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Chips Off an Old Sandstone Cutter's Block Berryville's Family Tree Traces to An Escaped Slave By Janet Lubman Rathner Special to The Washington Post Saturday, October 28, 2006; G01 FROM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700694_pf.html Rural, winding Berryville Road can be as difficult to pinpoint as it is to navigate. Just ask lifelong Berryville Road resident Shirley Shields. "We lived in Seneca. The telephone number was Gaithersburg and the post office was Germantown," said Shields, 64. "They didn't know where to put us." Apparently there is still some question. Mail destined for Berryville Road, 3.5 narrow, meandering miles linking Seneca Road to Darnestown Road in Montgomery County, still carries a Germantown Zip code. Meanwhile Shields and everyone around her, many of them cousins living along the first half mile of Berryville Road just above Seneca Road, continue to refer to where they live as Seneca. The family presence dates to just after the Civil War. That was when Shields's great-grandfather, Jack Clipper, a Virginia slave who ran away and joined the Union army, settled in the area. Clipper supported his wife, Martha, and 10 children by working as a stonecutter at the Seneca Stone Quarry. Demand for the red sandstone was great. Relatively soft when first quarried, it hardened over time, making it a desirable building material. The Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall, the National Building Museum downtown, and parts of the Library of Congress and the Capitol are among the edifices constructed with stone that was cut and shaped at Seneca and then loaded onto a barge on the C&O Canal to be sent down to Washington. That the buildings are still standing is testament to the stone's viability, but at the time of their construction, there were critics. A variety of well-to-do names were connected to the Seneca Stone Quarry. John Parke Custis Peter, a great-grandson of Martha Washington, was among the early owners. According to an article published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper on April 20, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant and an assortment of "high Government officers" stood to gain financially from the use of the Seneca sandstone. This raised concerns over whether the stone was truly as sound a building material as was claimed or was merely a ploy to further line the pockets of the already very well-heeled. A government investigation was launched. "The committee-room . . . presents the remarkable spectacle of experts, of apparently the same experience and intelligence, swearing on one side that Seneca stone possesses remarkable qualities, that it will stand for ever, that it is cheap, that it is fire-proof, that it does not absorb moisture, that it will stand more pressure than any other sandstone, that it is better than granite for some purposes, and that it is altogether superior to bluestone, etc.," the article reads. "Experts on the other side swear that Seneca is rotten, that it disintegrates and turns into mud on coming in contact with water; that it is not uniform in strength; that it is unsafe to work it; that it is costlier than granite and absolutely worthless; that it can be crushed into mud under one's foot; that it is an 'open and shut' game, and that if the witnesses had their way, it would never be used. . . . Whatever may be the result of the investigation, the great Reform Party of the country have certainly strong grounds for entertaining suspicion of the excellence of this material." The controversy does not appear to have affected Jack Clipper and his co-workers. He labored at Seneca Quarry until it closed in 1900. A photo from the 1890s shows Clipper standing with one other black colleague in a crowd of workers in front of the Seneca Quarry. "I heard he was one of the first blacks who worked at the quarry," said Clipper's great-granddaughter Bernice Johnson, 80, a retired mail specialist at National Geographic. Jack Clipper died at age 55 in 1903. Martha died in 1905. Their grown children remained in the area. Three of the sons ventured closer to Washington, building homes on what is now called Clipper Lane, off River Road in Bethesda. The others settled in or near Seneca. They remain there today. "It's a tight-knit community. For me growing up here, I wouldn't trade it," said Emily Johnson, 53, a great-great-granddaughter who works in quality assurance at Geico. The closeness is why she stays. "There's a lot of history and family values here," Johnson said. A century after his death, Jack Clipper's features are apparent in the faces of 11 Berryville Road residents -- all direct descendants -- who gathered at Shields's house on a recent Saturday. Most have lived on Berryville Road all their lives. Martha Clipper Dixon, 76, Jack Clipper's granddaughter, is one of the few who left and pursued a career out of the area. Dixon worked in New York where she was the assistant to the director of the city's finance department. She returned to Berryville Road upon her retirement in 2002. "I stayed there 50 years, but this is why I came back," Dixon said of the close family that surrounds her. Another draw is Seneca Community Church, across the street from Shields's house. "It's mostly Clipper descendants," Dixon said. Berryville Road residents live within walking distance of both Seneca Creek State Park and the C&O Canal. Their neighborhood has a rural feel, even though it is close to more-developed areas. "It's absolutely gorgeous, very rural, surrounded by trees and woods, and yet close to the Quince Orchard shopping center. Shady Grove at [Interstate] 270 is right up the road," said Jane Weissman, a real estate agent with Long and Foster's Potomac Village office. Others outside the family are discovering Berryville Road. The past 15 years have seen a number of large homes going up on what had been open land, Weissman said. "A home on nine acres, a five bedroom, 4 1/2 -bath Colonial with a circular drive and a fountain, built in 1990, sold for a million dollars this past June," Weissman said. "Nine acres for a million; that's pretty good." As has happened throughout the region, smaller houses have appreciated also, Weissman said. "A rambler built in 1966 with four bedrooms and three bathrooms, sitting on half an acre, sold in March for $535,000. Ten years ago, a similar house sold for $120,000," Weissman said. Jack Clipper's progeny watch what is happening along Berryville Road with resignation. "The larger homes take away from what it used to be," said Barbara Jackson, a great-great-granddaughter. Sally Tynes-MBoye, another great-great-granddaughter, agreed. "We don't want the look to change, but you ride around and you see them, the McMansions," Tynes-MBoye said. So far, most of the development is happening closer to Darnestown, but Clipper family members say solicitations to buy their properties are frequent. "Every day we get mail," Shields said. She has no plans to sell. "It's God's country. That's what I would tell them," she said. Her cousins feel similarly. "We live on a rural, rustic road," Tynes-MBoye said. "It's peaceful. It's quiet. We've got families who've been here forever. At least at this end, we'll keep the developers away."