Touring George Washington's Estate At Mount Vernon!

hi guys good morning from Virginia so myself and Brennan are in Mount Vernon this is kind of near where her family lives we're gonna be going to George Washington's house today to take a little tour of the grounds until kind of explore this is gonna be a lot of fun for me I was here a long time ago and we've never been here I don't know why it's really like a couple minutes away from where my family lives and I just never visited Mount Vernon before about to have like a super historical and exciting trip just exploring the grounds we are gonna take a guided tour I believe and then we're kind of free to walk around after that as far as I'm aware they filmed a national treasure book of secrets here a little bit of it I guess so that'll be kind of fun to see and make if you want to watch national treasure every time I come to DC I want to watch national treasure and I want to watch an attic museum because those are just the historical movies of okay let's go into Hollywood adaptations of historical significance that's what I meant to say so we're heading in through the gate here gonna get our tickets and then head out onto the estate so there's some shops and dining areas over here we were gonna go have dinner at this restaurant we still may do it in the time that we're here but that is over there ticket sales main entrance are over here I already like the historical colonial looking wood and fences and everything I'm excited Brennan I haven't done this in such a long time it's big out of brochures in our ticket times for our tour this is a giant map the entire estate and all there is to see here we are over here in the orientation center and that there's the mansion right there which is what our tour time is for and then after that we are free to kind of like explore the estate as we want we're probably going to come this way so we can get a grand reveal the mansion and then after that just explore as we want to so that map was over there and right over here are some statues of George Martha looks like granddaughter Nellie and then grandson washi so this is pretty cool this hand's all golden from everybody touching them and stuff but are you ready to get going on our tour here yeah I'm excited there's a little shop over here they have a lot of beautiful Christmas trees over here by the way and Wow look at that those kids are even dressed up colonial here's a display of the house and model the house alright heading outside I think into the historic area now that was the orientation center back there and we're walking along this nice little brick path I believe to get the reveal of the mansion around the corner over here alright so we just came from that path over there and right here is a camel and his name is Aladdin if you'd believe it isn't that kind of cool now the house is right back there so let's go get a gander the house all right Aladdin the camel was right back there and here we are the first reveal of the mansion George Washington's house we have a tour in about 20 minutes over there so we should probably make our way over there and then we can explore more of the whole estate in all honesty the house itself is very relatively simple it's the grounds and the estate itself that's just so much more vast that they have here but I'm excited to get a tour the house anyway so I think we have to go over there for that by the way so what do you think first impressions are you impressed it's so beautiful over here and it's just crazy to think that this is this whole property like what's this house over here I mean everything is just just like the barn or is this like the the other house you probably had a guest house you know and he had slaves here they have a tour about specifically the slaves and Mount Vernon so it could be that I doubt that because I think the slave plantation was way over there almost by the wharf by the water so I guess we'll find out that's what we're here to do okay so we found out where we need to go for the house tour where we are right now this is 7 & 9 which is the upper garden and the green house so that's what this building is right there that Brennan's peeking in through the window see okay so this says it's the green house before building his green house George Washington studied several designs and the green house provided a winter refuge for tropical and semi tropical plants like coffee orange lemon lime sago palm and aloe during the warm growing season these plants were kept in tubs outside in the garden the original green house burned down in 1835 the present structure was rebuilt on the original site in 1951 so that's why it looks a lot different and it looks a little bit newer comparatively to the main house over there I guess if you look inside you can see in just kind of a lot of inches I don't know if they do demonstrations inside or if they have people come and talk and speak in there they probably do but so that's pretty cool I've got something burning over there and then this garden is kind of full of what looks like either cabbage or lettuce on both sides they are growing plants here I assume so that's pretty cool all right so that was just equipment that's just steaming I guess I thought it was like a fire or something like that where to go around the back of the house to see there's anything on the other side right here this is a gift shop but let's see looks like people are taking pictures over here and this could be cool so that was right there that was the woman's slave quarters which it was really quiet in there so I didn't talk this is the shoemaker shop right here so this is pretty cool let's see what's over here it looks like this is the stove room let's see what this looks like okay so this was the stove room this provided the heat that the palms orange trees lemon trees and other tropical plants that were in the greenhouse used to survive so this is really cool all right I think we're getting very close to our time to return to go on our tour of the house okay my first I stepped inside to see any men's slave quarters here sorry I don't know if you heard that at all but that was the men's quarters right there and then the women's was all the way down at the other end so there were slaves that were housed over here which is interesting because I know that