 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this virtual book talk with Grant Quartamas, author of A Georgetown Life, The Reminiscences of Britannia Wellington Peter Kennan. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Monday, December 7th at noon, we'll welcome author Larry Tai and former Senate historian Don Ritchie, who will discuss Tai's new book Demagogue, The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy. And that same evening at 6 p.m., join us for a program titled The Four Continents, an open dialogue. Michelle Cohen, Curator for the Architect of the Capital and Brent Leggs, Executive Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, will discuss the four continent statues at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City. I hope you can join us for these two programs. Just 14 years after Congress first met in Washington, D.C., Britannia Wellington Peter Kennan was born in the newly designated District of Columbia. Living into the first years of the 20th century, Kennan saw firsthand about half of the history of the nation's capital. We were able to discover her unique view of early Washington D.C. because of the written record left by Kennan and other family members. Grant Quartamas has made this historical documentation available to the public by editing and annotating a manuscript found in the Tudor Place archives known as the Reminiscences of Britannia W. Kennan. The National Archives, through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, has long supported the preservation and publication of primary records of significant historical value. The Commission made its first grants in support of editing and publishing manuscripts in 1964. Since 1974, NHPRC has funded projects in every state and territory to preserve and increase use of historical records. Today's guest author introduces us to a remarkable witness to life in the District of Columbia from its earliest years through the Civil War and into the 20th century. Grant Quartamas is the Curator and Director of Collections for the Classical American Homes Preservation Dress. As the former Curator of Tudor Place Historic House and Garden, he spent five years researching the Custis Peter family and using the collection to interpret their nearly two centuries of ownership of the National Historic Landmark property in Georgetown and their familial ties to George and Martha Washington. Prior to his arrival at Tudor Place in 2015, he was the Assistant Curator of Collections at James Madison's Montpelier, where he worked for nearly nine years on the Mansions Interiors Initiative to Research and Furnish the Mansions following its architectural restoration. Now let's hear from Grant Quartamas. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here this afternoon. And I'm going to focus on how Britannia's reminiscences were created, the work of her grandchildren to capture and record these fascinating stories that she told them in my PowerPoint going here. When subscribers to the Century Illustrated Monthly magazine received their current issue in May of 1890, they would have been presented with a variety of reading options. A new poem by Walt Whitman. A treatise on agricultural irrigation for the desert southwest by John Wesley Powell, then Director of the U.S. Geological Survey or an article by William Armstrong about a collection of relics associated with George and Martha Washington that was owned by Miss Britannia Wellington Peter Kennan of Tudor Place. As the article noted, Mrs. Kennan was, at the time, the closest living descendant of Martha Washington, her only surviving great-granddaughter. The article described how Britannia lived at Tudor Place surrounded by a collection of objects that had been used by the President and Mrs. Washington at the Executive Mansion they inhabited in New York, as well as the one in Philadelphia, and later during their retirement at Mount Vernon. The article also described the important archive of family papers that Britannia owned, including two of the only known letters from George to Martha Washington, written by the General in 1775, just after he was given command of the Continental Army. At the time the article was published, Britannia Wellington Peter Kennan was 75 years old. Aside from her importance as a member of the Custis Washington family, she was a lifelong resident of Tudor Place and the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. During her long residency, she bore witness to many of the significant events that occurred in and around the nation's capital over the course of the 19th century and into the first decade of the 20th. The article in the Century Magazine made Britannia somewhat of a celebrity. Three years later, she was invited to attend Virginia Day at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition where the state of Virginia had constructed an exact replica of Mount Vernon in the Chicago fairgrounds. Britannia was also an early member of both the Colonial Dames and the DAR. The following year, Britannia's grandchildren recognized the importance of their grandmother as a source of collective family history and living link to the Calvert, Custis, and Washington ancestry. And for this reason, they began conducting a series of interviews with her, prompting her to share recollections of