The Shotguns of Del Ray

Developer David N Rust Jr bought 25 Del Ray lots, including two at the east end of Custis Avenue in December 1908. In this case he chose not to build on them, but instead sold them unimproved to Garner Jones and TM Dail of North Carolina in November 1913, who in turn sold them to William T (“WT”) Sledge a year later.

Sledge had been born in Lawrenceville in southern Virginia in 1861, marrying Cora in 1900. As a court clerk he had a comfortable life style, living with Cora, his daughter Lucille, and his mulatto servant Fanny Davis. He presumably had money to invest, but his purchase of the two lots 150 miles away (and that as the bird flies) was quite a gamble. He presumably found a local builder during a visit for his planned improvements.

On the two lots he had built two similar houses on lots now numbered 508 East Custis and 510 East Custis. They were variations of the classic shotgun style, two- story wood-frame units with lath-and-plaster interior walls and wide front porches, slightly offset by being short a couple of feet on the left side (seen from the street).

Each was 20 feet across and 35 feet deep, for a total of 1,400 square feet. They had two bedrooms nd a bath upstairs and a kitchen and dining/sitting room downstairs. The floors were pine except the kitchen, which had linoleum flooring. The roofs were flat with rolled roofing. The houses had neither attics nor basements, although a sub-basement was excavated under the front 8 feet of 510, presumably for utilities.

Unfortunately, WT had been diagnosed with chronic endocarditis in 1913 and he died at home in Lawrenceville, Va in April 1916, aged only 54. Cora was healthier, and lived to age 77, passing away in 1948, still in Lawrenceville.