250 years ago today a fuse was lit in Virginia, where a rogue assembly approved a set of earth-shaking instructions for its delegates in the Continental Congress. The detonation took time, time to traverse the miles from Williamsburg to Philadelphia, time to persuade and prepare the people and their representatives to risk a new political adventure, and time to drag the holdouts across the line. Join us this month on Stratford Mail as we recall the last adieu to the British Crown and count down to the 250th anniversary of Virginia and Richard Henry Lee’s resolution on independence.   

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260 years ago, a merchant on the banks of the Rappahannock River threatened to undermine strategic non-compliance with the Stamp Act. He needed stamped paper to offload a cargo of perishable grain. He intended only to obey the law. Many in the community viewed that law as a violation of their constitutional rights and liberty. The Lee brothers stepped forward to express and enforce the will of the community on this recalcitrant merchant. Organizing a heavily armed private militia, the Lees rode on Hobbs Hole and made a public example of the man. Richard Henry Lee drafted the manifesto of this militia, the Leedstown Resolves, the first organized, armed, and publicly signed association of resistance in the American colonies and a founding document of our enduring American experiment.  

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In 1662, the Royal Society of London adopted a motto that promised a revolution: Nullius in verba—or, on the word of no one. It was a bold renunciation of authority in favor of evidence, yet behind this polished veneer of the Enlightenment lay a messier reality marked by class-coded science and imperial gatekeeping. Even as Society president Sir Isaac Newton modeled dispassionate inquiry, the institution came to operate as a passionate apparatus for elite privilege and British expansion. Fellowship in the Society opened channels into an international fraternity of gentlemen-scientists and into the inner sanctums of British imperial power. As crisis ripened between Britain and its North American colonies, America’s first celebrity leaned on this scientific brotherhood to achieve political reform, while another American patriot rejected it as collusion with the imperial fist. 

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In October 1774, a congressional committee with Richard Henry Lee at the helm drafted a Petition to the King. The petition invited “royal attention” to colonial grievances in pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the mounting crisis. That petition died in Parliament, starved of attention, but it wasn’t the last formal attempt by the Continental Congress to seek conciliation with the mother country. Another attempt in the summer of 1775, milder in tone, and with the Congress divided on the weight and wisdom of the measure, found its way to Lord Dartmouth. Tune in this month to hear the tale of the so-called Olive Branch Petition, a last-ditch diplomatic overture that failed to re-leash the dogs of war, leaving the path to independence wide open. Listen now to From Compulsion, Nothing.

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17 June 1775. The redoubt fortifying Breed’s Hill–not terribly far from the taller Bunker’s Hill–proved permeable to the advancing waves of better trained, better equipped British regulars. The British took Breed’s Hill, but paid a high price in men and perhaps an even higher price in emboldening colonial militia, who inflicted more than double the losses they sustained. ‘Bunker Hill’ was a point of no return for the colonies and Great Britain, but has often been returned to in memory and memorialization, typically as an opportunity for rededication to the ideals embodied in the colonists’ will to fight at Breed’s Hill. The legacy of ‘Bunker Hill’ was soon hammered out in letters, poetry, and art that mingled achievement and loss, an alloy perfected in the exaltation of the “godlike” hero-martyr Dr. General Joseph Warren.   

Listen now to Wounds Too Deep!           

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British General Charles Cornwallis said it best: “The Rivers of Virginia are advantageous to an invading army.” In the spring of 1781, the Royal Navy and loyalist privateers raided along the major and minor waterways of the Chesapeake. The April 1781 log of the British war sloop HMS Savage offers a glimpse of the destruction wrought along the Potomac to warehouses, manufacturing facilities, homes and outbuildings, and it counts 50 or more enslaved Africans and African Americans who escaped slavery aboard the marauding British ships. In April 1781, Richard Henry Lee was home at Chantilly overlooking the Currioman Bay, and from there he monitored British activity in the Potomac. Taking charge of the undermanned and ill-equipped Westmoreland County militia, Richard Henry organized local efforts to repel what he called a “contemptible collection of Pirates” and “freebooters.” Those efforts included a skirmish on April 9 he later described as a "very warm engagement." Tune in to Stratford Mail season 3, episode 2: A Very Warm Engagement to hear tales of the Potomac Raids of 1781!