past events, as well as her vast knowledge of family history. As she spoke, they began to write, capturing all the information she provided and the memories exactly as she has recounted them. Some of the notes appear on neatly lined notebook paper like these you see here, whereas others are on the backs of envelopes or any scrap of paper that was at hand, as the notes were being taken and they were later recopied. The compilation of these notes from these conversations form the manuscript known as Britannia's Reminisances that's now found in the Tudor Place archives. The document that I've edited and annotated to present in my book, accompanied by essays where I contextualize Britannia and how these reminiscences were created. But before I delve too far into the creation of the reminiscences, I want to provide a brief biographical overview of Britannia's life. Born at Tudor Place in 1815, Britannia was the youngest child born to Thomas and Martha Park Custis Peter. It was through her mother Martha that Britannia was descended from the Custis Washington family. Born in 1777, Martha Park Custis Peter was a namesake for Martha Washington and the only one of her four Custis grandchildren to be born at Mount Vernon. In 1795, 17-year-old Martha married Thomas Peter, eldest son of Georgetown Tobacco Merchant and Georgetown's first mayor, Robert Peter. In 1805, Thomas and Martha purchased the Tudor Place property, later asking their friend Dr. William Thornton to design a suitable house for the 8.5-acre property. This is the presentation drawing Thornton provided to the family that's also found in the Tudor Place archive. This is a good time to mention that Thomas and Martha Peter were ardent Federalists, one possible reason why they bestowed the names Columbia, America, and Britannia on their three daughters. Unlike her older sisters, Britannia was educated locally in Georgetown, spending four years at the Young Ladies Academy at the Visitation Convent, the school that's known today as Georgetown Visitation. In 1842, Britannia married Beverly Kennan, a career naval officer who was commandant of the Washington Navy Yard. Tragically, their marriage lasted only 16 months before his death in a shipboard explosion aboard the USS Princeton. During those 16 months, Britannia gave birth to the couple's only child, a daughter, Martha, who she called Markey, who was only four months old at the time of Commodore Kennan's death. Newly widowed, Britannia and Markey returned to Tudor Place to live with Britannia's mother. Except for a brief period at the onset of the Civil War, Britannia made Tudor Place her home for the rest of her life, living there for 67 years. As I mentioned earlier, beginning in 1894, Britannia's grandchildren starting prompting her to share her recollections of past events, as well as her vast knowledge of family history. This undertaking allowed the grandchildren to commit to paper the stories they'd grown up hearing from her about Lafayette's 1824 visit to Tudor Place, or her recollections of attending parties at the president's house during Andrew Jackson's administration, or about interactions with notable political figures of the era, including Daniel Webster and Vice President John C. Calhoun, a neighbor who actually lived across the street from the Tudor Place property at the estate known today as Dumbarton Oaks. Calhoun's daughter Anna-Maria was a friend of Britannia's and the girls attended dancing class together. Now, another story that Britannia recalled, or another information that Britannia recalled to her grandchildren was her role as a bridesmaid in the June 30th, 1831 wedding of her first cousin, Mary Anna Custis, to a young army officer named Robert E. Lee. In telling her grandchildren about the Lee wedding, Britannia recounted a rather humorous story about how the minister, Reverend Ruel Keith, got caught in a summer rainstorm and arrived at Arlington House soaking wet. He ended up having to borrow a pair of trousers from Britannia's uncle, George Washington Park Custis. Now, apparently Reverend Keith was rather tall and lanky, whereas Uncle Custis was short and stout. So this gave the minister a rather comical appearance in the borrowed trousers, whose him set several inches above the tops of his boots. Another fascinating person with whom Britannia interacted was Elizabeth Skyler Hamilton, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, who along with her daughter rented Britannia's H Street House, where the elder Mrs. Hamilton died in 1854. More tumultuous memories are also described in Britannia's recollections, like her decision to take on union officers as boarders during the Civil War in an effort to prevent tutor place from being seized by the federal government. Another instance she recalled was the hanging of her cousin and nephew after they were captured and accused of being Confederate spies in Tennessee in 1863. This image of their execution actually made the front page of Harper's Weekly on July 4th of 1863. In addition to her own memories and experiences, Britannia shared anecdotes and information passed on to her by her mother, Martha Custis Peter. This information recounted secondhand included details of Martha's childhood visits to Mount Vernon and of accompanying President George Washington to the laying of