the plantation was maybe it's just like the slave memorial that's on the other side of the estate I don't know but now we're gonna definitely go on our tour because it is our time right now here's a nice view of the upper garden here where they have these vegetables growing we're standing in line right over here to get our I guess admittance into line for our tour all right so this is the gardener's house this building first served as a slave hospital and then as a space for spinning wool and finally as living quarters so this is cool with the assistance of two or three enslaved gardeners we care of the upper and lower gardens as well who's ever seen as well as the orchards and the greenhouse so run line to go inside the house there's no photography or videography allowed inside the house we're gonna have to put the camera away but I'll see you guys in just a minute so this room that we're in right now is the kitchen this is where they would wash and dry a lot of the dishes right behind me that's where they would prepare everything and then here was kind of a refrigeration process so this was the one part of the mansion that we were allowed to take pictures in videos in just not on the main part of the house right over there what did you think of that I just like I was so frustrated that I was bound to like the tour because I wanted to stay in there and I just wanted to like look through everything like I wanted to be able to go into the rooms and like touch the bed right now I don't know it was so cool in there that was the house we got to see Washington's room like where he actually passed away and I was just like mm-hmm and I wish there was more that I could remember to share about it but the main part of the house with just kind of a few of the viewing rooms visiting rooms bedrooms upstairs that was kind of the main part of the house at George Washington's father built and then George Washington had it on over here and over there he had it on the dining room and then his kind of study over on this side of the house so that was a really really cool unique tour I kind of asked why pictures and videos weren't a thing and how why I thought that they weren't a thing is because it kind of slows the line down because the line goes all the way back there and it's just kind of a moving conga line through the entire house and then also I think they want you to buy the book that's what the tour guide said but it goes through the kitchen and then wraps around here it goes in through the inside you can see a few the rooms in there then you go upstairs you go through some of the rooms in there you get to see George Washington's room right up there and then you go down the stairs and then come out into the kitchen so there's the mansion you can see everybody filing in through the back door down there we came down the hill a little bit because you get a really nice view of the Potomac over here this is just gorgeous it's very serene beautiful this time of year with the trees where some of them are dead some of them are falling off some are still alive it just it's so beautiful we have so much to explore here because this whole property I think is 8,000 square ma no not square miles that does make sense okay so it was 8,000 acres back in the 1700s presently it is 500 acres that have been preserved so it makes a lot more since but now I think we're heading more over here towards the plantation area to explore this and maybe go to the old tomb and the new tomb the present tun alright so for orientation that's the kitchen this is the clerk's office on this side of the building over here this is the storehouse where they stored blankets clothes tools to the slaves nails copper all sorts of other things that I guess they stored right over here but I do want to go check out the clerk's office over here too interesting so this was a living quarters for his Clerk right next to that it was the paint cellar and one thing that we learned in tour is that George was very into paints and wallpapers kind of showing off his extravagance see when it came to wealth for visitors and other people coming to visit him at the mansion so he liked this paint he did it was more to just kind of brag and show off yeah and then over here this is the smokehouse I believe so to preserve meat they would hang them in the smokehouse out here they would dig a pit and I believe they'd start a fire that's how they keep that meat preserved until they would utilize it in the kitchen right over there right next to that is the wash house I presume where they did a lot of laundry yeah it required an entire building for washing and ironing in here the structure began as a hen house but became the wash house by 1783 with a large fireplace and a brick boiler to heat the water cool this is the coach house here with a writing chair what wasn't expecting it to be a literal chair well it's interesting so let's see as a young man George Washington acquired a writing share similar to the 18th century example you see here alongside a modern reproduction wait so is this the modern reproduction and then the one over there is the original popular in American England writing chairs could travel country lanes and back roads more easily than a bulkier four-wheel chariot and coach this is cool okay so I guess that's the modern one and then the one over there is the one for George Washington's time this looks like some sort of a stable over here certainly smells like a stable Wow yeah this literally smells like horses that they do like recreations of things so imagine the keep horses somewhere around here so this is a another stable over here he designed and had built this brick structure to replace it the following year after it burned down in 1781 so this is where they would keep the livestock I guess here and then on the other side and then in the middle I'm sorry had his vehicles he had several horse-drawn vehicles so this is cool this is an example I believe this is a reproduction of one of his vehicles that he had poorly maintained roads men short journeys were hazardous and vehicles were out quickly this is cool it's at both this example in Washington's coach were made by a well known Philadelphia carriage maker all right that's cool all right onward I'm learning so much so this is why it actually smells like livestock