Unlocking Menokin’s Secrets: Archaeological and Landscape Research at a Northern Neck Plantation

On October 25, 2012, David Brown delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Unlocking Menokin’s Secrets: Archaeological and Landscape Research at a Northern Neck Plantation." One of the great houses to survive from colonial Virginia, Menokin was the result of a unique collaboration between John Tayloe II of Mount Airy and Francis Lightfoot Lee, the husband of his daughter Rebecca. Tayloe gave Lee a life interest in 1,000 acres of his vast Richmond County estate and, as a wedding present, built the plantation house and surrounding structures. Though scant written records remain, other clues offer insight into this adaptation of European design to the environment of eastern Virginia. David Brown with DATA Investigations will discuss recent archaeological and landscape research conducted at the site. Brown is a consulting archaeologist for The Menokin Foundation. This lecture is cosponsored by the foundation, which owns and operates the home of Francis Lightfoot Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his wife Rebecca Tayloe Lee. (Introduction by Paul Levengood and Sarah Dillard Pope) The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.