the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol building in 1793. Valuable information that illuminates how Martha and George Washington were perceived and memorialized by later generations of their family, including the for Custis grandchildren and their descendants. Britannia served as a beloved maternal figure to her five grandchildren, particularly following the death of their mother, her only daughter, Markey, in 1886. At the time of Markey Kenan Peter's death, her children ranged in age from 18 to six years old. So much like her great-grandmother, Martha Washington, had done a century before, Britannia stepped in and raised the grandchildren, several of whom even resided with her at Tudor Place. As the grandchildren reached adulthood and moved away, Britannia remained an important part of their lives and someone with whom they frequently corresponded and visited whenever possible. It was Britannia's grandson, Armistead Peter Jr., who was the primary force in ensuring that his grandmother's recollections were preserved for later generations of the family. A majority of the notes are in his hand. Other notes are also in the hand of his younger siblings, Freeland and Agnes Peter, who both lived with Britannia at Tudor Place until the time of her death in 1911. In addition to his role as the unofficial family historian, Armistead Jr. followed his grandmother's example of adding labels to important objects in the family collection. And like his grandmother, he compiled his own reminiscences in the mid 20th century after he reached old age. His reminiscences contain additional stories and information passed down by his grandmother as well as other members of the family. Now, Britannia recognized her grandson's interest in family history and frequently gave him objects from the family collection as well as bundles of old papers that were left in the Tudor Place attic. He went on to note that Britannia said he was the only family member who took the slightest interest in them and she knew that he would preserve and care for them. Each time Armistead returned to Georgetown to visit his grandmother, he continued to conduct oral history interviews with her. After spending the day with her on May 13th of 1899, he confided to his diary a desire to write down all she tells me of the past, a most interesting volume it would make. Armistead carefully preserved the notes from his conversations with his grandmother and today they're found within his personal papers in the Tudor Place archive. When Armistead was interviewing his grandmother and most actively engaged in his research on the Custis Peter family in the final decade of the 19th century, there were few repositories to house public records. Thus, his grandmother's memory and the collection of Peter family papers at Tudor Place were valuable and accessible research tools in much the same way earlier 19th century historians such as Jared Sparks seen here and Benson Lossing sought audiences with Britannia's mother, Martha Custis Peter, eager to hear her memories of George and Martha Washington and utilize the same archive of family papers. Sparks recounted his February 28th, 1828 visit to Tudor Place in his diary summarizing a conversation he had with Martha Peter about Martha Washington's decisions to burn much of General Washington's correspondence and the eventual discovery of those two surviving letters by Mrs. Peter behind the drawer in Mrs. Washington's writing table. Prior to her 1911 death and division of her estate, Britannia possessed a large collection of family papers including the two George Washington letters Sparks mentioned. She also owned letters of condolence that were received by Martha Washington from President John Adams and other former members of her husband's cabinet. Since Britannia's father Thomas Peter served as one of the executors of Martha Washington's estate, the archive held important documents about the settlement of the estate, other correspondence including some of letters between Thomas Peter and George Washington about the sale of tobacco and letters from Britannia's siblings written while they were away at school in Philadelphia. In contrast to the archive of family papers and objects that Britannia possessed in the 1890s, the bulk of George Washington's correspondence was not publicly accessible as it was held by the State Department. Originally purchased from George Corbyn Washington, the President's grand-nephew, the personal papers and diaries of the President as well as state papers from his administration were not transferred to the Library of Congress until 1904. As part of the library's institutional reorganization in 1897, the manuscript division was created to house important papers including those of former presidents after they came under the ownership of the federal government. And most important for our discussion today, the National Archives and Records Administration was not created until 1934. Prior to that time, each government agency or branch was responsible for keeping its own records, and they weren't always stored in ideal conditions either. Washington DC of course had its historical society, but the organization was in its infancy. Founded in 1894 as the Columbia Historical Society, its role at the time was to serve as a forum where its members presented papers of historical