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Staff Sgt. Philip Savard of the Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps performs at yesterday's celebration
Former congressman and Army Secretary Jack Marsh was among a host of dignitaries at James Monroe's 250th birthday celebration. Yesterday's event also dedicated a new $500,000 visitors center at the Westmoreland County site.
A bust of James Monroe is one of the items featured |
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."
The James Monroe Foundation joined forces in 2005 with Westmoreland County when it leased 10 acres of the 75-acre county-owned site for 99 years. In addition to rebuilding the house and staffing the visitors center, the foundation hopes to create an 18th-century farm.
Yesterday, the dignitaries presented enough letters, resolutions and proclamations to fill a wall of the new 1,000-square-foot center. They came from President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates and the Grand Lodge of Virginia Masons.
Hereditary and patriotic organizations were out in force, including Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, Order of Lafayette, Societies of Cincinnati and Colonial Wars, the Military Officers Association of America and the Masonic National Sojourners dressed in 18th-century garb.
Westmoreland Supervisor W.W. Hynson, a longtime proponent of improving the Monroe Birthplace, said he recently read five books about Monroe. Hynson said his favorite quote about Monroe came from Thomas Jefferson: "If you turned his soul inside out, you would not find a spot on it."
Milton Martin, Westmoreland's manager of special projects, spent years coaxing grants for the birthplace project from the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Yesterday, he took care of one last-minute detail.
He said county workers had neglected to turn on a sewer pump as he carried a mop, bucket and a bottle of Spic and Span into a bathroom of the new visitors center.
Charlotte Hooten of Fredericksburg was there with daughter Tara Lane. Hooten said she was the great-great-great-great-great-great niece of James Monroe.
"We used to drive by here and Mom would say that's where James Monroe was born, but all I could see was woods," she said.
Frank Delano: 804/333-3834
Email: fpdelano@gmail.com
| 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. |
