legacy of Stratford Hall, The

Southern Living, May 1996 by Ford, Gary D

We call this room the Great Hall," says Michelle Brumfield, a guide at Stratford Hall. I'm tagging along with a tour group into this room, where silver, fine china, and mahogany furniture sparkle around us. On the walls above, a pantheon of colonials in white wigs and elegant dress gaze down from oil portraits.

The house stands in the Tidewater region of Virginia, 42 miles southeast of Fredericksburg; yet this room seems to rise in the heart of all the South. Light falls through two doors, one facing north to the distant curl of the Potomac River, the other looking south across a smooth, green lawn. Here once gathered a family of triumph and tragedy: the Lees.

Michelle points to the framed portraits of Thomas Lee, who built the house in the 1730s, and of his wife, Hannah, who greatly influenced its design. Other Lees who lived here and in neighboring areas, likewise shaped American civilization, for worse and for better.

A Lee in the 1600s led efforts in bringing African slaves to Virginia, but a century later a fellow family member worked to stop slave importation. In Congress in 1776, Richard Henry Lee offered the motion for American independence, then signed the declaration with his brother, Francis Lightfoot Lee.

Henry Lee III led cavalry charges as "Light Horse Harry" in the Revolution, then composed the eulogy for George Washington: "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." But later, foolish with his money, Light Horse Harry lost a family fortune, and with it Stratford Hall. In 1807, his son Robert Edward was the last Lee born at the estate. As the Lees moved to Alexandria, Virginia, creditors moved in, taking furnishings that are still lost.

Only two items in the house today are known to have been there during Lee occupation: Robert Edward's crib in a bedroom upstairs and, in the adjacent nursery, an iron fireback depicting two winged cherubs. Open to the public since 1929, and owned and operated by the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association, Stratford Hall is now filled with furnishings similar to those present during four generations of Lees.

Though the Lees left, the Paynes have stayed. The Paynes are an African American family that has lived and worked at Stratford Hall since 1778. They helped build it from the ground up (it's still a working farm), and in recent years their descendants have turned the Stratford's restaurant into (To page 37) one of the Tidewater region's best.

Bee Smith, director of food services, seats our party, while Tonia Reed, a Payne descendant, serves ham, crab cakes, cole slaw, strawberry preserves, and biscuits, wonderful biscuits. It's a lunch that tastes of time, created with recipes that date 50 years and more.

Inside and outside the main house, Dr. J. R. Fishburne, executive director of the plantation, and his staff bring the memory of the Lees and all the past people of Stratford Hall alive. Julie Finn, head gardener, returns the bloom of history to the grounds. At the servants' quarters, she grows African produce such as sweet potatoes and okra inside round waddle fences. In the west garden, near the main house, she plants 18th-century vegetables, fruits, and flowers.

Joyce Wellford, director of collections and historic preservation, who first saw Stratford Hall as a teenager on a picnic with Robert E. Lee's granddaughter, searches the country for Lee furnishings to return to the house.

Jeanne Calhoun, director of research and education, coordinates the Stratford Hall-Monticello Seminar for Teachers (held annually) and other special events. In the fall, the annual Lee Integrity Award is bestowed on an individual with outstanding character-the legacy Lee left all Americans. Retired Supreme Court Justice Lewis F Powell, Jr., was a recent recipient.

Judy Hynson, Stratford Hall's archivist/ librarian, began work here as a Girl Scout volunteer guide and knows Lee and memorabilia about him as well as anyone. Judy is fascinated by a tattered little children's book that is in the library's collection.

In this children's book, General Lee And Santa Claus, which was published in 1867, Lee meets Santa on his way South with presents on Christmas Eve. The general asks him to return to Baltimore and exchange the toys for medicines for the wounded Southern soldiers. The children will understand the sacrifice, Lee tells Santa, and will give up their toys to make the soldiers well.

This little volume could have been a beloved children's classic if Lee had chosen another side. Likewise, Walker Allard, who started work here as a guide in 1948 (her father and grandfather also worked here), believes Stratford Hall would have been a different place if Lee had accepted the offer in 1861 to command all Union forces. "If he had done so, he later could have been President, and Stratford Hall today would be run by the National Park Service," she muses over coffee in the dining room.

If. For our South, for this family and estate, that simple conjunction has always separated the tragedy from triumph, a gulf as wide as the land from Tidewater to Texas.