen probably stayed in Alexandria, but Mary moved to Indianapolis; daughters Sal and Jeanie were further south in Virginia with their husbands, son Jim was an early enlister in the army of the Confederacy, while John, the oldest, at the family farm in Centerville in the early days of the war, later joined the Army of Tennessee as an officer and quartermaster.
After the War
James Senior fought the US government through the courts for years, seeking the monthly rent of $750 that he had been promised to turn over his hotel to the Union Army, adding a claim for $5000 in damages. He refused to sign the federal loyalty oath for fear, he said, that this would lead to confiscation of his other properties in Virginia; his claims were thus denied “as he was believed disloyal.” Finally on May 5, 1865, the day the Confederate government was dissolved, James Green took a highly qualified oath of loyalty, declaring that “I have not since the first day of January, 1864, voluntarily in any way, given aid or assistance to those in rebellion against the Government of the United States.” The fight with the US government for rent and damages continued.
In Alexandria, on August 22, 1880, Jane Muir Green died and was buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery. Eighteen days later, on September 8, James Green died and he, too, was buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery.
On January 29, 1883, the US government awarded the late James Green Senior $32,750 for 43 months and 20 days rent of Green’s Mansion House Hotel, but denied the claim for damages.
Throughout the 1850s the Greens had a country home three miles from Alexandria, The Grove, where they lived much of the time, and entertained visiting friends and relatives. When they needed to be in Alexandria they would stay at the hotel or, perhaps, Carlyle House which was part of the hotel, at least for census purposes. They sold The Grove in 1860 (and bought it back in 1868) and must have moved to one of their other properties, perhaps Carlyle House. In late 1861, when Mansion House Hotel was taken over to become a military hospital, they moved into their old family home next to the furniture factory, on Prince Street.
James was born in 1801 in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. His mother died when he was still a child. William, his father, married again and in 1817 the whole family, including the teenage James, boarded a ship and moved to the United States. This seems a radical move for a man over 40 years of age! But William, a skilled cabinetmaker, must have brought some capital with him and soon established a business, first in Washington, D.C. and then in Alexandria, on King Street. A canny marketer, in 1817, just after setting up business in Alexandria, William donated a set of chairs to his church, St. Paul’s Episcopal.
The death toll was staggering. James’s stepmother died only a year after moving to Alexandria and William married a third time. But he died in 1824 leaving a widow with a new baby and two other small children as well as a teenage son, William Jr, who died the next year, and two adult children – James and his sister Sarah. James would have received a good education in England and would have spoken with an English accent that would have stayed with him throughout his life.
After his father’s and brother’s deaths, James – at 24 years old now the “man of the family”– took over the business. These first years were hard indeed, and then in 1827 – FIRE!
The Alexandria Gazette reported on January 23 that a fire began in James Green's cabinetmaking shop near 112 South Royal Street. It moved at great speed, and a northwest wind carried burning shingles 400 feet to the west, starting a second blaze on Prince Street. Firefighters came from Georgetown and Washington, and a traveling circus company assisted in putting out the fire. Fifty-three buildings were lost, at a cost of $107,277. It was the worst fire in Alexandria’s history.
[A century and a half later, Alexandria Archaeology would find several remnants of Green furniture on the site as well as decorative brass furniture hardware, such as knobs, lock plates and escutcheons.]
Despite this setback, James’s re-built factory became a roaring success. By 1833 his mahogany dining chairs stood literally in state: in the newly-refurbished State Dining Room of the White House.
In the midst of all this chaos and tragedy, James married Jane Muir, daughter of Alexandria’s other major furniture maker, also a British immigrant. John Muir, Jane’s father, was Scottish as was his wife, a needlework expert who taught needlework at one of Alexandria’s four private academies for young ladies.
The Green furniture factory moved in 1834 to the southeast corner of Fairfax and Prince Streets, transforming a three-story brick building used for the storage of corn and wheat into a furniture factory. James brought in the newest technology, installing advanced steam engines for sawing and turning wood. Upstairs was converted into show rooms for local customers. The building’s fine cupola with a clock that chimed out the time to one and all became a proud local institution.
