The Speaker's House Has a Blog

Those of us who live in Virginia are downright spoiled by the presence of historic homes. Just within a few-mile radius of Charlottesville, we have Monticello (home of Thomas Jefferson), Montpelier (home of James Madison), and Ash Lawn-Highland (home of James Monroe). There are also Mount Vernon (home of George Washington) and Gunston Hall (home of George Mason) in Northern Virginia, the John Marshall House and the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, John Tyler's plantation house (Sherwood Forest in Charles City County), Stratford Hall (birthplace of Robert E. Lee), and many more.

Up in Trappe, Pennsylvania (I'm sure you've never heard of it) is a home belonging to the first Speaker of the House of Representatives, Frederick Muhlenberg. Long in disrepair, the Speaker's House, as it has come to be known, has recently been rescued by a non-profit group and will soon be open to the public for tours just like our stately homes in Virginia.

I visited the Speaker's House in 2006, I photoblogged about it a while back.

Now it turns out that the historians working on the Speaker's House have started a blog of their own, which you can find here. It looks like the blog will be used to alert people to activities and events attached to the Speaker's House:

This blog will post updates on the renovation done to the House, any new artifacts or historical records discovered in connection with the House, interesting historical facts and anecdotes about the House and its inhabitants, and best of all, your story.

Don’t forget to come to our Bar-b-que and Open House Fundraiser on July 26, 2008, 11:30 AM – 7:00 PM. Check out our announcement on our Home Page!

The blog is an effort, in addition to the Speaker's House web site, to bring the Frederick Muhlenberg House (and Muhlenberg himself) to the attention of the history-hungry public.

Although Muhlenberg may seem obscure when compared to such giants as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or Alexander Hamilton, he played an important role in the founding of this country and its constitutional order: In addition to being the Speaker of the House in the First Congress, Muhlenberg was a member of the Continental Congress, a delegate to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, and the first signer of what we know as the Bill of Rights.