Send us a text

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!

To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate, and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail.

Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org, for enhanced content.

Send us a text

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!

To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate, and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail.

Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org, for enhanced content.

Send us a text

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.

To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate, and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail.

Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org, for enhanced content.

Send us a text

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.

To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate, and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail.

Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org, for enhanced content.

Send us a text

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!

To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate, and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail.

Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org, for enhanced content.

Send us a text

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!

To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate, and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail.

Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org, for enhanced content.

Send us a text

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!

To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate, and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail.

Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org, for enhanced content.

Send us a text

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.

To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate, and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail.

Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org, for enhanced content.