Everyone who is educating their children should try to find a way to go to a Vision Forum Faith and Freedom Tour… They are absolutely blockbuster. There is nothing better for learning history than to go to the actual places in which they occurred.
Monticello, my favorite place on the tour. Wonderful buildings. Great site.
Doug Philips Lecturing in front of Mt. Vernon
George Washington the Surveyor
One of my favorite places in Virginia is Mount Vernon. I love it because I see a man creating over a span of forty years a home place full of activity, hospitality and industry. I like the way the buildings are arranged. I like the way the main house sets on the hill overlooking the Potomac. I like the shape of the house and how it is fitted for having large groups of visitors for lodging and for meals.
I like the way the outbuildings are arranged for efficient exercise of the prosperous purposes of the farm.
This home schooled boy lost his father at age 11 and went on to became a surveyor then a planter and then the most powerful man in the nation and perhaps the best President the country ever had.
He humbly acquiesced taking the Presidency making provisions for the power of others in the process. When elected President, said,
“I walk on un trodden Ground.”
In a way, so are we who are involved in family integrated churches that turn sharply away from the highly programmed professionally run seeker driven churches of our day. It is not completely untrodden ground that we travel, but it has been un trodden for quite a while.
Mount Vernon
A small building for each service the farm needed. There were three hundred slaves who needed shoes so there was a cobbler who worked in a building. One million fish were caught each year so there was a salt room for the preparation of fish. There was a blacksmith. Wash house. One year there were 11,000 gallons of liquor produced. He produced wheat, corn…
Wise Thinking Regarding Home place Development
I like the expansion of the house and how it demonstrated forethought yet the understanding of the resources at hand. The house started with about a 1200 square foot footprint and grew through two major stages to around 9000 sf. He started with a small house, expanded it twice. He had a wise modular plan. I have known people who use this strategy and it allows them affordability while growing at the pace of their prosperity instead of ahead of it (through debt).
This is Stonewall Jackson’s home. See the original footprint of the home on the left (brick). On the right is the addition. It started small and was expanded as finances would allow. A very smart way to engage in home ownership
Hospitality
There was a twenty year stretch at Mount Vernon where he and Martha did not eat alone because there were always visitors. They averaged over 700 overnight visitors each year.
Martha Washington built wonderful relationships among her visitors.
In a letter from Martha Washington to her friend Mercy Otis Warren, Dec 26:1789, (displayed in Williamsburg Visitors center) she writes
“I am determined to be cheerful and to be happy in whatever situation I may, for I have learnt from experience that the greater part of happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions and not upon our circumstances.”
We went to the home of Patrick Henry - the place where he raised his six children from his first wife.
The Actual Floor that Patrick Henry (and other founding fathers) Walked
Fruitfulness and Multiplication
I am sorry to say that in the area of large family, Patrick Henry makes Dan Garner, with only a measly 11 children, look like a lightweight. His first wife bore him six children and went insane, dying at a young age. She died there in the house we visited. Patrick remarried, moved to a new home in Red Hill Virginia… and went to have a total of 17 children.
Devotion to family
Patrick Henry was an unusual member of our founding fathers for many reasons. First, as George Washington was known as “the sword” of the revolution, Jefferson was “the Pen” of the revolution and Patrick Henry was “the Trumpet” (the orator) of the revolution. It is interesting to note that he slipped into relative obscurity after the revolution. Patrick Henry went back home and spurned all other overtures for continued fame and fortune through political position and travel. He stayed home. In some ways he became the forgotten founding father. His grave site was left unkempt and overgrown until only recently when the governor of Virginia allocated funds to clean it up and repair it for visitation..
Formational Years Under Great Preaching
One principle that family heads need to understand is that importance of the local church you choose during your children’s formative years. My own father made a powerful decision for our young family, when he took us out of a liberal Methodist church in and took us to a Bible teaching church. The effect was landmark in every one of our lives. I am confident that if we had stayed in the old church, our family history would be very different. Patrick Henry was nurtured under the best preaching that Virginia had to offer. His oratorical skills were first inspired by the Great Awakening preacher, Samuel Davies. His mother took him to a Presbyterian church from age 12-22 to hear Davies preach.
Think of how many children there are in our church that are in this same formative period. This makes it obvious that the kind of church we make together, as the formational environment for our children looms in significance.
And how did young Patrick’s mother help her son understand the preaching of the day? On the way home, she would make him recite the sermon contend and would go the extra step to have him give the proper inflections and emphases he heard from Davies sermons.
I played the role of the pastor of the church Patrick Henry gave his famous address, “give me liberty or give me death.
One encouraging note
Patrick was not a good student as a boy. He was like most boys… liking the outdoors and not appreciating books all that much. He failed in two businesses by age 22, as a shopkeeper and a farmer. After that he studied law under the forces of his own motivation and continued to be self taught. From this time forward, Patrick Henry’s motivation rose dramatically. The lesson: Sometimes a youth without any strong literary or oratorical motivations during their youth will later turn on. Youthful affections or inclinations are not always the indicator for the future.
Robert E. Lee’s Grave at Washington and Lee University in Virginia
