ALEXANDRIA When the family running Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary closed its doors in 1933 after more than 140 years in business, it left everything.

Everything included financial ledgers, tooth-pulling tools and shelves of bottles containing medicines and other potions.

"When they left that day, it's possible they thought they'd reopen," said Gretchen Stelzel, a guide at the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum that operates in the same building. "They never did."

When it shut down during the Great Depression, the apothecary shop was one of the oldest in the United States. It eventually was sold to preservationists and opened as a museum in the late 1930s. The city of Alexandria acquired the museum, restored it and reopened in 2006, adding the one-time manufacturing lab on the second floor to the public tours.

The museum on Fairfax Street is less than a half-block off King Street, a main drag through Old Town. There's not a great deal here, but what's here is most intriguing, particularly when you consider the original apothecary -- Edward Stabler, a Quaker preacher and avid abolitionist -- served George and Martha Washington, who lived a few miles down the road. The museum has a letter from Mount Vernon on behalf of Mrs. Washington seeking the shop's "best castor oil."

James Monroe and Robert E. Lee also were customers. As the story goes, Lee was in the shop when he learned of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry and was dispatched to the scene to stop the insurrection.

In those days, an apothecary offered medical advice as well as remedies he would prepare using herbs -- including dragon's blood, a resin from plants used in medicine and dyes -- and other ingredients. He also pulled teeth and performed bloodletting, an often-used approach to treating illnesses. The shop also sold medications for cattle and horses and manufactured paint.

--Bill Lohmann