Last week in this space, Answer Man hammered out the story of Naylor Road SE and the family that gave it its name. The Naylors who ran a ferry across the Eastern Branch (i.e., the Anacostia River) and owned farmland nearby were descended from George Nailor, a.k.a. George the immigrant, who came to Maryland from England in 1668.
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It follows that the name of the road gave its name to places such as the Naylor Gardens apartments and the Naylor movie theater, on Alabama Avenue SE.
But what of other District features, such as Naylor Court in Northwest? Or J. Naylor’s stables, which once stood on E Street NW near 14th Street, and where some Lincoln assassination conspirators boarded their horses?
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The Naylor stables appear to have been operated by a different Naylor family, said Franklin A. Robinson Jr., a co-author of the authoritative “The Naylors of Woodborough: The Stories of Some Descendants of George Nailor, 1655-1734.”
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As for Naylor Court, that could be related to a member of the family: James George Naylor (1820-1902). He was a builder who worked on Gallaudet University and the Franklin School. “My guess is he may be the one connected with Naylor Court,” Robinson said. “There would have been a place there to store his lumber.”
Other Naylors — unrelated to the Naylor Road Naylors — settled in Virginia in the early Colonial period. There was a Quaker family with the name Naylor that settled in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s.
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There are also African American Naylors, including Linneall Naylor of Prince William County, Va., who reached out to Answer Man. She has traced her family to Richmond County, Va., where there is a Naylors Beach. She is related to enslaved African Americans who toiled at Liberia House, a plantation in Manassas, Va.
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Some readers were curious about Naylor’s Seafood, a restaurant on Maine Avenue SW. Yes, that was run by a grandson of James George Naylor named Grover Cleveland Naylor (1884-1962).
This Naylor went on to operate three seafood eateries: at 20 Maine Ave. SW, at 10th and Maine SW and on Georgia Avenue in Wheaton. In his chapter on this branch of the family, Robinson writes, “Naylor’s Shore Platter featured filet of fish, fried scallops, fried oysters, fried shrimp, a crab cake, a fish cake, sliced beets, french fries and coleslaw — all for $1.50!”
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Memories of Naylor’s Seafood put reader Stanley Love in mind of another fishy eatery.
“My uncle drove a taxicab in D.C. during the 1940-1950s period,” Stanley wrote. “He took us to Maine Avenue one very cold winter night and stopped at a hole in the wall run by a vendor named Benny Bortnick. It was just a wooden counter and bare lightbulb above, but a healthy collection of seafood customers picking up crab cakes, oysters and huge fish sandwiches to go. Please, who was Benny Bortnick, and did he ever branch out into a brick-and-mortar restaurant?”
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Did he ever — and into all sorts of other things.
“Benny Bortnick was a legend in this town,” said Benny Fischer, Bortnick’s grandson and namesake.
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Bernard “Benny” Bortnick was 3 when his family left Odessa, Russia, and settled in Washington. He was one of 11 surviving Bortnick children. (A sister died in infancy after choking on a marble.)
As a young man, Benny boxed and wrestled. After hanging up his gloves and his tights, he worked as a referee at pro wrestling matches. As is often the case in that theatrical sport, Benny was occasionally a part of the show, slammed to the mat by a rassler or thrown from the ring.
It could be dangerous work. Benny once worked a “gag bout” between a wrestler named Chief White Feather and a brown bear named Ginger.
According to The Washington Post: “After the bout, Benny went to raise Ginger’s paw in victory and the bear clouted him into the ropes. Six of Benny’s teeth were uprooted.”
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Many locals knew Benny as the Watermelon King of Washington. Before he got into the restaurant biz, he ran a fruit and vegetable store at 1123 F St. NW. The Watermelon King sobriquet was supposedly bestowed after Benny won a watermelon-slicing contest.
“Back then, watermelon was not as available as it is today,” Fischer said. “It was like a delicacy to get watermelon.”
Benny would donate melons to youth groups and civic organizations.
“He’d go down to Walter Reed [Hospital], bring in a truckload of watermelons and stand there with a giant knife slicing it up,” Fischer said.
In addition to his waterfront seafood shack, Benny had a restaurant called the Triangle at 12th and F NW. He also ran the Village Inn at 1606 Rhode Island Ave. NE. Guitarist Charlie Byrd played there. So did future sausage king Jimmy Dean.
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Benny Bortnick came up at a rough-and-tumble time. Newspaper clips include stories about numbers runners who used his establishments and other scrapes with the law. It was, perhaps, a more interesting time in Washington.
“The story through the family was he was a tough guy and not someone you wanted to mess with,” said Gary Bortnick, Benny’s nephew. “But he was a good guy. We heard his was one of the first restaurants to cross the color barrier and allow Blacks to eat in his restaurants.”
Benny Bortnick died in 1954 of a stroke. He was 55.
Read more from John Kelly.