The Rebirth of Montpelier

Allison Brophy Champion
Published: February 18, 2008

MONTPELIER STATION, Va.—James Madison’s lifelong home is looking more and more like the home in which he lived.

Not surprisingly, the public is increasingly interested in the 18th century mansion where the fourth president is said to have imagined the Bill of Rights.

In fact, year-to-date figures tracking visitors to the stunning Orange County estate already show a 52 percent increase in attendance over last year.

That trend continued last Sunday when more than 1,000 people visited Montpelier for a peek at the ongoing restoration of the vast estate - a $24 million project spanning five years.

Maybe it was the free admission in honor of Madison’s 257th birthday that attracted so many people. Maybe it was the bright winter sun and blue skies and the promise of a good walk.

Maybe it was the 9-minute feature on Montpelier that aired on CBS Sunday Morning just hours before. Maybe it was the chance to stand in Madison’s study, a small room where he conferred with the likes of Andrew Jackson and where he took his last breath.

Whatever the reasons, Montpelier is being reborn.

No ordinary house
In the CBS segment, correspondent Rita Braver talked of the presidential home’s history, offering insight into the wide range of it contained therein and the reasons, perhaps, for the enhanced public interest.

“This is not your ordinary remodeling project because this is not your ordinary house.”

Montpelier slaves Peter and George, skilled carpenters, helped build the brick house in 1765 for James Madison Sr., the president’s father, who was a planter and county official.

Madison Sr. inherited the vast plantation - one of the largest in Orange County - from his father Ambrose and raised 12 children there.

The future President Madison spent his childhood at Montpelier and played an integral part in managing the plantation even before he inherited it.

He would go on to attend college at Princeton before starting his political career back home at the local level.

In spite of his diminutive stature - Madison was “ around five feet four and sickly,” Braver said - he would go on to earn the moniker “Father of the Constitution” for the integral part he played in drafting the nation’s founding documents.

Hello Dolley
A few months after meeting a Philadelphia widow by the name of Dolley in 1794, Madison married her and the couple - who never had any children together - retired to Montpelier in 1817 following his two terms as president, but not before “Dolley lit up the White House,” Braver said.

“In some ways, I think she really defined what the new American woman of the new American nation was all about,” said Michael Quinn, president of the Montpelier Foundation.

Besides her sense of fashion, Dolley had a keen sense of patriotism. Case in point: she rescued the official portrait of George Washington from the White House during the British attack of the War of 1812.

She also loved to entertain at Montpelier, interpreter Jayne (pronounced Janie) Blair told visitors during a tour of three first floor rooms on Sunday.

Dinner was at 4 o’clock and would last nearly three hours, she said, and no one younger than 12 was allowed to dine with the adults. At some point, the ladies would excuse themselves.

“Dolley would rescue the ladies from the cigar smoke,” Blair said, pointing to a “tea room” behind the dining room, the perfect setting for her “gossip sessions.”

But was the First Lady more beloved than the president, CBS correspondent Braver wanted to know?

“I think Madison was enormously respected,” said Quinn. “I think Dolley was beloved.”

After the Madisons
Montpelier was sold after Madison’s death in 1836 - Dolley died 16 years later - “and removed from public view,” Braver said.
“In a way, so was Madison.”

Its ownership by the famed family of industrialists, the duPonts, from 1901-1983, in essence, erased the Madison connection from the public’s consciousness - until now.

“I think one of the reasons he is not well known is that his home has been lost to America for a century and a half,” Quinn said. “It has been a privately owned home until 23 years ago.”

Owner Marion duPont Scott gave Montpelier - and its extensive post-Madison additions - to the National Trust in 1984.

Today, a single pink building from the duPont era remains at Montpelier, which the restoration crew is using as a workshop, Blair said.

“Once the work is done, that will be coming down,” she said.

Uncovering the Madison’s
When the Montpelier restoration crew began its work in 2003, tearing down half the house and gutting it, they uncovered physical traces of the home James and Dolley loved.

For example, 200-year-old nail holes above a mantle in the drawing room - the room straight beyond the front doors - corroborate historical accounts that the Madisons hung pictures of their friends in this room, Montpelier’s Mark Wegner told CBS.

“This is the room that you would have been shown into if you’d come to Montpelier as a guest. This is the only room where the Madison-era plaster survives,” he said. “They sheared this white coat off and then mapped all of these holes and began to match these holes to the fasteners on surviving Madison paintings. And so they think they know where each of these works of art hung.”

Inside a rat’s nest in one old wall, more connections surfaced: a scrap of a letter in Madison’s handwriting (it seems to say ‘mother’), a piece of period wallpaper, a square of red fabric and a candlesnuffer.

African American ties
But there’s more to Montpelier than James and Dolley and their indelible impressions on U.S. history. African American history also happened here.

A modest slave cemetery of unmarked graves reminds one of the contrasts between Madison’s ideals of freedom and the people he enslaved.

“Although he recognized in his writings that slavery had no place in the country he created, he could not solve it,” Quinn told Braver. “I think he was economically dependent on slaves. He knew Dolley would be.”

In the back yard at Montpelier, three slave cabins, now long gone, housed six slave families, Blair said during the tour.

“Look how close they were to the house,” she said, noting that the occupants were likely domestic servants. “These cabins will come back,” Blair said, but only after archeologists have carefully excavated what lies beneath the former cabin sites.

James Madison’s father had 100 slaves, she said, leaving 18 to his son in his will. Historical accounts show that Madison was not a cruel master, said Blair, though recognizing that the whole story has yet to be told.

“Take time to walk the land,” she said. “There’s a wonderful spirit here.”

Montpelier will celebrate its architectural completion with a Restoration Celebration and free admission on Constitution Day, Sept. 17.

Allison Brophy Champion is a staff writer for the Culpeper Star Exponent and can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or

Want to go?
Daily tours of Montpelier are available November through March from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and April through October from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Admission is $12 for adults, $6 for children 6-14 and free for children 5 and younger.