Last weekend, my family visited the NC Museum of History to see the exhibit, "Discover the Real George Washington: New Views from Mount Vernon". We didn't want to miss it since we had just visited Mount Vernon; the exhibit runs through 1/21/11. There was a cool architectural model of the estate and grounds, and we learned about Washington's work as a surveyor. It occurred to me that his surveying experience likely helped him greatly as a general. We learned that George Washington never owned a set of wooden dentures--that's a myth. He did employ the best dentists, and had several sets of dentures. They were made of ivory, human teeth, and animal teeth.

We're on a roll through Colonial times: in December, we also visited Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown. We enjoyed walking around a reenactment of an army encampment at the Yorktown Victory Center. It was interesting to learn of the army surgeon's basic tools and strategy for removing a musket ball--with little thought given to the need to wash surgical instruments! We also learned that muskets were very inaccurate, and that battlefield strategy during the Revolutionary War often centered on using weapons to scare the enemy, rather than on maximum killing.

Yorktown, VA

Jamestown, VA

While in Colonial Williamsburg, we learned that a cobbler repairs shoes, but a shoemaker produces new shoes. In Colonial times, the wealthy would not have visited a cobbler--just the shoemaker.

Williamsburg, VA

Hello.

Mount Vernon, VA

My family visited Mount Vernon last week. We learned something very interesting. George Washington installed bevel-edged pine boards on the exterior of his mansion and had them covered with a white paint and then sand, so that they looked like granite or stone blocks. To us, they did look like concrete or stone from far away, but closeup, we could see cracked wood and lines that were not parallel. The process he used is called "rustication". From faraway, the mansion seemed very big, but inside, not so much.