What's Clifton's Lynne Garvey-Hodge Up To?

Clifton's own Lynne Garvey-Hodge will be wearing Edwardian clothes and a sash on Aug. 25, the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. She'll be joined by by other reenactors at the Workhouse Arts Center, when the festivities begin at 1:45 p.m.

It's a far cry from owning and operating Clifton's Canary Cottage bed and breakfast, which Garvey did from 2001 - 2011, but the author and speaker is at home with her personas.

"But owning a bed and breakfast in the future is a possibility," said Garvey-Hodge, who is also a local historian and author of the book “Clifton”.

Garvey-Hodge, who speaks to local history groups and associations, is also a founding member of the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial at the Workhouse (the former Lorton Prison) and is a member of the Fairfax County History Commission.

The Lorton Reformatory held about 200 suffragists who protested outside the White House in 1917. About 70 of the women were brutally treated, which helped lead to the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Her personas include Mrs. Robert Walker, a suffragist protester who was incarcerated at the Workhouse, and a recent addition - Antoinette Kelsey Devereux - the wife of John Henry Devereux, for whom the Town of Clifton was named (when it was known as Devereux Station).

Devereux was the daughter of the former mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, and “was always very politically correct, because her husband was dealing with amazingly tyrannical railroad men,” she said.

Garvey-Hodge will be in costume as Devereux on Nov. 7 at the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum and will talk about her character’s life during the Civil War in Fairfax County.