Wednesday: Montpelier & Manassas

 This is Montpelier, the home of James and Dolley Madison.  I think it was only about 25 miles away from Thomas Jefferson's home and James Monroe's home was also close by.  George Washington's home was probably just a little further in the opposite direction.  Isn't it incredible that so much brain-power and vision were concentrated in such a small geographical area?

 James Madison called this his chapel, just a pretty little rotunda a little way from his mansion.  He liked to go there to meditate.  They also had their ice house below this, where they cut blocks of ice in the winter and stored them here in straw all summer, so they could enjoy ice cream and whatever else they used their ice for.  The guide told us it would last until October through the hot Virginia summers.

 Another great man, seated beside the diminutive James.  James was very small in stature, but big in education and intelligence.  Both he and Jefferson were well-educated and spoke several languages.  I learned that Dolley was a Quaker, but was the first First Lady who set the tone for style and entertaining in the White House.  Our tour guide said she hadn't had the formal education that her husband had, (women didn't of course) but that she was very likely his intellectual equal.  Yeah for Dolley!!  We knew that James would have been a Cougar fan if he had only had a chance, so we honored him with this photo.

 They didn't let us take any pictures inside the house (wish we could have) but the grounds were lovely.  I tried to capture the majesty of some of the grand old trees, but the pictures don't do it.  This one was planted in Madison's time and was beautiful.

 The fence behind it is six feet high and of course you can't see the top of the tree, so just try and imagine how beautiful it was.

 A small shot of one side of the formal gardens.

 Madison's burial site.  There is a little family cemetery where many family members are buried.  Dolley outlived James by quite a few years and died in New York, I think.  It took a while before she was re-buried here and by then there was no room beside James, so she is buried behind him.

 I thought this was good advice on one of the family headstones!

 We stopped at the site of the Civil War battlefield of Manassas.  It was late in the afternoon and the Visitor's Center was closing, but we could walk around the grounds and read a little of the history.  This is a statue of General Stonewall Jackson, who got his name at this very place at the first battle of the Civil War.  They referred to this battle as the End of Innocence, because it ended any ideas for both the North and the South, that this was going to be a war that would end quickly and at a small cost in lives and money.  It was the first time many of the soldiers had seen battle.

The memorial erected immediately following the war.