National Park Service Arlington House U.S. Department of the Interior The Robert E. Lee Memorial The Spectacle From the Office Down the Hall Details This summer, Arlington House Facilities Manager Malcolm Willoughby transferred to Glen Echo and Clara Barton National Historic Site to be facility manager there. It was a dark day when he left, but there is a silver lining: we get to bring in someone new! The Facilities Manager job is a complex position that demands hands on trades skills, the ability to work well with people, and to an ever increasing degree, the ability to work with computer databases. Fortunately for us, we have found such a person within the ranks of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Tinaudra Foster, a maintenance worker in the Buildings and Utilities branch, will begin serving this month on a 60-day detail as the Arlington House Facilities Manager. North wing of Arlington House Tinaudra, or “Ti”, is no stranger to Arlington House. She has done some marvelous VIP Trip to Appomattox Court masonry work here, particularly the replacement of the brick floors in the slaves House quarters following the archeology, and she has worked behind the scenes with the park’s This year our destination for the volunteer September 10 (703 235-1530 ext. 227) or facility management database. But if you have trip will be the Appomattox Court House e-mail ([email protected]) to not had the chance to meet her, please take a National Historical Park. This will be day- reserve your seat on the bus. The bus seats moment to introduce yourself and welcome long trip, approximately 8:00 AM–7:30 PM. about 20. Please let us know your plans as her to the site! We will be leaving from the OAB (Old soon as possible, so we can finalize Administration Building) at 8:00 AM. arrangements. If you are unable to go on the Kendell Thompson Appomattox is approximately three and a trip, but would like to volunteer at Arlington Site Manager half hours from Arlington. House for part of the day, we would be most Arlington House, appreciative. The Robert E. Lee Memorial The Park Service will reimburse volunteers for their lunches (limit $10.00 per volunteer). The September 24th date is tentative because You may also want to bring snacks for the a driver has not been assigned. If the date is ride home. A Park Service bus has been changed you will be notified and we will reserved for our trip on Saturday, reschedule the trip. September 24, 2005. Please call by Volunteers Monthly Newsletter - Volume VI, Number 9 - September 2005 Significant Historic Events in September September, 1845 Perhaps the greatest consequence of the taken away for the evil to come.’ [Isaiah 57:1] G.W.P. Custis, continues his “pilgrimage to battle was the death of General Phillip May God have mercy on us all.” the great scenes of the American Revolution, Kearny, one of the “most promising Union visiting Boston, Lexington, and Concord. In officers…The death of the beloved and September 13, 1862 Boston he was “depressed to find no sign of admired Kearny…was mourned both North In the morning at Frederick, Maryland, two the old entrenchments on Bunker Hill,” and and South.” Kearny’s grave and equestrian lounging Union soldiers picked up a paper later expressed his regret that the New statue are located near the Old wrapped around a few cigars. It was a lost of England states had not preserved some of Amphitheater. Lee’s orders for the Maryland campaign. the Revolutionary battle sites for future The ‘Lost Order of Antietam’ was rushed to generations. In Lexington and Concord he September 2, 1862 McCellan and he began to move accordingly found thing “as they should be, little After defeating the United States forces at and a little more rapidly, though not entirely changed from the olden days.” “In Second Manassas, Lee remained on the trusting to his fortuitous intelligence. advocating the preservation of historic offensive, crossing the Potomac into sites…Custis was once more well ahead of Maryland by fords in the Leesburg area, an September 16, 1832 this time.” operation which continued until September George Washington Custis Lee, first child of 7. Robert E. and Mary Custis Lee was born at September, 1851 Old Point (Fort Monroe), Norfolk, Virginia, G.W.P. Custis spent a few days visiting the September 8, 1862 the only one of the Lee children not born at Lees in Baltimore, and while there addressed General Lee issued a proclamation to the Arlington. Six weeks later Lee wrote, a meeting in Monument Square “which had citizen of Maryland declaring that it “is for “Master Custis is the most darling boy in the been called to petition the government to you to decide your destiny freely and without world.” intercede in behalf of some Irish nationalist constraint. This army will respect your