pelier. He took us around the property and showed us all the various locations where they had done excavations. Archaeology is very much like detective work. For example, in the pictures of Madison's house, you'll notice the curved fence in the front yard. The archaeologists had to figure out where the "post holes" had been -- where the white posts for each section of the fence had been placed. Architectural design at the time of James Madison recommended that such fences be placed the same distance in front of the house as is the width from front to back of the house. So the archaeologists measured out this distance and sure enough, they located the holes. How did they know these were the correct "post holes" 200 years later? Apparently, Madison had had his workmen "char" or burn the bottom ends of the fence posts. This would protect the wood from insects and decay. So the archaeologists found within the soil the remnants of this burned wood. Every seven feet, they dug a new excavation area and again found more charred wood remnants on the soil. When they finally inserted the new posts, they moved them 2 feet back so the original holes would not be disturbed.
One very interesting point that the Field Director explained was that they discovered the outlines of slave quarters behind the house. They had difficulty finding a lot of archaeological evidence about the slave quarters, so, for the time being, they marked off the rectangular buildings by putting a chemical on the grass to kill the grass. Hence, the dead grass formed the outline. From 2002-2009, they had restored Montpelier's mansion to the way it looked when James Madison was alive. They spent $25 million doing this restoration. One day, the Dead of Archaeology was showing descendants of Madison's slaves around the newly restored house and grounds. One of the descendants then said to the Director of Archaeology, "You spent 25 million dollars restoring James Madison's house, and you're marking the houses of my ancestors with dead grass?" This was like a punch in the stomach to the Director of Archaeology. So, since then, they have gotten a lot of grant money to fund many more archaeological excavations of the locations of the slave quarters.
After this tour, we heard a lecture by John Jeanes, the Director of Restoration at Montpelier. After Dolley Madison's death, Montpelier changed hands many times. Then, in 1901, it was bought by the duPont family (of paint and horse-racing fame). The duPonts changed Madison's 12,000 square foot house into a 36,000 square foot mansion. Marion duPont Scott, the last of the duPont family to live in the mansion, left a lot of money in her will for the house to be restored to the way it looked in Madison's time. In 2001, the Montpelier foundation finally got permission from the descendants of the duPont family to do this restoration. John Jeanes showed us fascinating pictures of how they figured out what the original house had looked like. For example, the pillars in the front of the house reached all the way to the ground in the duPont's time. By looking at illustrations from Madison's day, as well as at a drawing from a Civil War soldier, the restorers knew that Madison had made all the columns end evenly at the porch level. Another example is in an old photograph, they saw in the reflection of a mirror that there was a wall and a door on the other side of the room. This wall had been removed by the duPonts, so the restorers put it back. They also found "ghost" outlines indicating where molding had met the wall, and so they knew the shape of various "chair rails." I wish you could have seen the pictures from his presentation. The whole process was again very much like detective work! The restoration was just recently finished. I got to see the house in the summer of 2002 when it was still the pink stucco enormous mansion of the duPonts and they had just started tearing down the additions. I saw it again in the summer of 2008, and now I saw it this week when it had been finished. The whole process was painstaking and amazing.
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