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A 1781 letter written by Stratford-reared Alice Lee Shippen is mistakenly delivered to Braintree rather than to Boston. Politically literate, if shaped by family partiality, Alice's letter offers its unintended recipient clarity about intrigues involving an absent husband on diplomatic assignment. At the heart of these intrigues is a much beloved figure in the American mythos, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. But Dr. Franklin wasn't beloved by all, not quite the hero then that he has become, especially not to those who worked with him during the Revolution and expressed frustration with his idiosyncratic ways of conducting American business. The letter constitutes the origin of a correspondence between two elite women of politically significant families and raises a window on the intramural frictions, friendships, and resentments that were a naturally occurring feature of the American founding.

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Of the two epically scaled paintings of George Washington’s Delaware crossing, by far the most recognizable is Washington Crossing the Delaware by German-born, Philadelphia-raised Emanuel Leutze. This theatrical 1851 painting (measuring roughly 21 x 12 ft.) hangs today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its charismatic Washington commands the prow of the boat as around him the diverse peoples drawn into his orbit and the cause he represents struggle together in that cause. The lesser known 1819 painting (measuring 17 x 12 ft.) by Thomas Sully depicts an illuminated Washington astride a white mount with the night sky brooding above him and snow and mud churning below. A lone twisted and blighted tree encapsulates the desolation of the revolutionary movement in December 1776. In both paintings, the centerpiece is Washington himself, already the object of a triumphal American mythology, but on that Christmas night in the year of independence, the contest was far from won, and the outlook was desperate.

Join us this month as we reflect on that bleak midwinter 248 years ago when the tide turned.

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Time once again for a seasonal special edition of Stratford Mail. Visitors to Stratford are often struck by the wards against witches and evil spirits incised into its exterior brick and interior floors. These marks are reminders of our ancestors’ belief that this visible world overlapped an invisible world that was a source of both palpable wonders and terrors. Witches and conjured spirits were believed to gain access to homes through hearths, windows, and other openings, and hide in the shadowy nooks, crannies, and corners of homes. Once inside they would vex the inhabitants and ruin their property. Wards like the hexafoil or ‘daisy-wheel’ incised on the nursery floor of Stratford were proactive countermeasures to supernatural mischief. Alternatively, folks might invoke the protection of Jesus’ virgin mother, inscribing AM (Ave Maria), VV (Virgin of Virgins), or simply M (Mary) in vulnerable locations–all of these are visible on the red exterior brick of Stratford. Think of it as our spiritual security system! Colonial-era Virginians believed in witches and conjurations, but extant records indicate that Virginians were reluctant to prosecute and convict for witchcraft. Join us this month as we consider witches and witchcraft in the Virginia colony–Listen to Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble now!

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Back to school with Stratford Mail! This month we think about educational opportunity in the Virginia colony. The rural Northern Neck was slow to develop the kind of city and district schools found in the more densely populated New England colonies. This posed no problem for elites, who could afford to engage private tutors for their children and complete their education abroad at one of the English grammar schools or domestically at one of the newly established colleges. Differences of access and curriculum were stark depending on race, class, and gender. Death and inheritance interrupted the education of several Stratford Lees and dashed the romantic fortunes of a future revolutionary and statesman! Listen now to School Days! And if you haven't yet listened to Every Heart Throbs, be sure not to miss the tale of Lafayette's return(s) and his encounter with Arthur Lee!  

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Before Beatlemania, there was Marquismania! 200 years ago this August, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to these shores after an absence of 40 years. In his 13-month 'farewell tour' of the 24 United States, the nation he helped to found, the Marquis was cheered and celebrated by grateful crowds in the hundreds and thousands. As the 50th anniversary of Independence loomed, nostalgia burned hot for heroes of the Revolution like the Marquis, whose generation was vanishing too quickly into memory by 1824. James Madison hadn't seen the Marquis since 1784, when he shared his first impression of the Marquis with Thomas Jefferson. And Madison was there when the Marquis ruffled the feathers of Stratford-born Arthur Lee, an event Lee recalled in the months before his death in 1792. Join us this month as we explore memories of the fabled and fabulous Marquis de Lafayette!   

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Sociologist Émile Durkheim taught us that the study of human mourning raises a window on human values and lifeways. Returning after a brief hiatus, Stratford Mail ponders elite deathways in the Northern Neck, with close attention to the opinions of Robert Carter III, as recorded by Philip Vickers Fithian, the tutor at Carter's Nomini Hall. And we clear up confusion about the final resting place of Stratford's own Thomas and Hannah Lee, who chose not to be buried on the grounds of the home they established together.   

