tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. artifacts american takes you to museums and historic places to learn about american history. dc, tudor washington place was the home of thomas hayter and his wife. this was the granddaughter of martha washington. six generations of the peter family lived in the house from 1805 to 1984. we take a tour with the curator who shows us a letter from george washington, a bomb shelter and a signed picture of woodrow wilson. curator at the house of -- house and garden. we are taking a look at some of the amazing objects. this is from 1805 to 1983. five different generations of the peter family lived here at to replace. this was of the public could come and enjoy this amazing collection of objects. i would to talk about the architecture of the house. when he purchased the property , they5 with a .5 acres were here with nothing in between. an earlier honor had always intended to build a larger house but never did. by this time, though it had already won the design competition. thoren took the two men and incorporated them into a five-part house. the key architectural feature of the house is the scene on the south side. what he did was make them competent the superstructure of the house with the ceiling windows. it really provides a transition between the interior spaces of the house and the exterior spaces beyond. was classicaln sources that keep looking at engraving of roman temples and other roman architecture from that time. that is really a brief architectural overview of the house. the other thing i want to talk about is the connection to george and martha washington. the place -- the best place to do that is. the driver. these are the very public rooms of the house. wasnotable visitor lafayette which -- revisited in 1824. the family must -- always kept it here in this room. they had met martha peter. reunion. wall, it is an engraving of george washington. this is one that martha washington actually left to martha peter in her will. it previously hung at mount vernon and it was a gift from the artist john trumbull. especiallyis interesting that they kept both of these hanging across from each other. after martha washington positive, that always -- also attended a sale. they purchased almost $800 of objects. porcelain, table wares, other household items. one of those items was this punch bowl. it was porcelain. what is interesting about the punch bowl is this is taken from an english and force. depicts chinese rice cultivation. this punch bowl was used at took place to serve apple toddies which was a spiced apple cider. she also tells us that the congress -- congressman came here and drank a little too much apple toddies. speaking of politics, i should say that they were very ardent federalist. as federalist, they named to their three daughters columbia, america and brittania. , they are aur tour ride across in the parlor. let's look at those items. when thomas and martha peter were married in 1795, george washington asked martha what she wanted as a wedding present and she replied that she wanted a likeness of him. washington complied and he had the artist walter roberts paid this portrait of him. it is a piece that martha treasured for the rest of her life. in 1812 description said that she was wearing a portrait minister of general washington as large as a warming pan. we had an image of martha has an older woman at 70 years old holding this. item you have is a letter. it is one of three surviving documents from george to martha washington. this letter and another letter were found in martha washington's death when she owned it. what was so significant about this letter is this was the letter of june of 1775 when george tells martha that she gave martha -- he tells her that he must proceed to boston. it is such a significant document. burned all ofton the correspondence between she and her husband because she thought that was one aspect of their very public relationship that could remain private. this is a treasured item in our collection. one of the other washington objects that i wanted to highlight is this camp store. it is one of two surviving camp that washington used during the american revolution. a very significant object with great ties to our country's history. i do want to talk about britannia, peer thomas and martha's youngest daughter. born in early 1815, brittania was a longtime owner of tudor place. you can see this portrait here on the table. he was in the washington navy yard and an english naval officer. this engraving up here on the wall actually illustrates that february 28,on 1844. they were demonstrating a gun ironically. this was the name of the ship. the gun backfired and exploded. the secretary of state was killed and the secretary of the navy. brittania, at 29 years old was a widow with a war -- four month old daughter. here is an image of brittania with her young daughter in 1846. we have an image of brittania much later in life. a fascinating person during the civil war, brittania actually turned to the place in the boarding house, taking in borders. the southern limits were no secret during the war. brittania was actually a cousin by marriage to robert e lee. of was actually a member their wedding party. most of her borders were union officers. the wonderful during dinnertime was that they not be discussed. brittania became a celebrity of it is amazing how britannia really stewarded this collection -- shects you inherited inherited from her grandmother and grandfather. they started taking oral histories as well. he would tell stories of when lafayette would visit, she was a nine-year-old girl and she wrote all these reminiscences down. it is fascinating historic rhetoric and key evidence for us at tudor place to learn about room use and things like that throughout the house. when britannia died in 1911, the