History in your veins

Here’s an interesting news story, via a blog devoted to John Brown, about an event attended by descendants of Brown and his followers.  One of the attendees was Brown’s great-great-great granddaughter, Alice Keesey Mecoy of Allen, Texas.

For some reason the notion that I’m sharing the planet with John Brown’s great-great-great granddaughter struck me as pretty darn cool.

I had a similar feeling a few years ago when I saw a local TV spot here in East Tennessee.  It was a campaign ad for Andrew Jackson VI, who was running for a judgeship in Knox County.  The background music was an instrumental version of “The Battle of New Orleans.”  I had no idea there was an Andrew Jackson VI, and I certainly didn’t know he lived in Knoxville.  But lo and behold, it was true.

Technically, of course, he’s not a biological descendant of Andrew Jackson, who fathered no kids of his own; he’s descended from Rachel Donelson’s nephew.  But Old Hickory adopted the nephew and named him Andrew Jackson, Jr.  That’s good enough for me.

I actually met a John Sevier descendant once.  She was a delightful lady, and strikingly resembled the Peale portrait of him.

I decided to see what I could find out about people who are carrying history around in their genes.  Web browsers make it a lot easier to indulge this kind of idle, unproductive curiosity.

• News story about the release of the John Adams dollar coin, with a picture and quote from a seventh-generation descendant.  I think he looks more like Sam Adams than John, but that’s just me.
• Jefferson descendants have their own organization.  Benefits include burial at Monticello.  Last I heard there was a Hemingses-need-not-apply policy, but that might have changed by now.
• Madison’s relatives also have a group of their own, with a spiffy website.
• There’s also a group for Washington relatives, although His Excellency (like Jackson) had no biological children of his own, and thus no direct descendants. 
• No Lincoln descendants left either, though if I had one of those John Adams dollar coins for every time somebody told me they were in Abe’s direct line, I could buy an original Gettysburg Address.  But here’s an item about a modern-day Abraham Lincoln who claims a distant relation.  Imagine the trouble this guy has passing checks.
• Back in May, a Virginia reporter caught up with U.S. Grant’s great-great-grandson—who’s a Confederate reenactor.
• A fellow named David Morenus has a website on his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma, Pocahontas.
• Davy Crockett’s descendants and relatives are taking applications for new members at their website.
• If you’re one of the millions of Mayflower descendants, maybe you’ll be interested in joining this group.  Given the math, though, this is about as exclusive as having your name listed in the white pages.
• Kenneth B. Morris, Jr., direct descendant of both Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, runs a foundation that opposes modern-day slavery, which seems very appropriate.
• Here’s an old news item about an event with appearances by various relatives of Ohio’s presidents.  One of the guests of honor was a guy named Rick Taft, great-grandson of you-know-who.  According to the news item, he’s a lawyer and software developer.  Here’s a picture and blurb from his company’s website. 
• The same event also hosted Stephen Hayes, great-great-grandson of Rutherford B.  He’s a consultant with one of those firms which have really impressive-sounding names, the kind for which you see commercials on television that never actually explain what service they offer.  I think this one finds people to run companies.  (Wouldn’t it be easier to just promote somebody from the ranks?)

And finally, for the rest of us whose family trees are undistinguished, weep no more.

Part shrine, part museum

Regular readers of this blog (God bless ‘em) know that for the past few months I’ve been in the habit of posting brief reviews of the museums and historic sites I visit.  I debated long and hard whether to take a crack at Lee Chapel & Museum, located on the campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA.

It was one of my favorite stops from my recent Virginia trip, but it’s also as much a shrine as a place of historical interpretation.  These reviews are meant to be assessments of how well museums and historic sites present themselves and educate their visitors, based on the time I spent working in the public history business.  This approach just didn’t seem appropriate for a sacred space.    However, since W&L has constructed a kind of interpretive center in the chapel’s lower level, I’ve decided that it’s a legitimate subject for a review, so here goes.

This particular site owes its existence to the two figures who cast longer shadows across Virginia’s history than anyone.  On the one hand, you’ve got George Washington, whose donation to the college led to its being re-named in his honor.  On the other hand, you’ve got Washington’s relative-by-marriage Robert E. Lee, who became the school’s president after the Civil War.  It was Lee who directed the building of the chapel (1867-68) that bears his name, and who now lies in a vault below the sanctuary level.

By any measure, visiting the sanctuary itself is an incredibly impressive experience.  On the outisde, it’s a beautifully constructed nineteenth-century brick church; on the inside is an auditorium with a seating capacity of 500, which is still in use by W&L.  Two portraits, one on each side, flank the front of the sanctuary.  On the right is a painting of Lee in uniform, similar to some of the famous photographs taken of him during the war.  On the left is an absolute gem, the oldest portrait of Washington, painted by Charles Wilson Peale in 1772, which depicts him wearing his colonel’s uniform from the French and Indian War.  I had no idea the original was at Lee Chapel until I walked in the door, and seeing it was an experience that was hard to beat.