research, many of which were then published in its journal. Up until the late 20th century and the advent of census databases and online repositories like those I utilized for my research working on this book, individuals like Armistead Peter Jr. would have needed to spend hours in courthouses searching probate records or climbing into church attics to locate old vestry books and baptismal records. Now, don't get me wrong. I spent my share of time during this project in various archives and tracking down sources and documents, but being able to do a search across multiple census years or find a digital copy of a family member's will certainly speeds up research and makes it possible, especially now in the era of COVID when so many repositories have been temporarily closed. Birth and death records found in the leaves of Bibles like Martha Peter's Bible, which was used to replace archive, also acted as another important source. Britannia inherited her mother's Bible in 1854 and she continued to add family records to it, carefully noting every birth, marriage, and death of an immediate family member. Here you can see where she's added the names of her mother, her brother, and her own daughter. The other thing to keep in mind is that elderly members of the community who served as first-hand witnesses to significant historical events or historical research. Many of the 19th-century histories of Washington, D.C., and the articles that appear in the early volumes of the Historical Society's journal contain the same type of personal recollections as those Britannia Kennan provided to her grandchildren. Washingtonians such as Christian Heinz and Marian Campbell Gouverneur, seen here, even wrote and published memoirs of their lives in the nation's capital during the 19th century. In contrast, Britannia appears to have had no interest in writing and publishing a memoir. She frequently granted interviews to local reporters, to whom she recalled events like Lafayette's visit in 1824, but everything of historical nature that she wrote appears to have been written for her grandchildren and other family members as the primary audience. Britannia Kennan died on the eve of her 96th birthday in January of 1911. According to the terms of her will, the whole estate, including her possessions and the five-and-a-half-acre Tudor Place property, were divided equally among her five grandchildren. The siblings also devised a way to equally divide the collection of objects and papers that had been at Tudor Place since Martha and Thomas purchased the property in 1805. Now, I should also say that the obvious solution to splitting the entire estate five ways would have been to sell the house and just split the proceeds. Fortunately, Armistead Jr. was able to buy out his sibling's share to own Tudor Place outright, and by forfeiting his share of another family property, he was able to do that. The siblings also divided, like I said, the collection, and they took an inventory because the collection included furniture, jewelry, clothing, and decorative objects, including numerous objects formerly owned by George and Martha Washington. To ensure that the collection of Washington objects and everything at Tudor Place was equally divided, Armistead Jr. and his siblings began the arduous task of inventorying more than a century's worth of family possessions. Each object was given a number and have given a small sticker, and objects associated with George and Martha Washington were given an additional Mount Vernon label. The siblings identified more than 500 objects ranging from Martha Washington's writing table to a piece of soap that formerly belonged to George and Martha Washington, and yes, the piece of soap is still in the Tudor Place collection today. The 1911 inventory is an equally important historic document describing each object and noting its location within Tudor Place. The nucleus of the collection at Tudor Place Historic House and Garden today of the Washington collection are objects and papers that were selected by Armistead Jr. during the 1911 division of his grandmother's estate. Some of the objects that left Tudor Place as part of the 1911 division, objects that went to his siblings, have since returned to the museum collection while others can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and of course, Mount Vernon. Here you can see a plate from the Neal Americana collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the Washington's French porcelain service that still has its 1911 Tudor Place inventory number and Mount Vernon sticker affixed to it. The archive of family papers was equally divided in 1911, although Armistead Jr. claimed it was Britannia's intention for him to receive the bulk of the papers. However, his siblings were adamant that the family papers would be divided equally as well. In the division, Armistead received his grandmother's account books, a portion of her correspondence related to Beverly Kennan, his grandfather's military naval career, as well as that June 18, 1775 letter from George to Martha Washington. Today the family archive that existed at Tudor Place until the time of Britannia Kennan's death is split among three institutional collections. A portion inherited by Armistead Jr. is now found in the Tudor Place archive along with Mr. Peter's