because they have livestock here and they have some sheep it looks like this is really cool and then a giant area over there to graze I wonder what the purpose of having these is I guess they also have a camel Aladin back over there alright so reviewing our map here we've taken the house tour we've seen all of these structures along the side over here by the livestock barn stable area right here you said over here what was that being the fruit garden in nursery fruit garden and nursery so I think the highlights over here definitely the old tomb and then the current tomb yeah we can go check out so let's go do that let's just hit all the like highlights okay it's a fruit garden a nursery that's this whole area right here which is this giant expansive area so let's head that way and then head over to the tomb area okay so I think we have a plan for the most part we have our highlights that we definitely want to do because Brennan's family is still at their house we were gonna go do this by ourselves and then go rendezvous within because that's why we're here is to hang out with Brennan's family and when we have Kenna days where we can kind of branch off and do our own thing that's when we're gonna go do it yesterday was actually Brennan's big Christmas family celebration so that's what we went to last night had a really good time didn't film anything yesterday but today's our last big day here in Virginia and this is one of the big highlights that we definitely wanted to do there's some more livestock over there over here is a trail that goes through the woods and that looks like that's what that is heading over towards the slave area the housing for the slaves we're gonna head this way over towards the tomb and the slave Memorial though trying to orient ourselves here on the map the Potomac is over there next to the house okay took a detour over here to be fruit and garden nursery most of this four acre enclosure was devoted to an orchard that produced the apples cherries peaches and other fruits needed in the kitchen vegetables grains and pasture grasses were grown at beds and allowed to go to seed providing the seeds essential to next year's planning hedging plants boxwood and trees were also propagated here and nurtured until they've reached a size to be transplanted to a permanent location so that's what this whole expanse all the way over there kind of next to be stable was okay so heading still miss direction then all right we have reached the Washington tomb I asked for silence and respect over here so I'm not going to be talking over here just kind of showcasing it [Music] well not everybody was just quiet and respectable because I think that they want you to be but we're gonna head in this direction down towards the old tomb to comparatively see how that is to the new one so we're coming out onto the wharf by the Potomac and I think we'll check that out real quick and then go that way towards the old tomb okay so again there's the wharf over there I believe we can continue on that way to go towards the slave Morial and the slave quarters we're gonna go up these stairs over here and hopefully we can find Washington's old tomb up there this really is an incredibly beautiful property I'm enjoying the weather right now I'm enjoying the trees the hills the architecture of all of the houses it's incredible so there's the fruit garden in nursery there's the mansion up there that was kind of the main road there with the barn up there and this is the road that is the old tomb right here actually okay so this is an excerpt from his last will and testament saying that the family vault at Mount Vernon requiring repairs and being a properly situated Maiden desire that a new one a brick in larger scale is built at the foot of what is commonly known as the vineyard enclosure so George and Martha Washington along with 20 other family members were originally interred in the old vault and in accordance with this new will Washington directed at the building of a new tune the Washington's were removed to the new tune within 1831 so this is the old tomb so as you can tell this one was a lot more simple and it was really just kind of at the foot of the mansion over there I'm tripping but I think we're gonna head back over towards the Slade memorial over there before we kind of wrap it up and head on out all right so we're approaching the other side of the Washington tomb right over here there's the fruit garden nursery we're gonna bypass this and go over towards the slave Memorial which i think is adjacent over there on the other side all right so now we are approaching the slave Memorial and there's a sign saying to approach with silence and respect as well so slavery at Mount Vernon in 1799 this estate was home to a community of 317 and slave men women and children who had no choice but to live here most of these enslaved people lived and worked on before outlying farms as agricultural laborers so in George Washington's will and stipulated that upon Miss Washington's death they would be freed so she freed them early on January 1st 1801 the remaining 194 people remained enslaved after the death so general and this is Washington which I'm pretty sure she died just a couple years later so the Mount Vernon ladies Association is the group that privately owns and renovates Mount Vernon and in 1929 they placed a marker noting the location of the slave cemetery believed to be the first commemoration of its kind at historic site so that's what we're gonna go check out over here so this specific slave memorial I don't believe was the original but this is one that was instituted in 1983 by the not Mardan ladies Association okay so this is the slave cemetery though and it looks like a Archaeological Survey began in 2014 to understand the cemetery size and organization this is in memory of the many faithful colored servants of the Washington family buried in Mount Vernon from 1760 to 1860 they're unidentified graves around this spot 1929 so it looks like this is the archaeological survey being done but the sign of there said that there are no graves being disturbed during this process so that's interesting okay so the graves were up there and now we are heading down towards the Pioneer farm the barn and at the slave cabin which is kind of way back in the back back here it is getting