estate and the house was divided amongst her 5 grandchildren. she died on the eve of her 96th birthday in january of 1911. she outlived both her daughter and son-in-law. the estate went to her five grandchildren. britannia wanted to ensure that everything was divided equally among her grandchildren so the contents of the house were inventoried. a paper inventory was done and then to accompany the document every object got a paper label. you can see a number label on this small cup, and everything with a washington history got a mount vernon label. many of these objects you can see still have these paper labels on them and it is an interesting part of their history as well. the thing to remember about a historic house like tudor place is room use changes over time. what we will step into now is the dining room which was originally a bedchamber. this was thomas and martha peters' bedchamber, and a fascinating story related to this space is on the evening that the british burned washington in august of 1814, miss peter and on arena thornton -- on a maria thornton stood at the window and looked out, and they could see the smoke and fire from the white house burning, from the naval yard burning across the city. mrs. thornton wrote about it in her diary. thanks to missus thorton's diary we know the two women stood here , and watched washington burn. martha peter was pregnant with britannia at the time. britannia would be born about four months later after this event. now if we can look at the dining table, presently it is focused with a number of objects that thomas and martha peter purchased at the 1802 mount vernon sale. you see a number of plates and other tableware have those stickers on them, mount vernon as well as the numbers from the 1911 inventory. the plates, the plateau, the glassware, all of these are pieces that came for mount vernon and were used at tudor place by the peter family. after britannia's death in 1911, her grandson purchased his siblings' share to own the home outright. he and his wife modernized the house in adding electricity, 1913-1914, telephones, and a steam radiator system. we can take a look in the office, which was a space that armistead peter junior and his son used as an office. the office is also a great place to highlight some of the art in the family's collection and a , number of engravings. on the wall you see henry clay, who was a frequent visitor. and next to him president , woodrow wilson, an interesting story about that engraving. armistead peter wanted the president to sign it so he sent it over to the white house and it president wilson sign it. another thing you are probably noticing is the extension cord off the chandelier. armistead peter iii recognized that his story of the house and did not want to tear up walls to put an additional electric outlet and to plug in an electric typewriter. so he had an extension cord run off the chandelier in this room. the desk in the office is a colonial revival copy of the desk george washington used as president in new york city. i think that's another connection the family was making to their relationship to george and martha washington. the office is really a time capsule as well and shows how the family really kept everything in the house. as i mentioned, armistead peter junior and his wife modernized the house in 1913-1914, adding electricity and the telephone system. here is one of the original telephones and it was actually an intercom system. right next to it is a slightly later rotary dial telephone from the 1960's. we are going to go from the office into what is more the servants' area of the house, and the corridors used by the family servants. areae in the back hall, an typically that's a service area. you can see the bells hanging on the wall. east bell corresponded to a pull bell so the servants would know which room a family member was calling them from. this system became obsolete when the house got electricity in 1913 and 1914, so let's step into the servants' sitting room and look at the system that replaced it. on the wall you see the call box and enunciator. the public rooms of the house and bedchamber's headache buzzer -- had a buzzer. this box would buzz and the arrow would swing, indicating which room a family member was in and wanted a servant. this room was typically furnished. this is the servants' sitting room or they would wait upon for being called on or do tasks. sewing, mending of clothes, that sort of thing. it is the perfect example of one of our preservation projects in action. in the next couple of days we are going to be removing -- you see a number of the paint on the wall is flaking off due to some plaster that needs to be repaired beyond the paint. the paint will be repaired, the the plasterwork done and the , room repainted. the house is the largest artifact. the tudor houses over 200-years-old and requires careful maintenance and upkeep. again a great example of the , ongoing preservation we are doing here. here in the servants' sitting room i want to talk about domestic servants. it's a very important part of the story. i want to tell the story of the enslaved domestic workers as well as servants that the family had here at tudor place, and we are fortunate to have photographs of a number of those people thanks in part to armistead peter junior's interest in photography. we have records in our archives, stories of a number of these people, as well as images of them as well. one especially interesting story at tudor place is john luckett, who was the gardener for over 40 years. john was an escaped slave from virginia during the civil war who happened to be walking down the street and asked britannia if she needed help. she said she was looking for someone to work in the garden so she hired him and he worked here for over 40 years. john actually in addition to , being the