papers and those of later generations of the family who lived at Tudor Place. Other portions of the papers are found at Mount Vernon at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the study of George Washington and at the University of Virginia at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. Two institutions that I visited numerous times to utilize those portions of the family archive for my book project. In addition to keeping original notes, transcribing the conversations with Britannia about the family's history, excuse me, Armistead Jr. compiled a handwritten version seen here where he anthologized a portion of the notes into a single document. At a later point around 1920, he also created a typescript version. However, I learned during the process of my project that not all the notes were included in this anthology that he made, so that was a great process of discovery, finding these additional notes that didn't make it into these later drafts that he compiled. Given that many of the reminiscences were committed to paper in or around 1894 when Britannia was in her late 80s or early 90s and that she was recalling events that had recurred 60 years earlier, her accuracy is impressive. In many instances, receipts or papers found in the Tudor Place archive or in the other collections I mentioned made it possible for me to precisely date an event that Britannia described to her grandchildren, such as the funeral of her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Scott Peter, a receipt for which from the undertaker survives in Thomas Peter's papers. In fact, one of the best clues to help me determine the date of an event she described during her Civil War travels came from materials held in the National Archives in one of the collections. The records of the provost marshal at Fort Monroe, a union held fort in Hampton Roads, Virginia. To provide a bit of context, Britannia and her daughter were traveling when the Civil War began in April of 1861. They first settled in Stanton, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for several months, then moved on to Richmond, Petersburg, and finally Garfield. Through an appeal that Britannia made to Confederate general Benjamin Eugene, she and Marquis were able to leave Confederate held Norfolk aboard a flag of truce vessel, a neutral ship that took them to Fort Monroe. At the fort, all passengers aboard the boat were registered and their luggage was searched. Britannia described the event to her grandchildren. The mention of a Mrs. Beverly Kennan and a Miss Kennan in the passenger list helped me to establish an exact date for this event, December 6th of 1861. Following the inspection, Britannia and Marquis were allowed to remain on the boat, which traveled at the Chesapeake Beta Baltimore. From there, they made their way to her brother's plantation near Ellicott Mills, Maryland, and then on January 1st of 1862, Britannia returned to Tudor Place. Later that spring is when she decided to take in borders as part of her effort to prevent the house from being seized, which is an equally interesting facet of the Tudor Place story, given Britannia's overt Southern sympathies. As I suggest in my first essay of the book, when reading this historical document, the reader needs to keep several things in mind. First, the Britannia's primary audience for this document was her grandchildren and other members of her immediate family. Thus, personal opinions are frequently included and information that was sometimes of a rather gossipy nature makes its way in there. Always proper, Britannia undoubtedly would not have made some of these comments if her intended audience was more public. Second, the reader should also understand that Britannia was a product of the time and place in which she grew up, the antebellum south, and that her family owned numerous enslaved individuals and used their labor both at Tudor Place as well as on their agricultural lands in Maryland and the District of Columbia. An unapologetic southerner, Britannia herself was an enslaver and relative comfort due in part to her family's use of an enslaved labor force to cultivate tobacco and other crops. Britannia's mother, Martha Park Custis-Peter, received two large bequests of more than 100 Dower slaves from the Custis estate. The first group in 1795 at the time of her marriage, a number of which were sold the following year in 1796 by Thomas Peter noted here in his account book something that actually displeased George Washington. And the second group in 1802 after Martha Washington's death. Now, according to 17th century Virginia law, any child born to a female Dower slave became a Dower slave themselves regardless of the status of their father. In this way, the Peter family came to own multiple generations of Custis Dower slaves. Many of these individuals were inherited by Britannia or her brother at the time of Martha Peter's 1854 death and remained in their ownership until the eventual abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia in Maryland. Following her husband's death and her move back to Tudor Place, Britannia hired out a number of the enslaved individuals previously used in their household, meaning for lack of a better term, other Washingtonians literally rented these slaves from Britannia paying her monthly for their labor. And