Oak Hill, Annandale’s historic gem, welcomes visitors once a year

Once a year, Amanda and Dave Scheetz open their house for
public tours, while county leaders greet visitors.

While the Scheetz’ are gracious hosts, the event is a county
requirement: It’s part of the easement they must comply with for living in Oak Hill, the oldest house in Annandale, in the midst of the Wakefield Chapel
community.

This year’s Oak Hill Day featured displays from local
history groups, farm animals from Frying Pan Farm Park, music performed by a Lake Braddock Secondary School students, cookies made by Annandale High School culinary students, and remarks by Fairfax County Supervisor Sharon Bulova and Braddock
Supervisor John Cook. Several descendants of former residents dropped by, too.

The house has been expanded and modified in subsequent, and
much of the property has been sold off to developers. It currently has six
bedrooms and five and a-half bathrooms on a two-and-a-half acre lot with many
200-year-old boxwoods. The owners are prohibited from making any architectural
changes to the historical parts of the house.

During the Oak Hill open house on Sept. 29, a volunteer
guide, John Brown, of A Look Back at Braddock, recounted several stories about happenings at
Oak Hill. One famous visitor was Thomas Jefferson, who slept there, most likely
in a first-floor bedroom.

In 1861, there was a shootout in the Oak Hill kitchen
between three Union scouts and four Confederate cavalrymen. At the time, Oak
Hill was in between the Southern troops stationed in Fairfax and the Union army,
which was within 10 miles of Alexandria, Brown says, so spies and scouts frequently
traveled through the area.

Then, there’s the story about the ghost of  “Miss Ann,” Richard Fitzhugh’s daughter, who
fell in love with a British soldier. During the Revolutionary War, troops from the Continental Army searched the house looking for him. The family was hiding him and Ann in a secret room. The captain escaped, but the troops killed Miss Ann by mistake. People who had been in the house over the years say
they’ve heard what sounds like the officers’ boots running up the stairs.

That story is probably not true, Brown says, because the
house most likely hadn’t been built during the Revolutionary War. Judy Anderson,
whose mother was born in Oak Hill, says her mother “was adamant that the ghost
story was a myth.”

Current owner, Dave Scheetz,  has heard strange noises in the house, however, and says
a few weeks after moving in, there was a strong odor of gunpowder. “We
couldn’t explain it, and it never happened again,” he says.

Anderson was at Oak Hill Day with her sister, Joyce Deputy.
Their mother was part of the Watt family, which owned the house from 1896 to
1930. During that period, the property had 200 acres with fruit orchards.

The Watt’s sold Oak Hill to the Howrey family, which put in
bathrooms and electricity. In more recent years, attempts by developers to tear
down the house were beaten back by community residents, local historians, and
county officials.

Buying the house was an “emotional decision,” says Dave
Scheetz, a government contractor who acknowledges he has “an unhealthy interest
in history.” The previous owner was a developer who had declared bankruptcy,
and it had been on the market for several years, when the Scheetz bought it in 2008. The house had started to degrade, the roof
was leaking, and the property was overgrown, he says.

Two of the chimneys were damaged in last year’s earthquake
and had to be replaced, says Amanda Scheetz, a music teacher at Keene Mill
Elementary School. “The earthquake shook up the house pretty well. It swayed
like a rubber house,” she says, and there are several new cracks.

The Scheetz’s haven’t found any hidden treasures inside.
There are probably lots of old items buried on the property, but the easement
prohibits them from digging up the grounds and disturbing the artifacts.