gardener, he took britannia's grandsons hunting and fishing. they said he knew the best places to go on the river and the best places for hunting as well. we are fortunate to our extensive archives to have a number of photographs of john with family members including , this image with armistead peter ii, the last owner as a young boy. we are going to go into the butler's pantry, where the china and dinnerware would be stored. when armistead peter junior added the steam radiator system in the radiator here is a 1913, combination plate warmer. at the time meal service was done in the russian style, which meant many different plates for many different courses because they would come out separately. you needed somewhere to warm the plates. the butler's pantry is also a good place to look at the large collection of tablewares, pieces with over 15 patterns. a number of them are the pieces that were inherited from family members, but also because he acquired an interest in 18th and 19th century porcelain. now we are going to go upstairs and look at some of the bed chambers. as we're coming upstairs we are now in the upper stair hall and i want to focus on an amazing object up here. this chest on chest. they purchased it at the 19 at two mount vernon sale -- 1902 mount vernon sale. what is especially interesting is george washington purchased at secondhand. it was made for george william fairfax in london in 1760 and washington purchased it at a sale at belvoir, which was fairfax's estate. now we can take a look into the master bedchamber. right now you see the bedchamber largely furnished as the last owner remembered it when his great grandmother britannia used this as her bedchamber. he see a number of family photographs and here and of the various family members. when armistead peter junior modernized the house in 1913 and 1914 they added modern bathrooms as well. so for the master chamber they took what had been a dressing room and made it into a bathroom. this is a good opportunity to see the original plumbing fixtures here in the bathroom, including a toilet with a mahogany tank and mahogany toilet seat. one of the things that makes tudor place unique is the large archive we have. in addition to the 15,000 objects in the museum collection we have we have a quarter , million manuscript pages and photographs, inventories, these things and gives us an idea of how the family used these rooms in the house. this helps says when we are furnishing these spaces, to have the record of how they look, what pieces of furniture were in them. it is also due to the archive that we learned about the family. where they were traveling and what they did in their spare time because they kept so many pieces of paper and objects to give us insight into their past. some of the photographs and images i wanted to talk about on the table. we have britannia's granddaughter, agnes peter, taken about 1900 and her armistead peter iii with his wife caroline on their wedding day, february 14, 1921. next to that is an image during the second world war. armistead peter iii was a officer who served in the pacific and his wife volunteered for the red cross. armistead peter iii inherited the house in and he is really 1960, the one who set things in motion for tudor place to become the museum it is today. he created the foundation that operates tudor place as a historic house because he recognized the significance of the house and the collection, and wanted to be able to share it with the public. we use the inventories and photographs of these rooms that we have in the archives to furnish the spaces. if armistead peter iii or another family member would walk in today they would recognize , where things were placed. let's walk across the hall and talk a little more about the civil war. as i said britannia rented out , rooms to borders during the civil war and she was a cousin by marriage to robert e. lee. lee stayed here at to her place when he came back to washington to meet with general grant when grant was president of the united states. during the civil war, britannia had a number of family members who were fighting for both sides. one story that is especially interesting is the story of william warden williams and his cousin. we walk over here to see an image of them in their confederate uniforms. williams was in the union army for a time and was on general winfield scott's staff, but was suspected because of the close family relationship with the lee's, of ferrying information to them and was jailed. after he was released he joined the confederate army. fast-forward to the summer of 1863 when they are down in tennessee. union uniforms. into a union fort in franklin, tennessee and say they are here to inspect the fortification. the commanding officer is a little suspicious but let's them complete their inspection. after the inspection they leave and someone realizes they are imposters so they are captured and questioned. while questioned they admit they are both confederate soldiers. the commanding officer of the fort commands a drumhead court-martial. they are tried and sentenced to be hanged the next morning. they are hanged in tennessee in the summer of 1863 and after the war, dr. armistead peter who is living at tudor place actually arranges to have their bodies brought back to georgetown and buried in the family plot. before the bodies are re-buried he keeps their spurs so we have both sets here with a tag that outlines the history. a very interesting object there related to the civil war, and talks about how the family was affected by the civil war. in the 20th century this room was used by armistead peter iii's wife as her morning room. he said he always wanted this room to remain the way it was when she used it. you can see her desk where she would complete her correspondence and take care of business matters like