confined in the England penal colony in choice, whatever it may be.” September 17, 1862 Australia. Lee was impressed…by the size of The Battle of Antietam was probably the the crowd and the attention and applause it September 11, 1861 bloodiest one-day battle ever fought in gave ‘the old orator of Ireland,’ when Mr. The cheat Mountain campaign, the first that North America. “Badly outnumbered, Lee Custis addressed it.” Lee was to conduct, was a failure, and it made his stand in Maryland and McCellan brought Lee considerable public criticism. attacked, throwing in his corps piecemeal September, 1866 For five days he campaigned “against the and failing to use his very strong The vault of The Unknown Dead of the Civil Federals, the heavy rains of the season, and reserve…Federal gains were small and War, a pit twenty feet deep and twenty feet in the rugged mountains in western Virginia.” costly.” At a critical moment when the diameter constructed just to the west of the [Long] Afterwards the Richmond press Confederate right was driven in, Confederate former flower garden at Arlington, was filled pictured Lee as overcautious theorist and General A. P. Hill and his division arrived on with bones from over two thousand gave him a lecture about the proper conduct the field after a hurried march from Harper’s skeletons—”skulls in one division, legs in of mountain warfare. Ferry, and the Federal advance was halted. another, arms in another, and ribs in Exact casualty figures are unknown, but at another”—and finally sealed. September 13, 1861 least 12,400 Federals and 13,700 Confederates Lt. Colonel John A. Washington, Lee’s were killed, wounded or listed as missing in September 1, 1852 A.D.C. during the Cheat Mountain fiasco, battle. Colonel Lee assumed command of the was killed by United States Army pickets United States Military Academy at West while reconnoitering. The horse of Rooney “Lee, directing his first battle on the field (in Point were he served until March 31, 1855. Lee was killed at the same time, but Lee’s son contrast to planning the strategy and was himself uninjured. Washington, who relinquishing the tactics to subordinates), September 1,1862 was the great-grand nephew of George revealed himself to be as great a combat Battle of Chantilly. During this last episode Washington and the last private owner of general as he had already shown himself a of Second Manassas, General Pope’s troops Mount Vernon, had been esteemed by Lee as strategist. It was entirely his fight, as he held off a Confederate advance and both a friend and a gentleman. To his wife, moved brigade units and even gun batteries withdrew closer to Washington. “Lee kept Lee wrote with genuine grief that he had about with no regard to army organization.” the pressure on the distraught Federals, but appreciated “him very highly. Morning & “His men stood up to 25 per cent Washington itself was well protected.” evening have I seen him on him knees praying to his Maker… ‘[T]he righteous is (continued on page 3) 2 The Spectacle Furnishings Tour of Arlington House On September 27th and September 29th, Dr. Dr. Fitzgerald earned his B.A from Check the following link to learn more about Oscar Fitzgerald will give a tour of the Vanderbilt University and his M.A. and Ph.D. Dr. Fitzgerald’s book: exhibit room furnishings at Arlington House in history from Georgetown University. He http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/ for the volunteers and staff. recently retired from the Naval Historical 0870697412/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-1945190- As space in the exhibit rooms is limited, we Center, where he served first as head of the 7032123#reader-page can only take 15 people on each tour. You Contemporary History program and then as must RSVP no later than Friday, September director of the Navy Museum. His 23rd so that we may have an accurate count. publications include two volumes in the Please choose one of the evenings and call official Navy history of the Vietnam War. For Museum Curator Mary Troy at 703-235-1535 the past few years he has pursued full time to RSVP. [Mary works Monday toFriday, his first love, the history of furniture and the 6 am – 3:30 pm] decorative arts. His publications in this field We will schedule a weekend tour later in the include Four Centuries of American year to accommodate those who can not Furniture and an exhibit catalogue of the make it in September. “Green Family of Cabinetmakers: An Alexandria Institution.” He is active in Details: historic preservation as a consultant to RSVP - Museum Curator Mary Troy no later historic properties, including Dumbarton than Friday, September 23rd, 703-235-1535 House in Washington, and as a member of Limit: 15 people per tour Alexandria’s Board of Architectural Review.