Download or read book Spies at Mount Vernon written by Steven K. Smith and published by Myboys3 Press. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dead drops, cyphers, and invisible ink are all part of a mystery that even spymaster George Washington would love. Sam, Derek, and Caitlin love solving mysteries, and when they visit Washington, DC, spies are lurking. What starts out as a fun game of pretend on the National Mall turns all too real when they follow a mysterious man to a meeting deep within the Capitol. To keep government secrets from falling into the wrong hands, the kids must work with federal agents and travel to historic Mount Vernon for a state dinner with the president and his son. Dead drops, cyphers and spy chases are all part of what might be their most dangerous adventure ever--if it isn't their last. Spies at Mount Vernon is the seventh book in The Virginia Mysteries series, but it also makes a great standalone read. The story is the perfect complement to social studies units covering George Washington as well as field trips and family vacations to Washington, DC and Mount Vernon. If you enjoy mystery and adventure like the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Magic Tree House, or National Treasure, you'll love author Steven K. Smith's exciting middle-grade series. The stories are modern-day fictional mysteries with twists of real locations and events from Virginia history. These fast-paced books are popular with both boys and girls ages 7-12, appealing to even reluctant readers Buy Spies at Mount Vernon and unlock the adventure today

Download or read book Stewards of Memory written by Carol Borchert Cadou and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mount Vernon, despite its importance as the estate of George Washington, is subject to the same threats of time as any property and has required considerable resources and organization to endure as a historic site and house. This book provides a window into the broad scope of preservation work undertaken at Mount Vernon over the course of more than 160 years and places this work within the context of America’s regional and national preservation efforts. It was at Mount Vernon, beginning with efforts in 1853, that the American tradition of historic preservation truly took hold. As the nation’s oldest historic house museum, Mount Vernon offers a unique opportunity to chronicle preservation challenges and successes over time as well as to forecast those of the future. Stewards of Memory features essays by senior scholars who helped define American historic preservation in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including Carl R. Lounsbury, George W. McDaniel, and Carter L. Hudgins. Their contributions—complemented by those of Scott E. Casper, Lydia Mattice Brandt, and Mount Vernon’s own preservation scholars—offer insights into the changing nature of the field. The multifaceted story told here will be invaluable to students of historic preservation, historic site professionals, specialists in the preservation field, and any reader with an interest in American historic preservation and Mount Vernon. Support provided by the David Bruce Smith Book Fund and the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.

Download or read book Dining with the Washingtons written by Stephen Archie McLeod and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining vivid photography with engaging essays, Dining with the Washingtons explores the menus, diet, and styles of entertaining that characterized the beloved home of the nation's principal founding father. Compelling accounts, historic artwork, and images of gardens, table settings, prepared food, and objects from the Mount Vernon collection blend to shed fresh light on the daily lives of George and Martha Washington, on their ceaseless stream of household guests and those who served them, and on the ways food and drink reflected the culture of eighteenth-century America. Featuring a foreword by former White House executive chef Walter Scheib and more than 90 historic recipes adapted for today's kitchens by renowned culinary historian Nancy Carter Crump, this book is ideal for veteran and novice cooks alike as well as for those wishing to learn about both formal and everyday dining at Mount Vernon. Drawing from a wide range of sources, including memoirs, diaries, plantation documents, archaeological research, and the personal correspondence of the Washington family and their visitors, this charming volume brings the household of America's first president and his wife vividly to life for modern-day readers. The contributors are: Steven T. Bashore, Manager of Historic Trades, Mount Vernon Carol Borchert Cadou, Robert H. Smith Senior Curator and Vice President for Collections, Mount Vernon Nancy Carter Crump, author and founder, Culinary Historians of Virginia J. Dean Norton, Director of Horticulture, Mount Vernon Dennis J. Pogue, Vice President of Preservation, Mount Vernon Walter Scheib, former executive chef, The White House Mary V. Thompson, Research Historian, Mount Vernon Esther White, Director of Archaeology, Mount Vernon

Download or read book Mount Vernon Virginia An Explanatory Leaflet with a Plan written by Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union (Mount Vernon, Virginia) and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The General in the Garden written by Adam T. Erby and published by Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union, Library. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designing the beautiful: General Washington's landscape improvements, 1784-1787 / Adam T. Erby -- George Washington's gardens: under the watchful eye of the Mount Vernon Ladies / J. Dean Norton -- "Laid out in squares, and boxed with great precission": uncovering George Washington's upper garden / Esther C. White -- Gardens et groves: a landscape guide / Adam T. Erby -- The views: bowling green, upper garden, greenhouse and slave quarter, lower garden, botanical garden, outbuildings, the lost deer park.

