History. It's all around us. However, when I was younger, I never was interested in history. I thought it was the most boring subject on the planet. I didn't understand why there were people out there who were fascinated with it and loved the stories that came with it.
There was a class trip...more like a grade trip my whole 5th grade took to Virginia. We stopped at all these historic places on the bus ride to Virginia but there is only one that I can remember like it was yesterday. Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home on a mountaintop outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. At the time I just thought that it was just a house of a former president. I didn't realize what Thomas Jefferson meant to this country. We got to tour the home along with the tunnels that ran underneath the home and even went to his grave site. As I got older, I found myself getting more and more interested in history. I was fascinated by all the stories & secrets that we weren't taught in school. As I got older, I understood more of why we preserve places like Monticello and Mount Vernon. It gives us a look back into the past, a look of what took place back when those president's lived. I would give anything to go back to Monticello and really take in everything that home and plantation has to offer.
I noticed that in “Keeping time. The History and Theory of Preservation in America” is Mount Vernon, the property of George Washington. There were plans of turning the home of the first president into a hotel, thanks to the public, that didn't happen. I would really hate to see a historical place such as Mount Vernon be turned into a hotel. Thank goodness for Ann Pamela Cunningham. She was the one to start a movement to help preserve the property. She formed the group of women known as the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union. I was a little surprised that a woman was able to pull a group of other women together to preserve a historical site during that time in history.
As I read on, preservation groups started to pop up in the National Trust for Historic Preservation which ended up being the largest organization group. I loved how this group, itself, made history. It opened up a lot of other doors for other preservation groups to form elsewhere to preserve other historical places or parks throughout the nation.
Image:
http://www.revolutionaryday.com/usroute60/monticello/default.htm
I think that it is often in those instances when we don't even realize it, that certain things make a big impact and will be remembered as if they just happened. Monticello is one of my favorite buildings, and I too have been there (in my case 8 or 9 times), and it really gives us a sense of what life was like in the 1790s for everyone who resided on the plantation. I have had the distinct pleasure of viewing all parts of the house, especially where the tourists are not allowed to go. It is a very unique arrangement that definitely catered to Jefferson.
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