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Hannah Lee Corbin was undeniably a force to be reckoned with. She attracts interest from scholars and history-lovers alike, whether for her unusual private life, her defection from the established Anglican faith of her family, or her general independence of spirit. Hannah is sometimes celebrated as an 18th century proponent of women’s right to vote, which is a claim requiring more nuance than it is usually given. Hannah posed in private correspondence poignant questions about political representation and the political participation of women. She sought to persuade her famous brother that "no taxation without representation" had more local application than perhaps he and his fellow revolutionaries had considered. Join us this Women’s History Month as we remember Hannah Lee Corbin of Stratford, Peckatone, and Woodberry.      

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In commemoration of Black History month, Stratford Mail considers a trio of portraits of Black women and men, two of whom were enslaved at Stratford Hall under Colonel Philip Ludwell Lee. The stories of Sawney, Henrietta Steptoe, and Louisa Thomas, however partial and fragmentary, offer valuable lessons of resistance and resilience in the face of the longest odds. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, their stories help us to enrich and enliven our national narratives about liberty and other founding values, and to see those values as tasks never quite done and forever in need of defense. 

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1778, British-occupied Philadelphia. The American alliance with France and defeat at Saratoga have depressed the British outlook on the war. General William Howe pays the cost, resigning his command of British land forces. Only days from the order to withdraw from Philadelphia,  Howe's officers organize a fabled farewell blowout called the Meschianza, which is as much about releasing anxiety and reimagining how the war ought to have gone as about bidding Howe adieu. When patriots retake Philadelphia in July, official Independence celebrations are subdued, but the common folk organize a memorable parade that Richard Henry Lee writes home about. Listen now to learn how a parading prostitute with big hair raises a window on simmering political and cultural tensions in Philadelphia.   

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Join Dr. Steffey for a special edition of Stratford Mail. In this final episode of Season 1, Hallowtide is upon us, and as the veil between the worlds grows thin, our minds turn to the 'hereafter,' and perhaps to the departed who haunt our here and now. What's the connection between historic sites like Stratford and ghosts? Which member of the Lee family compiled two books of ghost lore? What does ghost lore have to do with women's suffrage? Listen now to find out, and to hear of a haunting from old Virginia.  

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As conflict with England escalated, delegates to the 2nd Continental Congress foresaw the need for diplomatic and intelligence services. On 29 November 1775 the Committee for Correspondence was born, soon becoming the Committee for Secret Correspondence, and ultimately the Committee for Foreign Affairs on 17 April 1777. In the beginning, with war on the horizon, the likeliest prospective agents were Americans living abroad with established networks of information and alliance. The first agent recruited was born and reared at Stratford, and had been collecting intelligence for years. He was deeply placed in circles of London radicals and friends with establishment Whigs like Lord Shelburne. Join us this month as Stratford Mail peers beneath the covers of early American spy games. 

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On October 19, 1774 a tyrant minority in Annapolis compelled traders James Dick & Anthony Stewart to burn the merchant brigantine Peggy Stewart. The so-called Annapolis Tea Party differed from its Boston precedent in that there were no disguises, no concealing cover of night. The disposition of the Peggy Stewart and its cargo were topics of open deliberation and debate in public meetings organized to decide the matter. The meetings underscored and magnified local political tensions between patriots and their several methods of dissent and resistance. 24-year old Alice Lee of Blenheim (eyewitness to the bonfire) returns to Stratford Mail to offer her take on the immolation of the Peggy Stewart. 

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In 1787 Thomas Lee Shippen, an American student at Inner Temple, London, shipped a hat to his sister Anne Home Livingston in Philadelphia. Nancy, as she was called by kith and kin, was living at Shippen House with her parents after her marriage to a scoundrel with a taste for scandal and no taste for divorce fell through.  Tommy Shippen was a bon vivant and a bit of a clothes horse, writing home from London: "I am so transformed already by dress that you would hardly know me, curls to my hair, round hat, raven's gray coat, black satin vest," etc. Tommy was keen on the latest fashion, and keen to lift the spirits of his melancholy sister with a magnificent bit of millinery fresh from the frontlines where Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, set the standard. If not for the droll prose penned in exposition of the hat by their uncle Arthur Lee, the transit of this hat from London to New York to Philadelphia might have escaped notice. Tune in this month to track the itinerary of the grandest, most anticipated hat in human history! 