really really serene as we had more over towards this side of the estate and it looks like it's down there actually so I did mention that this estate is privately owned and operated by the not Vernon ladies Association and because of that fact this isn't affected by right now there's the government shutdown going on and when we went to the Natural History Museum the other day it was really busy we were wondering why and that was the reason because that was one of the last days that the public could get into the museum because of the shutdown it was going to be affected by it and they couldn't go inside it after I believe tomorrow is the last day that people can go into the museum neither tomorrow's the last day or it starts tomorrow one of the other but because this is privately owned we can come and enjoy this and everybody else can too okay so this is the Pioneer farm which stretches all the way from I believe the Potomac which is right there all the way down to the slave cabin and then the barn which is back there as well so we're gonna check out the cabin over here looks like there's a lot of tool storage over here I'm assuming some livestock would have been over here as well what's in there your storage so this makes a lot of sense this building right here this is the barn over there that is the slave cabin I don't know I thought this was the slave cabin it's right over there yeah that little one which makes a lot more sense so this looks very new by the way and just the wood that they have outside so innovative barn George Washington was always looking for ways to improve his farming operations at Mount Vernon to this end he designed a novel way to improve the processing and storage of grain at his farm so a two-story 16 sided structure was built in at 1792 through 95 with a circular treading floor on the second level and a granary or storehouse on the ground so this is really cool I guess this is where a lot of the livestock would be in here and then on the first floor down there and then that's where the tool storage would end up over here on these sides see how new that wood looks over here and over there as well we came round on the other side here and it says to protect the health of your animals of our animals and for your safety do you offer food of any sort so I guess they did have animals grazing over here so I guess just this entire areas encompassing livestock area is there stool on the ground yeah I was just showing this off this is just another enclosure for animals so saying this whole area is just the barn and livestock area let's see if the camera agrees to be lighting down here you can kind of see in there not a lot of room but they did have animals in there and on the first floor as I understand it it says something that they mentioned on the tour of the mansion was how much of a farmer a visionary farmer that George Washington was which I thought this was really interesting well the whole world while the world remembers him has a great military and political leader George Washington would have told you that he was first and foremost a farmer so that was something that he held very important to him and the functionality of its a state here so I thought that was really really interesting but we're gonna go check out the slave house over here now kind of sounds like somebody's chopping wood over the hill over there but this is the slave enclosure got some produce over here it looks like a chicken coop this looks relatively new comparatively to other structures as well okay so this cabin represents dwelling is inhabited by enslaved people who worked on Washington's outlying farms groups of cabins were arranged opposite in overseers house and an overseer was like a farm manager I'm taking to believe so that was something that Brennan was bringing up because we've only seen this dwelling and then the one that was over by the Washington's house and if there's 318 slaves that were here where did they all go so this is just a representation of the kind of dwelling I believe that they would just have across the property in various locations that are obviously no longer around alright so now we were heading up a trail through George Washington's forests here back to the main part of the estate over on the other side of the hill over there now this is just a beautiful trail they put a bunch of these signs periodically throughout the trail just to kind of inform me about the types of trees and agriculture here on George Washington's property which that's really cool and beneficial and helpful so that's sign back there said George Washington was six feet and two and a half inches tall and for the 1700s that was like that was like a giant that was a monster and seeing his bed like in his bedroom it was really tiny yeah for guys feet mustard yeah and like what I was pointing out was as soon as you leave his bedroom and go downstairs there's a part of the stair wall like ahead mm-hmm where I like I have to duck to get out like going down the stairs you had to like do this too to go underneath the lip of it which in I'm 510 so he's four and a half inches taller that I serve let's head over this bridge back over to the main part of the estate there's some livestock over there and this is really high off the ground there's actually a little running brook down there that this goes over which that's that's really interesting too all right I think we've pretty much seen all that we wanted to see George Washington's estate there are a few areas that we didn't fully get to experience a few Gardens a blacksmith area but for the most part we got to see pretty much everything that we wanted to see at George Washington's estate today which is really really awesome I'm really glad we got to do it one of the locations that we didn't get to is the lower garden over there that's right next to the mansion but we're gonna head out we want to grab some lunch and luckily there is a restaurant like I mentioned at the beginning of this video that's right by the orientation center looks like this is the Donald W Reynolds Museum and Education Center we're heading in to you right now so before heading to lunch Vernon and I stepped into the George Washington Museum here to walk around a little bit this is George Washington as a surveyor at 19 years old his next room is about