in her role as executor of her husband's estate, she approved the sale of some 50 enslaved individuals from her late husband's Henrico County Virginia plantation. Here's the newspaper advertisement for that sale. Her attitude toward slavery is apparent when she discusses several of the individuals at Tudor Place prior to the Civil War. In an aside about Hannah, the daughter of her enslaved ladies made, Britannia recalled to her grandchildren that Hannah quote belong to me, of course. Her statement is especially interesting because Hannah was likely fathered by one of Britannia's brothers. So in addition to being owned by Britannia, she was also a blood relative. Britannia's attitude toward slavery was clearly one of matter of fact acceptance as it was an institution that she had known and been surrounded by for the first five decades of her life. Her surviving letters as well as information she provided to her grandchildren suggest that from her point of view, she was kind to the individual she owned. However, we're only hearing one side of the story. We don't have the perspective of the enslaved on working at Tudor Place or of about Britannia as an enslaver. However, it should be noted that she maintained relationships with her former slaves more than three decades after the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Her account books include notations of charitable gifts to former slaves, and in the very first passage of her reminiscences, she discusses Hannah and the man who would become her husband Alfred Pope. Both Alfred and Hannah remained in Georgetown following their 1850 emancipation, and Britannia described them to her grandchildren as a most respected couple. One of the most intriguing relationships of Britannia's life was her role as employer to longtime Tudor Place gardener John Luckett, an escaped slave from Virginia, whom she hired when slavery was still legal in the District of Columbia. Luckett remained in Britannia's employ at Tudor Place for more than 44 years until his death in 1906. In 1899, Luckett recounted the story of his escape from slavery to Armistead Peter Jr., who later wrote about it in his own reminiscences. While residing on a Fairfax County plantation, Luckett and several other enslavemen were seized by the Union army as contraband, not wanting to drive the army supply wagon he was assigned to drive. Luckett escaped, crossing the chain bridge from Virginia into the District of Columbia. While walking down the street in front of Tudor Place, he saw Britannia cannon out in her garden, called out to her and asked if she wasn't needing to hire anyone. It appears that their relationship evolved from employer and employee to friendship and a mutual respect garnered by a lengthy association of more than four decades. Luckett was frequently called upon by Britannia's grandchildren to take them fishing or hunting, and he attended important events in the lives of her grandchildren, including graduations and ordinations. Upon hearing the news of the birth of Armistead Peter Jr.'s son, Armistead Peter III, seen here with John Luckett in about 1898, Luckett asked Britannia to pass along the message that he felt proud to hear that Armistead has a son, and I hope that I may live long enough to drag him around as I used to do Armistead Jr. Despite numerous offers by the Peter family to secure housing for Luckett and his family in closer proximity to Tudor Place, he always declined, stating that his wife preferred to reside in their neighborhood on Capitol Hill. At the time of Luckett's death in 1906, Britannia's grandchildren wrote an obituary for the longtime gardener that appeared in Washington newspapers. Britannia's quoted in the obituary saying, if I were asked to name a fault in John, I could not do so. It's a pity there are not more like him. In the late winter of 1911, when the contents of Tudor Place were inventoried after Britannia's death, the list of objects in her bedroom included a photograph of John Luckett, the only photograph in that room of someone who is not a member of the extended Custis Peter family. For all the wealth of information that Britannia provides to her grandchildren in these reminiscences, she's relatively quiet about the transitional period in 1863 when enslaved labor was no longer used at Tudor Place and she began employing paid servants. In the District of Columbia, the Emancipation of Slavery occurred in April of 1862 when President Lincoln signed the District of Columbia's Compensated Emancipation Act. This act provided for compensated emancipation whereby slave owners who made a loath of loyalty and oath of loyalty to the Union and voluntarily emancipated their slaves would receive financial compensation, up to $300 for each individual they emancipated. The act was passed nearly nine months before President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st of 1863. It's not surprising that Britannia's name cannot be found among the surviving records of district slave owners who sought compensated emancipation as it's doubtful she would have been willing to sign a loyalty oath to the Union given her overt Southern sympathies. After she made the decision to take in borders in the late spring of 1863, she hired two Irish immigrant servants, a maid and cook, and had Luckett as gardener. Another