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If you’ve visited Stratford Hall since 2016, you likely noticed the looming full-length portrait of British statesman WIlliam Pitt the elder in our parlor. Standing at 8 feet by 5 feet, it’s difficult to miss! That painting reproduces the original now hanging in the Westmoreland County Museum. From the hand of Maryland painter Charles Willson Peale, the  original shipped from London and arrived at Chantilly, the home of Richard Henry Lee, on April 7, 1769. When Americans still had confidence in the normal political process of the British empire, they commemorated the efforts of British politicos who steered that process in ways sympathetic to the colonies. A painting, a statue, a town named or renamed–-these are among the ways colonists expressed gratitude and aligned themselves politically with power and influence being exercised overseas in Parliament. The Pitt portrait is a by-product of commemorative efforts in the late 1760s before Americans began to despair of substantive change. Ironically, Charles Willson Peale and William Pitt were neither the preferred artist nor the preferred subject for commemorative efforts by Westmoreland County movers and shakers. Tune in to Stratford Mail Episode 6: Painting Mr. Pitt to learn about what might have been, what was, and to learn about an exciting event coming to Stratford Hall on September 9, 2023!

Register here TODAY! 

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Virginia wine has made a comeback from its bleak beginnings. Cultivation failed to make native grapes competitive with European vintages, and European vines struggled to adapt to the challenges of foreign climates, soils, and pests. Interest in producing good quality wine from native grapes persisted across centuries, and was a preoccupation of Virginia planters, including the Masons, Carters, Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Lees. Stratford founder Thomas Lee experimented with 20 vines of Rhine grape acquired from Pennsylvanian Conrad Weiser, though it is unlikely he succeeded where so many others failed. This month Richard Henry Lee of Chantilly and Stratford ships a cask of Virginia wine to a curious party in London, and indulges his youngest brother’s interest in exotic fauna from back home.

For more on the history of wine in Virginia: read here.

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1773. A letter and gift from prominent British abolitionist Granville Sharp prompts a thank you from Arthur Lee, whose antislavery writings circulated among abolitionists at home and abroad. Sharp may have met Lee in London, or been acquainted through his abolitionist correspondent in Philadelphia, Anthony Benezet, who reprinted both of Lee's antislavery essays. Those essays model many of the strengths and weaknesses of antebellum antislavery literature. While recognizing fully the contradiction between colonial agitation for liberty and the continued use of enslaved laborers, and despite his rational and spiritual aversion to slavery, Arthur surrenders to the "inhuman traffic" in the last year of his life. 

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A letter full of life and light from 12-year-old Alice Lee (1749-1789) of Blenheim plantation in Charles County, Maryland, to her second cousin William Lee of Stratford, a commercial agent for Virginia tobacco living in Tower Hill, London. Alice speaks her mind on 'tying the knot,' her eccentric Virginia relation known as 'the Squire,' and the pursuits of a 12-year-old recluse. Alice was well-known among the Virginia Lees and stood sponsor for Richard Henry Lee's son Cassius. Her mother Grace Ashton (who died the same year as her daughter) was the daughter of Colonel Henry Ashton, buried in the Nomini Plantation Graveyard in Westmoreland County.

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This month Elizabeth Jackson gives a piece of her mind to Martha Corbin (Turberville) of Portobago on the Rappahannock River and reports on a special event at Stratford. Working with letters from yesteryear we realize emphatically that the 'Devil is in the details,' and often those details lie just beyond our grasp. In consequence we float the known and the suspected to the surface and work assiduously on swelling their numbers by cracking the not-yet-known. This month's letter hums with all the above. If you have additional information about Elizabeth Jackson or Nancy Lawson, email us at steffey@stratfordhall.org

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Controlling the narrative is at the center of this month's microcast. As tensions escalate between Britain and the colonies, Americans residing and working in London experienced a unique set of difficulties, especially Americans involved in the production and dissemination of political intelligence. In a letter dated 6 March 1785, Arthur Lee underlined for John Adams, "how powerful a political instrument the press is," and how "the readers of News-papers swallow intelligence much more greedily, than any of the rest of their contents." In the wake of events at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Arthur and the Americans manage to steal a march on their British counterparts, scoring a significant public relations victory at the head of the impending war. One consequence of that victory is the subject of this month's letter dated 22 December 1775, which finds Dr. Arthur Lee put out by some mail gone missing. 

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