[2][3][4] Published accounts have credited Abingdon as being the home to the progenitor of all weeping willows (Salix babylonica) living in the United States.

[5] Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which occupies part of Abingdon's grounds, contains indoor and outdoor displays that commemorate the plantation's history.

[6] The land that contains Abingdon was originally part of a larger holding granted in 1669 by letters patent to shipmaster Robert Howson for headrights for settlers that he had brought to the Colony of Virginia.

[8] In 1746, a survey map that Daniel Jennings prepared showed that Gerrard Alexander owned a house on a portion of the Howson patent that was north of Four Mile Creek.

[17][18] However, Jacky Custis' eagerness and inexperience allowed Robert Alexander to take advantage of him in the transaction, because compound interest during the 24-year term would eventually transform the £12,000 purchase price into payments totalling over £48,000.

[16][21] During the year (1778) that Jacky Custis purchased Abingdon, his neighbors in Fairfax County elected him to the Virginia General Assembly as a delegate.

[2][11][17] However, Jacky Custis contracted "camp fever" in 1781 at the Siege of Yorktown while serving as Washington's aide and died shortly after Cornwallis surrendered there.

[21] Although John Parke Custis had become well-established at Abingdon, his financial matters were in a state of disarray due to his poor business judgement and wartime taxation.

[19] Because the estate had been paid for with Continental currency, the heirs of Gerrard Alexander brought suit against the Custis and Stuart families to recover their money.

[27] In 1800, Walter Alexander obtained ownership of the southern half of the estate, which contained the 545 acres (221 ha) on which the Abingdon house stood.

[5][31] Another reportedly grew from a slip of the Abingdon willow that American General Horatio Gates had planted at the entrance to his Rose Hill Farm in Manhattan.

[39] When the American Civil War began in 1861, Bushrod and Alexander Hunter (2nd) left the Abingdon plantation to join Confederate forces.

[29][43][44] In 1904, Alexander Hunter (2nd) authored a book (Johnny Reb and Billy Yank) in which he recorded his recollections of the Civil War and its aftermath.

He wrote of Abingdon, whose structures and landscaping were apparently destroyed during the war: We lived on a splendid estate of 650 acres, lying on the Potomac, between Alexandria and Washington.

I doubt whether in the whole Southland there had existed a finer country seat; the house was built solidly, as if to defy time itself, with its beautiful trees, fine orchards, its terraced lawns, graveled walks leading to the river a quarter of a mile away; the splendid barns, the stables with fine horses (for which my father, a retired naval officer, had a special fondness), the servants quarters, where dwelt the old family retainers and their offspring, some fifty or more.

[39][47][44][48] Congressman Garfield received as compensation 43 acres (17 ha) in a part of Abingdon west of the Alexandria Canal that Alexander Hunter had platted in 1874 as the town of Abington.

[2] Following the Civil War, Alexander Hunter (2nd) was employed for 40 years as a clerk in the federal United States General Land Office.

[57] The booklet illustrated a house at Abingdon (identified as the "birth-place of Nellie Custis") that reportedly stood on the bank of Potomac River, a mile east of the railway's tracks beyond a brickyard.

[61] The house was painted white with green shutters, had a shingled hip roof, and had a scattering grove of big trees to the front and sides.

[4][62] At the east front was located Abingdon's principal garden where the land sloped gradually down to the Potomac River shore about five hundred yards away.

[56][64][67][68] Visitors reported that people were tenting and enjoying a campfire nearby and that souvenir hunters had removed a cornerstone and parts of a chimney.

[72] In addition, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) worked on the Abingdon ruins, which in the early 1930s were located in the median of the George Washington Memorial Parkway.

The CCC landscaped the grounds and built a parking lot, a concrete pad for a monument, and a cinder access road from the parkway to the site of the ruins.

[1][6][56] Photographs taken in 1934 and in the 1950s showed the conditions of parts of the ruins during that period, as did a sketch in a pamphlet describing the recently opened airport that the United States Civil Aeronautics Administration authored in 1941.

[80] The 1991 report concluded with a recommendation from the Authority's engineering division that included:..... the undertaking of an appropriate archaeological data recovery program at the site and the construction of a "museum quality" interpretive exhibit to be located within the terminal complex.

The basis for this recommendation was the intention to avoid an adverse effect to the Abingdon Site (through comprehensive archaeological data recovery and public interpretation program) while at the same time providing the desired amount of parking in the near-terminal area.

[81]The Airports Authority's actions ignited a public preservation effort that culminated in 1992 with legislation that the Virginia General Assembly enacted and that Governor L. Douglas Wilder approved.

[82] The legislation required the Airports Authority to "take all steps necessary to insure the preservation in place, the study, and the interpretation to the public" of the Abingdon ruins during a one-year period that followed the law's enactment.

[92] As a result, when the Airports Authority completed the Abingdon site's restoration in 1998, the ruins were reportedly gone, the main foundation looked new and a well had been covered over.

[6][100][101] It can be reached by walking from either garage, from the south end of the nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport Metrorail station and from the Mount Vernon Bike-Hike Trail.