tragic episode that Britannia doesn't directly address in the conversations with her grandchildren is the death of her husband Beverly Kennan when she was just 29 years old. Commodore Kennan was one of the six victims killed when a debt gun exploded during a firing demonstration on board the USS Princeton on February 28th, 1844. Britannia herself was on board the boat as were a number of very important individuals the president of the United States, John Tyler, former First Lady Dolly Madison, a number of other cabinet members, but Britannia did not directly witness the explosion that killed her husband. She was likely below decks enjoying the dinner, the food that was served as part of this day-sailing excursion. The funeral for the victims was held two days later in the East Room of the White House. One can only imagine the loss that Britannia must have felt after just 16 months of marriage. Thus without, she was also a single parent to her infant daughter. Correspondents from other family members suggested that Britannia was devastated by the loss of her husband and spent nearly two weeks confined to her room. It's possible that the events surrounding the February 28th, 1844 disaster on the Princeton represented such a dark and painful time of her life that she couldn't even bear to speak of it more than 50 years later. Another incident from February of 1904 further illustrates the lasting effect that her husband's death and funeral likely had on her. That month, Britannia received an invitation from President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt to attend an event at the White House. This invitation, now in the Tudor Place Archive, still retains the response card and other inserts suggesting that Britannia did not return them or attend the event. While she was quite advanced in age by 1904, she would have turned 89 the previous month. She was still very spry and in excellent health. It's likely she had other reasons for not attending. The event to which she was invited was a reception that was held in the public rooms in the White House. Now, I think it's very possible that Britannia associated these spaces, especially the East Room, with that very dark time in her life as it was the location for the March 1st, 1844 state funeral held for her husband and the other cabinet members who died aboard the Princeton. In 1893, Washington Post reporter George Alfred Townsend, known by his pen name Gath, visited Britannia at Tudor Place. In the course of their interview, he asked her whether a clever woman should submit to an inferior husband. To this, Britannia replied, quote, I believe that women, by putting themselves forward in the world, do not elevate but degrade themselves. It's a woman's part in life of where she loves. Now, while this statement might be construed by a historian today as anti-feminist, it further illustrates the mindset in which Britannia Kenan was raised and the philosophy to which she adhered. Now, the statements especially ironic, considering Britannia never remarried after her husband's death in 1844 and during that 67-year period of her widowhood, she was afforded rikes and privileges not typically granted to married women at the time, and her son-in-law later recalled that as a widow, she had received no less than three proposals of marriage. Britannia Kenan has been called the first curator of Tudor Place and it's a title well deserved. In addition to providing news reminiscences to her grandchildren, she painstakingly arranged and labeled many of the objects in the family's collection, especially pieces that her parents, Thomas and Martha Peter, acquired at the 1802 sale of the decade she owned Tudor Place. Britannia carefully displayed these objects in the house and lived among the various heirlooms and relics. For her daily correspondence, Britannia set at the writing desk formerly used by her great-grandmother, Martha Washington, something that astounded reporters and writers when they came to interview her at Tudor Place. This was a piece of furniture that George Washington originally purchased in New York City from the outgoing French ambassador. Mrs. Washington used the table in the executive mansion in Philadelphia and back home at Mount Vernon, later bequeathing it to granddaughter Martha Custis Peter from whom Britannia inherited it. Here you can see Britannia's grants on freelance seated at the writing table where it was placed in the Tudor Place parlor and an image of the piece that's now back in Mount Vernon's collection. In Britannia's reminiscences she provides a fascinating insight into life not only on the Tudor Place property, but in Georgetown surrounding the estate. She included histories of some of the adjacent houses and properties and some of the fascinating individuals she had interacted with such as the former Empress of Mexico who after her husband's abdication and execution brought her large family to the United States, eventually settling in Georgetown. Britannia actually recalled that she attended visitation with several of the Empress's daughters, the former royal princesses. Another interesting person she discusses is Harriet Williams who as a schoolgirl of 16 married the much older widow or Russian ambassador Alexander Dibudisco in 1840. Britannia also focused on 19th century Washington. She discusses