nch 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.
This is the mansion the duPonts owned, before the restoration. Notice the pink stucco and how the columns go all the way to the ground. Also notice that the "wings" have a second floor, so there is no terrace on either side. (I didn't take this picture. This is from the web).
This is the much smaller Montpelier after it had been restored to what it looked like when James Madison lived there. I did take this picture today. Notice the columns, terraces, and white fence posts.
One last story about the archaeology and restoration. Yesterday, when we took a tour of the house, we saw what appeared to be "ink splots" on the floor of Madison's second floor library. This was the room in 1786-1787 where he did all his famous research about ancient civilizations and planned out his ideas for the Virginia Plan. The tour guide wasn't sure how exactly his desk was placed in the room. To me the ink splots seemed to be too close to the wall for a desk. So I asked the Director of Restoration about the ink splots He smiled and said that when they decided to restore the floor in that room, they didn't want to sand it and remove the ink splots or the original markings of furniture being dragged across the floor. So they got a company to use a chemical to "clean" the surface of the floor. This cleaning process kept the original markings intact. They then did a "spectral analysis" of the ink splots to determine if they were ink -- this involves using light and color. The tests came back negative -- this wasn't ink! When they asked the people who had done the chemical cleaning, they said the cleaning process with the chemicals would indeed prevent the spectral analysis from detecting that this was ink. So what they needed to do was actually take a small sample to to the lab to determine the composition. Currently, they haven't done that yet, but they intend to! So the Director thinks that the splots are indeed ink, but he's waiting for confirmation on this. Very exciting!
Oh, I did take a picture of the orange soil for you:
Posted by JENNIF