|
Following the deaths of George Washington in 1799 and his widow, Martha, in 1802, their Virginia home, Mount Vernon, remained in the family for three generations. In the 1850s the home George Washington painstakingly developed was beginning to crumble. The last Washington owner of Mount Vernon was John Augustine Washington, Jr., a great-great-nephew of George Washington. Throngs of tourists and a changing market for agricultural products left him without enough money to take care of the home and property. Neither the federal government nor the state of Virginia had the funds needed to buy and restore Mount Vernon. To his credit, John Washington would not sell to commercial developers and insisted the new owner preserve Mount Vernon as a historic site.
One evening in 1853 South Carolina socialite Louise Dalton Bird Cunningham stared out from her deck of her steamer on the Potomac and saw Washington's home in near shambles. She wrote her daughter, Ann Pamela Cunningham, "If the men of America have seen fit to allow the home of its most respected hero to go to ruin, why can't the women of America band together to save it?" Miss Cunningham ignited the preservation movement when she wrote a letter to the editor of a South Carolina newspaper appealing to American women to come to the rescue of Mount Vernon. She invited influential women from each state (there were 30 at that time) to serve as the original Vice-Regents of the newly formed Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which was the first national women's organization in America.
By 1858 Miss Cunningham had enough money to arrange a meeting with Washington to finalize the sale. He was not at all convinced that a group of women could manage Mount Vernon, but, with the help of his wife Miss Cunningham was able to convince him to sell. The Ladies' Association became the owner of Mount Vernon. Its work as the first organization in America devoted to the preservation of a historic site was begun. The Association's original vision became the mission statement which continues even today: "Ladies, the home of Washington is in your charge - see to it that you keep it the home of Washington. Let no irreverent hand change it; no vandal hands desecrate it with the fingers of progress. Those who go to the home in which he lived and died wish to see in what he lived and died. Let one spot in this grand country of ours be saved from change. Upon you rests this duty." (The Association, which maintains a headquarters with lodging on the Mount Vernon property, still consists of 30 trustees, or Vice Regents, who represent their home states, and a Regent, or chairman. The non-profit Association still receives no federal or state financial aid and relies solely on admission fees, revenues from food and gift sales, and donations from foundations, businesses, and individuals.)
Actually there wasn't much to see of Mount Vernon in 1860 when Miss Cunningham and her secretary moved into Mount Vernon. The key to the Bastille, presented as a gift to George Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette, the Houdon bust of Washington, and his terrestrial globe were among a handful of remaining objects. Other items had been given to family members or sold to pay bills. For five years the women struggled to make ends meet and to keep both Union and Confederate Civil War troops away from Mount Vernon.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, Vice Regents agreed to take responsibility for individual rooms. Detailed inventories taken in 1780 following George Washington's death was a great help in determining what furnishings were original to Mount Vernon. It took decades of careful research as well as gifts, loans, and purchases to get the original furnishings returned to Mt. Vernon.
Congresswoman Frances P. Bolton, who served as Vice Regent from Ohio from 1938 to 1977, launched an effort in the 1940s to preserve the view across the Potomac River. The Association purchased 750 acres, which was the nucleus of the 4,000 acre Piscataway National Park.
Today visitors at Mount Vernon can enjoy a house furnished with a number of original antiques and a view of beautiful Maryland shoreline instead of commercial development, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.
|
| |
