Stratford Mail
Finally, a history podcast for folks on the go! Who can spare an hour these days? Give us about 20 minutes, and we'll inform and entertain you! From Stratford Hall Historic Preserve in Westmoreland County, Virginia, join Vice President of Research and Collections Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey as he reads over the shoulder of letter-writers of yesteryear. What to expect? Once a month we feature an historical letter from a onetime resident, associate, ally, or friend of Stratford Hall. Whether the topic is wine, crossing the Delaware, ghosts, or fanciful hats, you'll learn what life on the ground looked like from those who lived the moments that make up our difficult and beloved past. And maybe you'll discover something about your present in our past! If you don't have more than 20 minutes, and you love history, discover Stratford Mail. And share it with your friends!
Episodes
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 o...
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 ...
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 ope...
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 ...
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 th...
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, a...
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. Fra...
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 an...
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 acc...
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 ...
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 o...
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&apo...
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. Ha...
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 S...
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...
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 gho...
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...
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 ...
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...
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 hom...
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