Download or read book Washington at the Plow written by Bruce A. Ragsdale and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh, original look at George Washington as an innovative land manager whose singular passion for farming would unexpectedly lead him to reject slavery. George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office. For over forty years, he devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture, which he saw as the means by which the American people would attain the Òrespectability & importance which we ought to hold in the world.Ó Washington at the Plow depicts the Òfirst farmer of AmericaÓ as a leading practitioner of the New Husbandry, a transatlantic movement that spearheaded advancements in crop rotation. A tireless experimentalist, Washington pulled up his tobacco and switched to wheat production, leading the way for the rest of the country. He filled his library with the latest agricultural treatises and pioneered land-management techniques that he hoped would guide small farmers, strengthen agrarian society, and ensure the prosperity of the nation. Slavery was a key part of WashingtonÕs pursuits. He saw enslaved field workers and artisans as means of agricultural development and tried repeatedly to adapt slave labor to new kinds of farming. To this end, he devised an original and exacting system of slave supervision. But Washington eventually found that forced labor could not achieve the productivity he desired. His inability to reconcile ideals of scientific farming and rural order with race-based slavery led him to reconsider the traditional foundations of the Virginia plantation. As Bruce Ragsdale shows, it was the inefficacy of chattel slavery, as much as moral revulsion at the practice, that informed WashingtonÕs famous decision to free his slaves after his death.

Download or read book Where the Cherry Tree Grew written by Philip Levy and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted historian pens biography of Ferry Farm—George Washington's boyhood home—and its three centuries of American history In 2002, Philip Levy arrived on the banks of Rappahannock River in Virginia to begin an archeological excavation of Ferry Farm, the eight hundred acre plot of land that George Washington called home from age six until early adulthood. Six years later, Levy and his team announced their remarkable findings to the world: They had found more than Washington family objects like wig curlers, wine bottles and a tea set. They found objects that told deeper stories about family life: a pipe with Masonic markings, a carefully placed set of oyster shells suggesting that someone in the household was practicing folk magic. More importantly, they had identified Washington's home itself—a modest structure in line with lower gentry taste that was neither as grand as some had believed nor as rustic as nineteenth century art depicted it. Levy now tells the farm's story in Where the Cherry Tree Grew. The land, a farmstead before Washington lived there, gave him an education in the fragility of life as death came to Ferry Farm repeatedly. Levy then chronicles the farm's role as a Civil War battleground, the heated later battles over its preservation and, finally, an unsuccessful attempt by Wal-Mart to transform the last vestiges Ferry Farm into a vast shopping plaza.

Download or read book The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret written by Mary V. Thompson and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "American historians began producing in-depth studies of slavery and slave life shortly after World War II, but it was not until the early 1980s that the country's museums took the first tentative steps to interpret those same controversial topics. Perhaps because of the tremendous amount of primary material related to George Washington, almost no one looked into the lives of Mount Vernon's enslaved population. Incorporating the results of detailed digging, of both the archaeological and archival varieties, the number of chapters grew as further questions arose. While a few scholars outside Mount Vernon turned their attention to Washington's changing ideas about slavery, they largely overlooked the daily lives of those who were enslaved on the estate, a subject about which visitors expressed a desire to know more. The resulting book makes use of a wide range of sources, including letters, financial ledgers, work reports, travel diaries kept by visitors to Mount Vernon, the reminiscences of family members, former slaves, and neighbors, reports by archaeologists, and surviving artifacts to flesh out the lives of a people who left few written records, but made up 90 percent of the estate's population. The book begins with a look at George and Martha Washington as slaveowners, before turning to various facets of slave life ranging from work, to family life, housing, foodways, private enterprise, and resistance. Along the way, readers will see a relationship between Washington's military career and his style of plantation management, learn of the many ways slaves rebelled against their condition, and get to know many of the enslaved people who made Mount Vernon their home"--