By mid-century, the business reached New York; Washington and Baltimore were important parts of the family’s map, on an almost daily basis. The factory provided furniture for the US government and hotels, near and far, including fine hotels like the Planter’s Hotel in St. Louis, James’ own Mansion House Hotel, and for many of Virginia’s most eminent families, including the Lees.
The buying spree continued: in 1839 James had bought a three-story duplex with dormer windows on Prince Street for a growing family of three boys and six girls. In 1850 he purchased a sixteen-acre track near the Episcopal Theological College three miles from the city center, with views of the Potomac and Washington D.C. The extended Green family remained close and James’s children were friendly with their many cousins, aunts and uncles on both the Green side and the Muir side.
In 1847 James turned his eye to Alexandria’s Ward 2 area and in quick succession bought seven parcels of land around the historic Carlyle House, finally buying the mansion itself and the three-story Bank of Alexandria building. First, the maker of furniture for hotels converted the bank building into a hotel and then, in an audacious move, he expanded the hotel southward, entirely blocking Carlyle House from North Fairfax Street and creating a 100-room, four-story building, the largest in the city. He furnished it with Green and Brother furniture. Green’s Mansion House Hotel, under James’s proprietorship, was easily the largest and most luxurious hotel in town and one of the notable hotels of the east coast. In 1860 James would say to the census-taker that his occupation was now “hotel keeper.” Mansion House Hotel was testimony to James Green’s vision, business acumen, and energy; his plans were long-term, both for his family and his adopted city.
James now became a major employer of slave labor, “renting in” those fifteen enslaved men and women to serve in that bustling establishment. There were also several white domestic servants at Mansion House, a labor force, free and enslaved, that was kept busy cleaning the chambers, serving food, assisting guests and running the stables.
By the late 1850s James was a prominent industrial pioneer and entrepreneur who topped the city in his declared wealth in the 1860 census and was the third richest by taxes paid in 1859. He was a mainstay of Alexandria’s business ambitions. As a capitalist and entrepreneur he had been a director of the Alexander Canal Company and the Mount Vernon Cotton Factory; he had built a coal wharf for transshipping Appalachian coal coming down the C & O Canal into Alexandria. He was one of the incorporators of the Alexandria Water Company. He dealt in both city and country real estate. His lumber yard also sold building supplies.
As a philanthropist, he was a director of the Alexandria Orphan Asylum and each year took in orphans to train in his furniture factory as apprentices. In all, he was a leading force in shaping Alexandria’s economic future.
His children had grown to take their own places in the community. John was married and a father, and now a businessman in his own right, as part-owner of the factory and a home owner. Two of James’ daughters had married into the Stringfellow family of Culpeper – and a third daughter, Emma, was being courted by a third Stringfellow, Frank. James Senior was withholding his consent to their marriage, because Frank could not afford to support a wife, much less James’s daughter.
Trapped in Alexandria
The war changed everything for the Greens as it did for Alexandria. The city took decades to recover; the Greens never did. It would be to the Prince Street house (now numbered 212 and 214) that Stephen and his parents would move after the occupation of their hotel by the US Army. James’ and Jane’s children scattered, as the war deepened: Emma and Stephen probably stayed in Alexandria, but Mary moved to Indianapolis; daughters Sal and Jeanie were further south in Virginia with their husbands, son Jim was an early enlister in the army of the Confederacy, while John, the oldest, at the family farm in Centerville in the early days of the war, later joined the Army of Tennessee as an officer and quartermaster.
After the War
James Senior fought the US government through the courts for years, seeking the monthly rent of $750 that he had been promised to turn over his hotel to the Union Army, adding a claim for $5000 in damages. He refused to sign the federal loyalty oath for fear, he said, that this would lead to confiscation of his other properties in Virginia; his claims were thus denied “as he was believed disloyal.” Finally on May 5, 1865, the day the Confederate government was dissolved, James Green took a highly qualified oath of loyalty, declaring that “I have not since the first day of January, 1864, voluntarily in any way, given aid or assistance to those in rebellion against the Government of the United States.” The fight with the US government for rent and damages continued.
In Alexandria, on August 22, 1880, Jane Muir Green died and was buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery. Eighteen days later, on September 8, James Green died and he, too, was buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery.
On January 29, 1883, the US government awarded the late James Green Senior $32,750 for 43 months and 20 days rent of Green’s Mansion House Hotel, but denied the claim for damages.