The Potomac and Rappahannock 



land, went to the youngest son, Richard Taylor, who sold it, and 

 for the first time the estate reverted to an outsider, Mr. Smith, who, 

 in turn, sold Fall Hill to Colonel Hellier. 



In 1909, upon the death of Colonel Hellier, Fall Hill came into 

 the possession of the original family again, through Captain Mur- 

 ray Taylor, eldest son of Dr. Taylor. At the present time, his 

 daughter, Mrs. Bessie Forbes Robinson, is chatelaine of the old 

 place, which descends by entail to her daughter, Butler Brayne 

 Thornton Robinson, 



Though the garden, which suffered cruelly during the war, has 

 been replaced to a great extent by modern shrubs and vines, the 

 steep terraces and the thousands of naturalized jonquils, which 

 make them glitter like gold in the spring, give a very good idea 

 of what the spot once was. The driveway around the grass circle 

 in front of the house is still lavishly bordered with jonquils, and 

 ends at an old-fashioned stone carriage block quarried at Fall Hill. 



Mrs. Charles Selden, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. J. R. Taylor, 

 who once lived there, says of the old garden: "A broad gravel 

 walk once led from the carriage block to the house, and from 

 there followed the course of the lawn overlooking the Rappa- 

 hannock River. The terraces which fall from the front of the 

 house are bordered with jonquils of many varieties, and thousands 

 of daffodils grow in large beds under many of the trees on the lawn. 



"On the first terrace, which begins at the brow of the hill, some 

 of the trees which once stood there are still left, though the trellises 

 and arbors, covered with roses and Virginia creeper, that were at 

 one time scattered over the lawn, have disappeared. 



"Extending through the original flower garden at the rear of 

 the house was a Avide gravel path, bordered with masses of cow- 

 slips and hyacinths which bloomed beneath spiraea, pyrus japonica 

 and magnolia conspicua. Microphyllae and damask roses were 

 also in these borders, and beyond them were large beds of hundred- 

 leaf roses." 



[215] • 



