George Washington Wired

January is one of the chilliest times of the year, which also means that here at Mount Vernon, it’s one of the most overlooked by visitors, who neither stop by for vacation nor pop by for neighborly visits during this coldest of months. It also means January is ideal for having the estate to yourself. Discover the five best reasons to get to Mount Vernon before February and the busy Presidents Day season begins.

1) Visit the estate without disruption: Attendance in January usually hovers around 20,000 to 25,000 visitors, which means there are six or seven times fewer bustling people than during busy months such as May. Lines are shorter and the estate’s sweeping panoramas are that much more stranger-free for your picture-taking purposes.

2) Scouting-oriented children get in free: All Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Camp Fire members wearing their uniform or official pen get into the estate for free through February 17. Not too bad of a treat after a long season of cookie sales. They can also complete activities towards patches and pins.

3) It’s a romantic time of year chez Washington: George and Martha, the happy colonial couple ,were married on January 6, a day referred to back then as Twelfth Night, which marked the end of the Christmas season. For current-day Americans, Christmas is long gone by January 6, but not the Washingtons’ anniversary.

4) Hot cider abounds: The Mount Vernon Inn is a place filled with the adjective delicious. Add hot cider to the menu and you’ve got yourself a warm treat to enjoy beside one of the inn’s several fireplaces.

5) There’s always snow here: Even if it’s not snowing much outdoors this winter, it snows every day in our Revolutionary War Theater, where film-watchers have an immersive experience when real “snow” falls on the audience as Washington crosses the Delaware.

He’s not quite person of the year, but he does get his own TIME special edition. If the longer tomes dedicated to the nation’s first president aren’t on your reading list (think: His Excellency: George Washington, Washington: A Life and Washington: The Indispensable Man, just to name a few of the best), then pick up a copy of this biography-in-miniature, which has been spotted everywhere from Target to grocery store check-out stands.

Historian Joseph Ellis (author of His Excellency) wrote the intro, and Mount Vernon assisted with the edition, though we weren’t contributors. TIME has created special editions about various historic figures throughout the magazine’s history. This one comes just in the nick of, well, time, for Washington’s 280th birthday next month.

In 1751, during his one and only voyage off the North American continent, George Washington accompanied his brother Lawrence to Barbados. While there, he picked up a piece of white coral that he held on to as a memento for the rest of his life.

In another Washington-coral encounter, it appears the General gave a red coral necklace to Nellie Custis (Martha Washington’s granddaughter, whom the Washingtons took in as an adopted daughter). Was Washington a fan of this sightly creature from the sea? Hard to say, but it looks like it.

One thing that we can be sure of is that Washington liked to give gifts. Upon returning home from the Revolutionary War in December of 1783, for example, he purchased various “sundries” for his family including a locket, three small pocket books, three thimbles, three sashes, a dress cap, a hat, a handkerchief, children’s books, a whirligig, a fiddle, a gun and some quadrille boxes.

It’s unknown when Washington gave Custis the necklace, which is thought to date from sometime between 1775 and 1800. Made of coral, ribbon and string, the necklace has two strands, one with small beads and another with irregular, tubular pieces of coral.

The necklace is not currently on display, but it and the envelope that contained it, which explains the piece’s early provenance, can be seen above. The message on the envelope reads “Worn by / Nellie Custis / & presented to her / by Gen Washington / Inherited from my Aunt Martha Custis Williams / George L Upshur.”

Assistant Curator Alison Bliss contributed to this report.

Object Spotlight is a regular feature that highlights household belongings used by the Washingtons. Check out Mount Vernon’s eMuseum to explore more Washington belongings.

Gift of Lylee Krech, Kara B. Seymour, Lyttleton B. P. Gould, III and Cyndie Gould, 2010. [2010.012.001/A-B]

Mount Vernon is not known to have been a particularly feline-friendly place. The absence of any mention of pet cats chez Washington may not have had so much to do with an aversion to hairballs as it did the family’s plethora of pet dogs and birds. Fido and feathered friends were more of the General and his wife’s style: Terriers, lapdogs, hunting hounds, plus a cockatoo, peacock and green parrot were only a few of the nonhuman inhabitants who called the Mansion and its grounds home. There were no doubt barn cats that kept the rodent population down as well as cats who belonged to slaves, the feline bones of which have been found in the layers of earth that constituted the cellar of a slave cabin. While the General may have seemed to have had nine lives throughout his battle-prone life, he likely didn’t have any cats.

Information courtesy of Mount Vernon historian Mary Thompson.
Photo compilation by Becca Milfeld; Cat photo courtesy of Flickr creative commons/dustin.askins.