"Old Fortunes, New Fortunes, Lost Fortunes" Utilizing a Forgotten Assemblage to Help Reconstruct Betty Washington and Fielding Lewis’s Dining Room (and So Much More)

Summary

Decades worth of artifacts excavated from Kenmore, the house of Betty Washington Lewis (George’s sister) and her husband Fielding Lewis, have recently been reanalyzed by George Washington Foundation archaeologists with the intent of shedding light upon what equipage would have graced the Lewis’s dining room table.  Re-examination of this collection proved both informative and surprising, yielding clues as to what life was like for this family during and immediately following the Revolution, as well as how their relation to George Washington drastically changed their fortunes.  Our findings have also helped inform curators working to accurately refurnish Kenmore’s dining room, raised questions regarding the true socio-economic conditions of a prominent Virginia family in the post-Revolutionary period , and highlighted the potential of re-examining extant archaeological collections.  

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Perspectives on the World of George Washington   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 413