My Candy Store

I am not really sure when I started to like history. I definitely know I didn't appreciate it in High School. In college I took a history class that was so bad that if I did like history then it really turned me off of it. I think I really started liking it when I read "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose. It is about the Lewis and Clark journey. Regardless when the passion began, anytime I am anywhere near something historic I am like a little kid in a candy store. So you can imagine how I felt on Monday when we went to see Mount Vernon, George Washington's house. I was so excited it was hard to contain myself. I am not sure how the rest of the family felt at the beginning of the excursion but within minutes everyone was very excited.

George Washington inherited the property at the age of 22 from his half brother Lawrence in 1754. Mount Vernon was named by Lawrence in honor of Admiral Edward Vernon, under whom he served in the Caribean. During Washington's 45 year stay at Mount Vernon he enlarged the mansion 3 times, built/rebuilt/moved several outbuildings and increased the property from 2,000 acres to 8,000 acres.

The mansion itself contains 23 rooms. It really is not as big as it looks on the outside. The building to the left is the guests servants quarters. The servants who attend to the property and the Washingtons are in another building down the lane from the mansion.

The building on the right is the kitchen. Yes! You read right. This huge house and it didn't even have a kitchen inside the main mansion. The little oven on the right is for bread. The main fireplace in the center was for the meat. Above the mantel are the skewers for roasting the meat on the fire. They had quite an elaborate rotisserie system. Another room in the building was used for cooking the rest of the dinner. Breakfast was at 7. Lunch, the main meal, was at 3 and was always a 4 course meal. Around 9 in the evening was a light dinner before bed.

There is even another building yet where they did the laundry.

This is the entry way to the Mansion. There are 2 other rooms to the right.

This the dining room that was the last edition to the house. This was my favorite room of the house. The colors really made a statement of wealth in 1799. By the way 40% of the belongings in the house belonged to the Washingtons. Only 1% has been replicated. The remaining 59% are original pieces from the period (1799).

Here is a typical bedroom in the house

Here is George and Martha's bedroom. A majority of the belongings in this room belonged to the Washingtons. This bed is the bed George Washington died in on Dec 14 1799 after a very short 2 day illness.

Here is a picture of the back of the house. The door on the left of the picture is an entrance to the basement. The movie "National Treasure II" was filmed in the basement. Yesterday only they were letting people go down. Austin was really excited as he has seen the movie and knew exactly what scene was filmed there.

The view of the Potomac from the back of the house is breathtaking.

After our Mansion tour we walked the grounds a little bit and then went to a Living presentation of Washington's granddaughter. Washington did not have any kids of his own, but Martha had two kids from a previous marriage, and 4 grandchildren. Her two children and I think 2 of her grandchildren lived in this house.

After the presentation we went to the education Center. It had the best displays I have ever seen. They even have short little movies. We watched one on the Revolution War. Our seat rumbled when they fired canons in the movie. We also got snowed on when the troops in the movie was snowed on. It was almost like Disney World.

Just like all the other places we have visited the pictures don't do the place justice and of course we didn't plan for enough time. So of course we will be going back. If you want to learn more to go my link "Mount Vernon". For an awesome book that goes into wonderful detail about the place you can purchase it online. On the Mount Vernon website click on Online Store. Then on the left click on Mount Vernon Bookstore. Then Guidebooks and maps. The book is called George Washington's Mount Vernon Oficial Guidebook. It is ony $5 and worth every single penny. I LOVE IT!!!!