that. we can look in the closet where we have a number of her pieces of clothing exhibited. we're very fortunate to have a large textile collection, with everything ranging from textiles related to martha washington all the way up to 20 century coture pieces belonging to caroline peter. this is a place to talk about all of the generations of children who grew up here and we , have toys reflecting that from dolls and stuffed animals and airplanes and even zeppelins. armistead peter iii used this bedroom as a young boy. here's a portrait of him over the mantle. a great room with lots of history, and a number of generations of children grew up here. just a great space. i will step out into the hall. a great image to end our discussion of the upstairs with is this image showing britannia with her great grandson. you have britannia, martha washington's great granddaughter with her great grandson, armistead peter iii. think about all of those generations of the family and they are right up there on the garden pathway. what is fantastic is you can see britannia in this wheelchair. we have the very wheelchair in our collection that she is sitting in in the photo with that blanket draped over her the wheelchair. britannia and armistead peter iii did the most to preserve and protect tudor place. britannia stewarding the house during the civil war and through the early 20th century and cheering -- ensuring the preservation, and armistead peter iii for creating the foundation to operate the house as a museum so the public could experience this amazing house and collection of objects within it. the other thing that is fascinating as we can tell the family's story from the american revolution all of after the cold war. now we're going into the garage. haver 5.5 acre property we a garden, the oldest smokehouse in the district of columbia. now we will walk into the garage. in 1913, the peter family built the garage. we have got what is probably our largest artifact in the collection, the 1919 pierce roadster the belonging to armistead peter iii. his parents bought it for him in and what is interesting is a 1919 number of elements are customized. armistead peter iii was 6'2", so the steering column was adjusted to account for his height. one of my favorite things about the car is it has got his monogram on the door. ap3. armistead peter iii loved this car and kept it for the rest of his life. he had extensively restored in the 1970's and could be seen driving it around georgetown. we also have a great photo from our archive showing armistead peter iii sitting at the wheel of the car. so the garage was built in 1913, 1914, but the part of the garage we are standing in was added in 1968. the most interesting part is what is beneath our feet, the bomb shelter we will go into right now. we are now under that 1968 garage addition and walking into what was the bomb shelter. iii, the lastr owner of tudor place was a veteran of the first world war serving in the naval reserves and the second world war in the pacific. he was in the pacific at the time of the atomic bomb. so by the 1960's, some of the cold war things, you can see why he would want to have a bomb shelter constructed. he realized he was a couple of miles from a number of buildings that were likely targets so he , wanted to have a shoulder that -- shelter that would protect from bomb blasts and nuclear fallout, radioactive particles that would have been in the air. it is a fantastic space, originally constructed to hold 12 people. we will walk briefly into the shelter and look at the storage tanks. we are in the nucleus of the shelter, the space we use as storage. you can see some of armistead peter iii's radio equipment on some of the shelves. that is going to be installed into a radio room into the main house. the shelter, as i said, was designed for 12 people to live in and the thought was that after 48 hours the radioactive fallout would have diminished enough that people could come out of the inner shelter and use some of these outer rooms. let's walk out and look at some of the systems in place to use with the shelter. we have got here to my left, three very large, 400 gallon water tanks used for holding freshwater. there is actually a pump right here next to them and by using that pump you could draw water into a tank overhead in the ceiling, and that powers and adjacent bathroom. it uses gravity to feed the shower and make the toilet flushable. another interesting aspect is this small kitchenette is hidden behind a panel. you have a sink, stove, and range that could be used when people are staying here. the other interesting thing is the escape tunnel. we are going to walk past the water tanks into the tunnel. the tunnel actually has a dual purpose. these are steam pipes that go to the radiator, that could also be used to enter or leave the bomb shelter. the tunnel comes out halfway between here and the house in the garden, so we will go outside in a moment and see the hatch where the tunnel ends. we are now standing inside the garden and you can see the hatch where the tunnel ends. the bomb shelter is an really interesting part of tudor place's history, helping to show the story from the american revolution to the cold war. it is a portion of the garage we will be opening for interpretation in the future, a project i am excited about. we have only had a chance to see a portion of our collection so i hope you will take a tour and really experience the house. we are constantly highlighting different items from our extensive 15,000 object collection, as well as exhibits. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] other can watch this and artifacts programs by visiting our website, c-span.org/history. >> this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, university of kansas professor adrian lewis on omaha beach and the 1944 d-day landings in normandy, france during world war ii. >> the normandy invasion, it was selected because it was poorly defended, poorly dissented in 1943. at most at omaha beach, they had a couple of italians. that is when it was selected. a year later when ronald was put in charge of defenses, all those forces we talked about have been moved forward. >> at 10:00 eastern on real america, in 1967 monthly film series on the activities of president lyndon johnson. >> he remarked one of the chief executive's most important jobs is attracting able and talente public servans to washington. first, the secretary of commerce. and thurgood marshall, associate justice of the supreme court. >> sunday at 6:30 eastern, george washington university history professor greg burzynski talks about the cold war competition between the u.s. and china to influence newly independent african and asian countries. 1960's, thee rivalry intensified. this is an important point where i think to many american policymakers chinese activities in southeast asia and africa start to become as or more worrisome than soviet activities. buckland talkic about confederate colonel john as mosby. >> generally complained to stuart that mosby was fighting into many small groups. decentralized way he operated the not make sense. the needed to mass his forces and pick one big target. that went completely against everton mosby was doing. his effectiveness was the fact he could have 3, 4, 5, 6 different combat patrols out on any given night. >> for a complete american history tv schedule, go to c-span.org. >> the state of pennsylvania was founded by quicker william penn in 1682 as a sanctuary for religious freedom. many quakers have lived in worship in philadelphia ever sense. next on american history tv's american artifacts, day visit to arch street meetinghouse. instructed in a keynote for that constructed in 18 a four to learn about the history and practices of quakers. archstreetto meetinghouse. i'm the director. they will talk about the building we are standing in, a quicker place of worship, and also about quakers. at the beginning of the towards that we normally do with visitors and school groups, we have a look around the space. we do a lot of comparing this site to other religious sites people are used to visiting because it is outside the norm. we have people look around and let us know what is different here versus other historic sites, for religious sites they have been to. a lot of times they notice there are not stained glass windows or large candles, or even a place for a priest or deacon to stand and give a sermon or something like that. that is because quakers worship in a way that is different than most folks do. it is a christian religion. on the typical sunday this is still an active congregation meeting for worship. what happens now and what happened 200 years ago is pretty similar in philadelphia. people gather and they sit in silence for an hour. historically people would gather in this space. that would be quakers you have heard him from history such as susan b anthony and william penn. they would meet in buildings similar to this. they would sit in silence for an hour. if anybody in the group or the congregation felt the desire to stand up and share a message, moved to speak, they could rise from the silence and share what they had to share. a question we get often is, what what they have to say during worship? we liked a throw back to history because it's easier. susan b anthony, when she had a message, it was probably related to women's rights and suffrage. that is what she was fighting for and what was on her mind. lucretia mott, we have records of some of her sermons and talked she was getting during worship. it was related to abolition and quakers do feel the way she did about freeing the slaves. sometimes you may hear quakers referred to as friends, with a capital f. that is the formal name of their religious society of friends. the religious society of friends formed in england in the 16 50's by a number of people, by prominently george foxe was his name. the leaders in england were sort of -- they did not agree with the english church. all the stuff we talk about, the church than was incomplete and -- in complete and total opposition of that. the quakers wanted to bear that down and only do the things they felt was useful, the things connecting them that are to god. theythe quakers wanted wanted te artifice and the middlemen. they thought they could communicate directly with god. they thought every thing else was superfluous. a lot of the early quicker leaders were jailed for their beliefs. they were on street corners preaching and they could be thrown in prison for speaking out the way they were about the quaker beliefs. the persecution they faced in england was one of the main reasons they started to come to america. they found they originally lived in the new jersey, pennsylvania area. it is another reason why william penn was so motivated to come and start the colony of pennsylvania, to get away from the persecution going on in europe at the time. ♪ >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. next on american history tv, civil war historian william jack davis compares the upbringing and leadership skills of union general ulysses s. grant and confederate general robert e. lee. this talk was part of a daylong seminar on civil war leadership, posted by longwood university in farmville, virginia, and appomattox courthouse national historical park. it is about one hour. >> thank you, patrick. our last speaker and in the afternoon is william davis. mr. davis is from independence, missouri. has a bachelor and masters from sonoma state university. many of you may know him as longtime editor of civil war times illustrated, back in the 1970's and 1980's when it was the only popular civil war magazine. its