the French and Indian War and then on display over here is a sword dating back to 1750 3 in which a 21 year old George Washington got his first military appointment as a major in the Virginia militia so there's his sword so over here this is a representation of a dress that would have been worn by Martha Washington this is reproduction of shoes these earrings are said to have been owned by her but it looks like the necklace was owned by Martha Washington so that's the true item here and that's of interest there's a lot of artifacts and displays that are hard to showcase because there's a lot in this museum but basically this museum just kind of showcases the timeline itself of George Washington how he became a colonel on to a general under a President of the United States right over here this is the Revolutionary War theater which apparently is a 4d experience so that's pretty interesting so there's something going on over here where you can sit down in a bench you have a little touch screen computer in front of you this is interesting that experience whatever that was was in there was also a door over here that says the battle a second trend starts in 15 minutes so there's a lot of experiences in the museum very interactive there's also a room in here called hands-on history or it looks like you have to make a reservation in order to go inside you know a lot of interesting displays in there I think there's this one family oriented so this area was about crop production and there was a display about slavery but this area is the one that I was really really interested in it'll focus there we go now although he was a man of exceptional physical stature and stamina George Washington suffered from a chronically bad teeth despite frequent brushing and availing himself of the finest dental care he suffered through a lifetime of inflamed gums and an abscessed teeth his torturous oversized inches left his mouth puffy raw and swollen giving him a little loosen to smile and then right behind that as a display of George Washington's teeth a lot of people think that George Washington's teeth were wooden but it was a lead base fitted with cow and human teeth in elephant ivory brass and steel they aren't George Washington's teeth that's why I wanted to come to this museum today this is George Washington's inauguration as president of the United States age 57 in 1789 ten years before he ended up passing away and this last section is about his obvious rise to the presidency and then his legacy that he left afterward and as the president of the United States and just how he set the standard for the president going forward all right so we just came out over there now we're entering into the food court area there is I think a more traditional restaurant area but we might just get something quicker here Sabrina and went over there to be Papa John's I'm in line for the grill there's also a deli over there as the options this seems to be the popular one all right so we got our food here I got a burger and Bernie got some mozzarella sticks and a cheese pizza and we just gotta wait in line to check out go find a table all right so we got a table here time to eat our authentic George Washington Mount Vernon Pizza Hut and cheeseburger you got mozzarella sticks right cheese bread oh well same thing was little bit worried because my line was so long the lady on a register to make that line we pass really appreciate really nice I got this actually pretty committee you had to wait a while for your cheese sticks we are all right on the way out we're gonna touch George Washington's nose for good luck yeah you touch a big nose for a good life so we're heading out the food court was over there there's a gift shop over here the gift shop over here and then a really big gift shop over here they sell little toy guns and they sell sorts of stuff right back there that is the Mount Vernon in restaurant which was actually closed today for some reason that's the one that we wanted to go to but it was closed anyway so we went to the food court got lucky okay so that concludes our trip to Mount Vernon today to walk around to educate ourselves and former selves about some very important parts of American history I don't know about you but that was very enlightening in a lot of ways it it made me think about a lot of things that I haven't thought about before and it encouraged me to want to kind of research some other parts of American history that you know I think that's the point of those kinds of things just to make sure that those things stay alive and encourage us to be educated on them Jeff oh yeah this is the way I like American history you know sitting in the classroom and reading it out of a book is not fun for me but you know when I can go and do the tangible things and be a part of the American history that I'm learning about makes it more involved and interesting for me mm-hmm well I guess that's gonna be the end of our trip today so thank you so much for coming with us and letting us take you on a journey through Mount Vernon through our eyes this was just kind of our little breakaway activity from Vernon's family it was Hannah back at the house everybody's kind of sick yeah you're coming around the corner for me I'm doing okay somehow I just sound bad yeah so we're gonna go back and join them maybe do something tonight for dinner don't know if I'll bring this along I've been just kind of taking this on our little outings that we've been having every other day or so tomorrow we head back to Orlando though and it's gonna be a long drives gonna be all day tomorrow and then half the day after that so have a good time maybe I'll phone something tomorrow something along the way we'll see tomorrow's technically New Year's Eve Montana clay it is New Year's Eve so we may just do something for New Year's Eve or just kind of hang out and enjoy each other's company we'll see but have a good day thank you for watching see you soon [Music]

Channel: oyby

Views: 428,202

Keywords: oyby, roy hornsby, mount vernon virginia, george washington home, george washington mansion, virginia historal locations, washington d.c., yourboytheroy, historic mount vernon, donald w reynolds museum and education center

Id: govDIuy9Ru0

Length: 32min 7sec (1927 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 04 2019