The sanctuary’s other highlight, though, comes pretty darn close.  When Lee died in 1870, he was buried underneath the auditorium, until the addition of a new section to the building in 1883.  Under the sanctuary, the addition contains the Lee family crypt.  Upstairs, it houses Edward Valentine’s magnificent recumbent sculpture of Lee, which rivals any monument or work of art I’ve ever seen in my life.  It’s an incredibly lifelike work of art, practically life-size, with a uniformed Lee lying in repose underneath a folded drape that looks far too natural to be made of stone.  (Here’s a photo that gives you the general idea, although it doesn’t do it justice.)  The one-two punch of this amazing sculpture and Peale’s famous Washington portrait in the same space is quite a thing to experience, and I don’t think I can convey the impression it makes on you if you’re a history enthusiast.  You just walk into the door and they’re right there.

Since the chapel area is meant to be more of a shrine than a museum, the interpretation upstairs is pretty discreet, as it should be.  There are a couple of interpretive panels near the sculpture with background information on Lee’s funeral and the construction of the addition.  During visiting hours a guide is on hand to talk about the chapel’s history and answer questions.

Most of the interpretation takes place in the “museum” of Lee Chapel and Museum, which is downstairs from the sanctuary.  In 2007 the college installed a beautiful new exhibit, “Not Unmindful of the Future:” Educating to Build and Rebuild a Nation.  Although it’s a relatively small display, you should plan on spending some time here.  There’s a lot of fantastic material to see.  The exhibit tells the story of the school’s founding, with an emphasis on Washington’s role and the inclusion of some of his personal items.  There’s a fine assemblage of Lee material here, too, including not only personal belongings from his years at the college, but also artifacts from his life before and during the Civil War. The exhibit also explores W&L’s evolution within the context of the history of American higher education (Lee, for instance, helped launch the inclusion of professional and practical programs of study in U.S. colleges) and the role the school’s students and alumni played in the Civil War.

Stepping outside the museum, you’ll see the Lee family crypt on your left.  Robert E. Lee isn’t the only famous American commander laid to rest here.  His father, “Light-Horse” Harry Lee of Revolutionary War fame, is buried next to him.  Just a few steps away from the crypt is yet another grave, this one for Traveller, the horse Lee rode during the war and after.  (You know you’ve made it into the pantheon of heroes when your horse’s grave becomes a pilgrimage site.)

It’s a lot of history for one building, and well worth a drive to Lexington.  The collection and interpretation in the museum at Lee Chapel are both first-rate, and the sanctuary itself is not to be missed.

Is Washington filmable?

For some time now an unfilmed script about George Washington has been floating around online.  It’s credited to David Franzoni, presumably the same person by that name who wrote Gladiator and Amistad.  You can read it for yourself here.  I just ran across it again while doing some online browsing.  As much as I’d love to see the Revolutionary War play out on the big screen, I’m not sure a Washington biopic is a workable proposition.

It’s not that I have a problem with Washington himself.  Far from it.  It’s pretty hard to study him and come away with anything other than the conviction that he was a genuinely great man, largely because of his persistent efforts to live up to his own demanding standards.  But he was also notoriously aloof and stern, keeping himself remote from others and from his own emotions.  This reservation would make it difficult for an audience to sustain their identification with him for two to three hours. 

There are a lot of episodes from Washington’s life that I’d like to see on film; David Hackett Fischer’s recent book on the fall of New York, the retreat across New Jersey, and the battles for Trenton and Princeton would make a great starting point for a script.  But I think Washington’s own austerity makes it necessary to tell these stories from additional viewpoints, approaching the man himself from the outside, with his emotions only rarely breaking out of that formidable exterior.  This is the way Washington’s contemporaries experienced him.  Washington’s usual, deliberate composure was what made his outburst of rage at Kip’s Bay seem so explosive, and his rare show of weakness at Newburgh so moving.  Any onscreen Washington should also keep his emotional armor fastened tightly, so that the rare opening in that armor would be similarly affecting.  (My main problem with Franzoni’s script is that it conveys a familiarity between Washington and some of his contemporaries that strikes me as inappropriate.)

Like many public figures, Washington consciously crafted his persona.  Uniquely, though, he played his role with sincere determination when no one was looking.  Few of today’s actors could do him justice, and that’s a shame.  Among modern Americans, Washington’s effort to become an embodiment of virtue is a lost art.

(I obtained the Washington portrait from Wikimedia Commons.)