MOUNT VERNON, GEORGE WASHINGTON'S HOME

Today we all voted to go to Mount Vernon to see where our first president, George Washington lived.

First we took a tour of the mansion and we got to see all of the first floor and most of the second floor.  We saw several guest bedrooms, one where Lafayette stayed when he visited.  And we saw the parlor and the dining room and the room where George Washington got dressed.  The paint colors in the rooms were very vibrant--bright green,

blue and red--not the subdued pastels we have today.  These bright colors were the height of fashion in the day.

We sat on the pleasant porch in back of the mansion.  They have removed the rocking chairs that used to be there and replaced them with stationary chairs fixed to rails.  There was a pleasant breeze off the water as we sat admired the beautiful view of the Potomac and pondered the life of our first president and watched the boys somersault down the hill.

The kitchen is a separate building so that there was less chance of the mansion catching fire.  And we looked at many other outbuildings too--the blacksmith shop where the smithy was making iron brackets to hold flower pots, the male and female slave quarters, the washing house where the laundry was done, the weaving room, the overseer's quarters, the stables and barn.

Next we walked around the estate, visiting the tomb where the Washington family, including George and Martha Washington are buried.  This tomb was built to the specifications and in the location described by George Washington in his will.  Congress had plans to bury him in the rotunda of the Capitol, but the Washington Family declined and followed his burial instructions.

There was also a farm with some animals and a large garden with fruit trees, vegetables and herbs used in the kitchen.

We returned to the Visitor Center and watched a film about George Washington's life, how he met Martha Custis, how he became such a great leader and the difficulties and trials of the Revolutionary War.

Then we went to the Education Center where the Ladies of Mount Vernon have done an outstanding job of creating a dynamic multimedia presentation of the life of George Washington.  There were several movies throughout the chronological presentation, showing how artists worked to build mannequins that are very accurate representations of Washington at different ages, and one about how George and Martha met, and one about Washington's service for the British in the French and Indian Wars.  The film about the Revolutionary War had very dramatic effects during the movie, with the floors shaking when cannonballs landed, and flashes of light and even snow in the sad scenes about the desperate winter at Valley Forge.

GG saw a film about some of the spy tactics used by Washington.  One ploy was to have the woman who owned the tavern eavesdrop on the British soldiers as they discussed their battle plans and then she would write them in a little note and sew them into a button on her little boy's jacket.  He would go for a walk in the woods and meet up with a soldier who would take the button to General Washington,.  Another scheme was to assign numbers to different words and send innocuous seeming letters with some numbers interspersed and that was the secret code.

There was a large display of Martha's clothing, shoes and hats.  She was a bit of a fashion hound, although she dressed quite conservatively, and we saw beautiful jewelry, fancy embroidered shoes, plumed hats and colonial dresses she wore.  Also displayed were a sword actually used by George Washington and his famous "wooden" teeth.  There was a short film about how the dentures were made, using animal teeth and lead.

Boys getting restless!

It was a long hot, but very interesting, day and we returned home hot, sweaty, tired and starving.
GG made tacos and we ate about 5 each.  Then it was a bit of downtime and off to bed.