We decided to head off to the suburbs today 15 miles outside Washington is Mount Vernon George Washington’s family home. It is said that he saw himself first as a farmer then a politician, his family owned 4 estates granted to his father by King George, slightly ironic as he spent his political life trying to achieve independence from England. Luckily the website told us exactly how to get to Mount Vernon which involved both the metro and bus but the journey although about an hour was actually very easy. At Mount Vernon you have to take a tour round the house but are free to wonder the grounds on your own. The Washington’s had almost 400 slaves between them, his wife had been married before and had approximately 190 and Washington also had a similar number. A lot has been made of how he gave them his freedom in his will, but it would seem that only about 200 were given their freedom, some were ‘rented’, others that had been born at the estate but we’re not adults didn’t get their freedom, all the same I suppose it was a start. I assume that the farm workers had accommodation nearer the fields as the women’s room only held about 20 women and the men’s about 30. The gardener and the clerk had the nicest rooms with the Gardner having what looked like a 4 poster bed, but the informations board suggested that he was quite well known and it would seem that the accommodation was actually part of getting him to work for you. The tour round the house was interesting providing details about the man and his family to help put things into context. They have managed to gather furniture of the period and present the house as it would have been once Washington left office. After the house tour we walked down to Washington’s tomb where 25 members of the family are interned, and the slave memorial, they have found the graves of about 150 slaves,but they were not buried in coffins making excavation and conservation difficult. From there we walked down to the wharf where they are in the process of building a boat of the period, they say it will be finished by October but I am not convinced personally!
We had lunch at Mount Vernon then started the return journey back to DC and our visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. This is a good museum, very big space filled with various rockets, planes and spacecraft. They have the space suits for a number of astronauts as well as copies of various satellites and telescopes. We got to walk through a cross section of the space stations (very small) and see the moon rover and curiosity (both bigger than I expected). We spent a couple of hours wondering round but in the end I had to come out as it was so cold! They really need to rethink their air conditioning! We walked back to the apartment to have a bit of a relax before heading out for dinner.
