Archive for the ‘Martha Washington’ Category

Mount Vernon conservators Katherine Ridgway and Anne Kingery talk about objects that belonged to Martha Washington, such as an ivory fan and seat cushion, in an upcomming C-SPAN 3 show.

It’s not every weekend that you can catch Mount Vernon on television. In a rare, behind-the-scenes show, C-SPAN 3 will showcase the estate’s conservation lab in a 30 minute feature set to appear multiple times this weekend. For a preview, click here.

In the words of C-SPAN 3, the show goes inside “Mount Vernon’s Conservation Lab to hear from conservators who study and preserve the belongings of George and Martha Washington. Featured in [the] program are Martha’s ivory fan, a needlepoint shell cushion from a set she worked on for over 36 years, and red silk fragments from one of her own dresses. Conservators at George Washington’s estate discuss how they authenticate and preserve historic artifacts.’

The show is set to air Sept. 18 at 3 p.m. and Sept. 19 at 2 a.m., 8 a.m., 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. EST and features Mount Vernon conservators Katherine Ridgway and Anne Kingery.

The episode is only one in a series shot at Mount Vernon this summer. The following weekend Mount Vernon’s collections storage will be the topic of the series’s second show. Check back for more details.

Update: For the full episode, click here.

In celebration of Martha Washington’s birthday today, we just wanted to point out some of the fabulous teaching resources we have online that you can use in your classroom. Martha Washington: A Life is a website devoted entirely to teaching about Martha Washington with a biography, lesson plans, an Archive of artifacts and letters that were hers, as well as a list of Resources. We also have a range of lesson plans that teach about Martha Washington for different grade ranges on our main website. If you have a chance to visit Mount Vernon in person this summer, you will surely meet Martha Washington via our first-person interpreter, Mary Wiseman. This past weekend’s Washington Post article about Mary’s work as Martha Washington is a little teaser for all that you will experience when you meet her in person. So once again, Happy Birthday, Martha!

We are so pleased to announce the launch of two brand spankin’ new, “gonna blow your mind,”” just can’t control the excitement” websites! We will feature the first today, and check back tomorrow for the second (it’s called building the suspense). As you know, we have something of a love affair with Martha Washington- she was courageous, intelligent, loving, and beautiful. She sat right there through that winter at Valley Forge with the rest of the soldiers when she could have easily been sitting in her own living room drinking hot chocolate. She helped her stoic husband provide a more human side to his adoring fans. George Washington would not have had the rich, loving life that he had without his wife of forty years. *Sigh… we heart you, Martha.

In order to provide more resources on Martha Washington’s fascinating life and material culture, we have launched a brand new website, Martha Washington: A Life. The site provides biographical information, three fabulous teaching modules that correlate to national standards, a searchable archive of all objects and documents that relate to Martha Washington, and research resources. So go check it out and let us know what you think! After playing around on the website for thirty minutes, we guarantee you will appreciate Martha Washington as much as we do.

The full title of this book sums up its history pretty well: “Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats being a Family Manuscript curiously copied by an unknown Hand sometime in the seventeenth century, which was in her Keeping from 1749, the time of her Marriage to Daniel Custis, to 1799, at which time she gave it to Eleanor Parke Custis, her granddaughter, on the occasion of her Marriage to Lawrence Lewis.” Learning about the foodways of a particular time and place, such as 18th century Virginia perhaps, is a surprisingly revealing way of learning history. Recipes such as “candied marrygolds in the Spanish fashion,” “sheep’s tongue pie,” or “pickled lettis (lettuce) stalks” are sure to either pique the interest or gross out a child- perfect history lesson material. While many of the recipes in the book, such as a recipe that begins with deboning an entire turkey, may be a little too difficult to make in the classroom or home, some recipes such as apple puffs or almond cakes could be easily made today. Each recipe is annotated by author Karen Hess with interesting information about the ingredients, process, cost at the time, historical tidbits, etc. If you can’t make it to Mount Vernon to see our Foodways interpreters flipping up some hoe-cakes in person, this may just be the next best thing. Yum!