the early infrastructure of the city describing Pennsylvania Avenue as a mud hole prior to its paving, then going on to discuss several variations of road surface materials used on it during the 19th century. She also talks about early public transportation systems including the horse drawn omnibus line that came through Georgetown until it was replaced by horse drawn street cars in 1862. Now in the five years that I was curator at Tudor Place, Britannia's reminiscences offered a wealth of information to me about room use within the house and other important facts for interpreting Tudor Place. In addition to the basic room use information, she includes more macabre details such as specific rooms in which various family members passed away. Again another clue to room use as in which rooms that are no longer bed chambers now were formerly used as bed chambers earlier in the 19th century. She provides valuable details about the historic landscape of the Tudor Place property and what plants were found in the garden and in the conservatory during her childhood. These clues along with materials found in her papers in the Tudor Place archive continue to give Tudor Place staff a more complete picture of life at the estate during the 19th century. Following Britannia's lead each subsequent generation of the Peter family did its part to further ensure the survival of Tudor Place. Armistead Junior who became the next owner in 1911 conducted a sympathetic restoration of the house in which he addressed several decades worth of deferred maintenance and added modern conveniences like electricity and modern bathrooms bringing the then 100 year old house into the 20th century. His grandmother had largely shun those modern conveniences preferring to use gas lighting throughout the house. Armistead Junior continued Britannia's tradition of making notes about the provenance of objects like this note about a soup plate from George Washington Society of the Cincinnati Porcelain Dinner Service that he received from cousin Mary Lee whose grandfather George Washington Park Custis had received the service after the Washington's death in 1802. Following Armistead Junior's death in 1960 his only child Armistead Peter III became the owner of Tudor Place. Armistead Peter III was Britannia's first great-grandson and she was always eager for news of him or when he visited Tudor Place as a young boy. He in turn was captivated by his great-grandmother the stories she could tell and the family's long-time ownership of Tudor Place. Here they are out in the Tudor Place garden just a few months before her death in 1910. This is actually one of my favorite images because you see Britannia a woman who met Lafayette as a young girl with her great-grandson Armistead Peter III who would be the last owner of Tudor Place and lived there until 1983. In addition to preserving the house collection and five-and-a-half acre property Armistead Peter III further documented the family's historic ties to the house and garden with a publication of his book Tudor Place in 1969. And as a further measure to ensure the preservation of Tudor Place Armistead Peter III had placed the entire five-and-a-half acre property in a conservation easement with the National Park Service in 1966. This action ensured that the property would never again be reduced in size as it had been when portions were sold off by Britannia in 1854 and 1866. President Johnson's Secretary of the Interior, Stuart Udall seen here with Armistead Peter III called the easement a gift to the nation. In 1972, Armistead Peter III wrote about the first time that he came back to Tudor Place after his great-grandmother's death and the division of her collection was completed. Then 15 years old he recalled that he found the house stripped of every picture, every stick of furniture, everything that I had known and only a lone packing box empty in the center of the living room floor. I sat on this box and I looked around me and I believed that at that moment was born the resolve that such an outrage would never again happen in that house. Armistead Peter III spent much of the 23 years of his ownership of Tudor Place acquiring furnishings and in some instances engravings that were identical to the ones found throughout the house during his great-grandmother's ownership. And it was Armistead Peter III who with his wife Caroline Ogden Jones made the decision to create a foundation to the safe Tudor Place to the public. A foundation that would operate the estate as a historic house museum and garden following his death. Not only would this once private house become public but the family's unparalleled collection of objects and manuscripts would also be made available for visitors to enjoy and scholars to utilize. Now all this was made possible because of Britannia Kennan with her stories and lifetime of work on the house and collections of the love of Tudor Place and an appreciation of its history to these later generations of the family preserving the house through the Civil War and into the 20th century. So, thank you very much. Now I'm going to end my screen sharing here and I am happy to take some questions. Oh, I'm sorry, it looks like we are out of time. Thank you all. It's been a pleasure to be here. I hope you will purchase the book if it's of interest. Thank you.