Download or read book Visitors Guide to Mount Vernon written by Elizabeth Bryant Johnston and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mount Vernon Virginia An Explanatory Leaflet with a Plan written by Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union (Mount Vernon, Va.) and published by . This book was released on 1956* with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book 1774 written by Mary Beth Norton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, a groundbreaking book tracing the critical "long year" of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord. A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR In this masterly work of history, the culmination of more than four decades of research and thought, Mary Beth Norton looks at the sixteen months leading up to the clashes at Lexington and Concord in mid-April 1775. This was the critical, and often overlooked, period when colonists traditionally loyal to King George III began their discordant “discussions” that led them to their acceptance of the inevitability of war against the British Empire. Drawing extensively on pamphlets, newspapers, and personal correspondence, Norton reconstructs colonial political discourse as it took place throughout 1774. Late in the year, conservatives mounted a vigorous campaign criticizing the First Continental Congress. But by then it was too late. In early 1775, colonial governors informed officials in London that they were unable to thwart the increasing power of local committees and their allied provincial congresses. Although the Declaration of Independence would not be formally adopted until July 1776, Americans had in effect “declared independence ” even before the outbreak of war in April 1775 by obeying the decrees of the provincial governments they had elected rather than colonial officials appointed by the king. Norton captures the tension and drama of this pivotal year and foundational moment in American history and brings it to life as no other historian has done before.

Download or read book Presidential Retreats written by Peter Hannaford and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating history of U.S. presidential vacation spots—collected for the first time in one guide that covers everything from Mount Vernon to Kennebunkport to Camp David. Where do you go to relax when you’re the leader of the free world? Even the president needs to get away from it all sometimes. From George Washington to Barack Obama, each of our presidents has sought solace from the tightly structured daily routines of the White House. As Ronald Reagan once said of his California ranch, “I do some of my best thinking there.” Peter Hannaford takes readers on a fascinating armchair vacation with each of our leaders, offering unique historical context for the why and the where of their chosen retreats. Which president asked visiting foreign dignitaries to send him seeds to plant at his family home? Who called his vacation property “Sherwood Forest” because it was “a good place for an outlaw”? Which adventure-loving Commander-in- Chief set up a Summer White House in New York every year? Who liked to cruise aboard the presidential yacht when faced with momentous wartime decisions? Who polled the American people to help him decide where to vacation? Presidential Retreats explores a side of the American presidency that we don’t often see—the downtime—as it offers an intriguing glimpse at the evolution of leisure time in this country.

Download or read book Slavery at the Home of George Washington written by Philip J. Schwarz and published by Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union, Library. This book was released on 2001 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Washington inherited his first slave at the age of eleven, and he was the only founding father to free his slaves in his will. This highly readable selection of articles focuses on Washington's changing attitudes toward the institution of slavery and his everyday relationships with the slaves who shared his Mount Vernon estate. Along with his insightful introduction, editor Philip J. Schwarz has included James C. Rees's essay "Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Changing Interpretation of Slave Life on the Mount Vernon Estate," Dennis J. Pogue's essay "Slave Lifeways at Mount Vernon: An Archaeological Perspective," and Lorena S. Walsh's essay "Slavery and Agriculture at Mount Vernon," as well as essays by Jean B. Lee, Mary V. Thompson, and Edna Greene Medford.

Download or read book Patina Style written by Brooke Giannetti and published by Gibbs Smith. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Giannettis have developed a home design style that embraces age, patina, weathered and worn surfaces, and rough surfaces. Patina Style is a color palette, a romance with subtlety, an attraction to natural materials and architectural details. It is at once old-world, contemporary, and mildly industrial. Patina Style gives insight into materials choices, methods and treatments that result in spaces that celebrate beauty in the old, the imperfect, the slightly roughed-up.

Download or read book Plantations of Virginia written by Charlene C. Giannetti and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southern plantations are an endless source of fascination. That’s no surprise since these palatial homes are rich in history, representing a pivotal time in U.S. history that truly is “gone with the wind.” With the Civil War literally exploding all around, many of these homes were occupied either by Confederate or Union troops. Nowhere else in the south were plantations so affected by the nation’s bloodiest war than in Virginia. At times, families fled, leaving behind slaves to manage the property. There are still more than 60 plantations in Virginia today, most of them open to the public. Some have been restored, others undergoing that process. If only the walls could talk, the stories we might hear! That’s what we hope to bring into this book on The Plantations of Virginia. We’ll take the tours and talk to the guides and dig even further if there is more to discover. We hope that travelers will be enlightened before they travel to Virginia, their visits will thus be enriched, and that residents will equally love exploring this deep history of Virginia. Accompanying the text will be photographs, taken by one of the authors, showing, in all their splendor, the exteriors of these plantations, as well as areas of interest inside the buildings.

Download or read book An Imperfect God written by Henry Wiencek and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Imperfect God is a major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slavery When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil. Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true. George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

Download or read book MOUNT VERNON VIRGINIA written by and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: