Washington Winter Show 2014

CELEBRATIONS AT STRATFORD HALL “They had an elegant Dance on the Whole;…[and a horse race where] Dottrell belonging to Mr. [Philip Lee] won the race;…” —Account of a visit to Stratford, January 1774 1 Family, Food, and Festivities Figure 1: South façade of the main house, Stratford 44 This page is sponsored by Mrs.William Curtin, Mrs. Dynes Leitch, and Mrs. Malcolm Matheson S tratford, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, served as the home to four generations of the Lee family, from the main house’s construction [Figure 1] beginning circa 1738 until sold out of the Lee family in 1822. The plantation, close to 5,000 acres by 1750, included a main house complex, a mill and landing complex, the ‘upper clifts’—a satellite farm—and at least one tenant farm. The Somerville, Storke, and Stuart families lived at Stratford in the decades that followed Lee ownership, until the property was sold to the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation in 1929. Throughout its use as a family home, Stratford has been a place of entertainment and celebration: from dances and horse races, to bountiful dinners and quiet family moments. The 2014 Washington Winter Show Loan Exhibition highlights the family, food, and festivities that made Stratford a welcoming beacon of hospitality, from the 18th century to the present day, and touches upon the Lee family and its treasured private collections, which have been passed down through the generations. FAMILY From the beginning with Thomas and Hannah Ludwell Lee, Stratford served as a family home for the Lees. Children were ever-present in the main house’s passages and chambers, and family dynamics were as complicated as we see in present-day society. Early deaths of parents, disagreements over inheritances, blended families of step-parents and half-siblings, and marriages by Gretchen Goodell Pendleton Curator, Stratford Hall