three years ending in 1771. Fitzhugh was a friend and colleague of George Washington, whose family's farm was just down the Rappahannock River from Chatham. Washington's diaries note that he was a frequent guest at Chatham. He and Fitzhugh had served together in the House of Burgesses before the American Revolution and shared a love of farming and horses. Fitzhugh's daughter, Molly, married the first president's step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, and became a leading abolitionist together with her friend Ann Randolph Meade Page. Their daughter Mary Anna, born at Ann Page's estate, later wed the future Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who freed the Custis slaves as the executor after his in-laws' deaths. The plantation included an orchard, mill, and a race track where Fitzhugh's horses vied with those of other planters for prize money. Fitzhugh named the mansion after the British parliamentarian William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, who championed many of the opinions held by American colonists before the Revolutionary War. Flanking the main house were dozens of supporting structures: slave quarters, a dairy, ice house, barns, and stables, plus fish traps installed on the river. Fitzhugh sold the Chatham plantation to Major Churchill Jones, who had served under Col. William Washington and Gen. "Light Horse" Harry Lee. The elderly Fitzhugh then moved to a city house in Alexandria, Virginia. Jones was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati and significantly improved the estate, adding terraces down to the Rappahannock River and constructing the first bridge across that river to Fredericksburg. The bridge took a year and a half to build but washed away in the flood of 1826, slightly more than three years after Churchill Jones died. Churchill's brother William Jones had long owned an estate, Ellwood Manor, in Spotsylvania County, and inherited Chatham around the time his wife of 40 years died. Hannah Jones Coalter was William's daughter by his first wife. After her first husband died in 1825, she married three-time widower and Virginia Court of Appeals judge John Coalter (1771–1838). She received the deed to Chatham as their wedding present. Meanwhile, the 78-year-old William Jones remarried Lucy Gordon, his late wife's niece. Their 18-year marriage produced a daughter, Betty Churchill Jones, who in 1848 married her former tutor, James Horace Lacy of Mississippi, son of a Presbyterian minister. Chatham remained known for its hospitality: Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and William Henry Harrison