still trying to catch up!

continuing Monday, May22

I neglected to mention that on the way to Peggy Bouffard's home, that we passed a marker designating the actual birthplace of James Monroe..IOt wqas only a few miles from George Washington's place of birth,,, Amazing to realize that so many greatmen lived aqnd were born so close to each other in this locale.

Tuesday, May 23

Another beauttiful sunny day..temp in the mid 70's....and a very pleasant drive back to Fredericksburg for a visit to The Ferry Farm...the boyhood home of George Washington.. It was formely referred to as the Rapphanock (sp?) Farm, but the name waqs changed to Ferry Farm since there had been a ferry crossing in the vicinity. The red colonial building had previously been used as a Boy's school...a church etc. There were many original artifacts attributed to George Washington as well as many other articles representative of the era during his lifetime. The plantation, however was home to George Washington until he was about 16 or 17. History reveals that after being born at Popes Creek in Wakefield, near Colonial Beach his
family moved to this farm. The farm is now primarily an Archeological site.

After purchasing our tickets, I discussed with some of the personnel the purpose of my visit, following which they became immediately actively helpful....They gave me verbally much interesting material concerning George and his genealogy..and then suggested that we inspect many of the artifacts which had been discovered by their archeological exploration. We were permitted to inspect the laboratory and had the opportunity to meet the Director who was a very pleasant woman who graciously explained the entire procedure of their exploration. She showed us some of their recent"finds", and the various phases of laboratory detection. We were introduced to several of the people who were working in the Lab as well. They evidently have dug to a sufficient depth of layers to reach the Paleolithic era and discovered that there were several generations of Native Americans in the location followed by the era of George Washington's era in the more superficial layers. They performed chemical, radiological, microscopic examinations as well as direct inspection. It was fascinating. Finally, I ws invited to walk out into the field to witness the investigation manually being performed and encouraged to ask any questions of those working that might be of interest to me! I did...and then was further invited to assist them in sifting some of the debris and attempting to recover anything that aoppeared to be of value... It was exciting, especially when I "discovered" a whitish, firm tubular fragment, which they informed me was a portion of a clay smoking pipe-stem, and since it was such a common finding by them...that the only excitement displayed was mine!

When we had been totally satisfied that we had seen sufficient, we said our "Goodbyes"...returned to the van and left for Mt. Vernon.

...time for bed...will finish this visit next blog...ZZZZzzzzzz