Old Town Tales

The Female Stranger

A local oddity with a romanticized tale can be discovered in Alexandria: The Female Stranger Grave 

Two hundred years ago, a well-dressed man and a woman obscured by a long veil rent a room at the Gadsby's Tavern. During their stay, the stranger becomes ill and is seen by the towns best doctor who is sworn to secrecy of the visit. The unnamed woman mysteriously dies and is buried in secret in Old Town Alexandria. The man vanishes from town never to be seen again. To this day, visitors claim to see a woman wandering the grounds covered in a thick veil...

The Grave is in St. Paul's Cemetery of the St Paul's Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia with the inscription: “To the memory of a Female Stranger whose mortal sufferings terminated on the 14th day of October 1816 Aged 23 years and 8 months. This stone was placed here by her disconsolate Husband in whose arms she sighed out her latest breath and who under God did his utmost even to soothe the cold dead ear of death.”

Shirley Marshall-Lee

Alexandria’s Shirley Marshall-Lee is the World’s First African American Female Scuba Diver.

In 1966, Marshall-Lee become the first female member of the Underwater Adventure Seekers, the first African American scuba diving club based in Washington, D.C. Since then, Marshall-Lee has been inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame and the Alexandria African American Hall of Fame. She is also a founding member of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers.

Marshall-Lee’s diving and swimming have garnered awards, including first place in the 1972 Atlantic Skin Diving Council Rodeo, the free diving portion of the Middle Atlantic Spearfishing Championship and in the USA Swim for Fitness program in 2001 by swimming 44 miles in four months. 

Dave Grohl

The punk-rock icon who rose to fame as the drummer of Nirvana then became the founder of the Foo Fighters is a former resident of Alexandria!

In 1999, Grohl built a 24-track recording studio in the basement of his home on Nicholson Lane, recording various songs for the third Foo Fighters album, "There is Nothing Left to Lose."  Grohl continues to speak about his Alexandria influences through music and documentaries. In songs like "Arlandria" and "The Feast and the Famine," Grohl references different locations in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C.

The Spite House

A bitter cocktail for a bitter story. Located on Queen St. in the Old Town Alexandria, Va., The Spite House is famous for being dubbed the narrowest house in America by Ripley's Believe It or Not. The Spite House is 7 feet wide, about 25 feet deep and totals 325 square feet in two stories. 

It gained it's name for supposedly being built out of spite by John Hollensbury, the owner of one of the adjacent houses, who was tired of horse-drawn carriages flying down the alley and hitting the walls of his house. By 1830 the side of his home was pockmarked from all the collisions with wagons and Hollensbury decided he’d had enough. From inside the living room you can still see the spots where wagons smashed against the brick walls and incited the fury of John Hollenbury.

The two-century-old residence has now become a beloved part of Old Town’s historic fabric.