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Celebrating the birth of a 'towering figure'
Dedication of new visitors center helps mark the 250th anniversary of James Monroe's birth.
Date published: 4/27/2008
BY FRANK DELANO
"Can you imagine the excitement in this neighborhood 250 years ago?" Helen Marie Taylor asked at yesterday's celebration of James Monroe's birthday at his birthplace in Westmoreland County.
Taylor, president emeritus of the James Monroe Foundation, imagined this dialogue among neighbors of the Monroe family who lived on the low-forested clay land near what became Colonial Beach:
"Spence Monroe's wife had a baby!"
"Was it a little boy or little girl?"
"A little boy."
"How's he doing?"
"Fine, fine. He's doing fine."
"But no one," said Taylor, "could imagine just how fine that Monroe baby would turn out to be."
He turned out to be a hero of the American Revolution, U.S. senator, governor of Virginia, minister to France and Spain, secretary of war and state, and the fifth president of the United States.
"Monroe was a towering figure in American history," said Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Montross. "He was one of the most qualified men ever to become president."
Yesterday, a trailer-full of dignitaries sang Monroe's praises and dedicated a new $500,000 visitors center after decades of fits and starts to honor the site of the great man's birth.
"This is the beginning of everything," said G. William Thomas, president of the James Monroe Foundation.
The foundation's next step, he said, is to construct a replica of the house where Monroe was born on footings unearthed 30 years ago by archaeologists.
Plans of the house, based largely on an 1839 etching by Colonial Williamsburg architects, sat on an easel in the new visitors center beside portraits of Monroe donated by the Army.
The Monroe home, said Colonial Williamsburg architectural historian Carl Lounsbury, "was no Stratford Hall, but it was one of the best buildings in Westmoreland County and a very fine house compared to what the neighbors lived in."
Camille Wells, another Colonial Williamsburg architectural historian, said rebuilding the house "could be a very interesting exercise and an important teaching device."
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James Monroe was born on April 28, 1758. He died July 4, 1831, in New York. His body was re-interred at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond in 1858. Other Virginia communities will honor him over the next two days.
TODAY: An open house is planned from 1-4 p.m. at the James Monroe Museum on Charles Street in Fredericksburg. It is the building where Monroe practiced law in Fredericksburg from 1786-90. Event includes a Monroe re-enactor, 18th-century music and birthday cake.
TOMORROW: Additional commemorations of Monroe's birth will occur at his tomb in Richmond and at Fort Monroe in Hampton, which was completed three years after Monroe's death. |
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Date published: 4/27/2008
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