This is not a happy day: one of my favorite historical myths has just been shattered.
There are no horse’s hoof marks on the wood floors of Monticello. Thousands of human feet have trod the historic boards in Thomas Jefferson’s mountain-top estate, but not the galloping hooves that carried British Col. Banastre Tarleton and the “Green Dragons” that June morning in l781. They came riding in hot pursuit of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and other signers of that Declaration of Independence that so angered England’s King George III.
The troops stormed Jefferson’s mountain at dawn, out to catch the Revolutionaries, and – in the story I’d heard since childhood – thundered right into the entrance hall of Monticello, terrifying the servants but missing the master of the house (and mastermind of the new nation). He was spiraling down the other side of the mountain, alerted in the nick of time by one Jack Jouett, a patriot who had galloped 40 grueling miles through the night to sound the alarm and save the day.
Alas, no Longfellow immortalized Jouett’s ride in poetry, but all Virginia schoolchildren know the true story of his heroism. And of the hoof marks in the halls of Monticello?
“Not true,” said Monticello’s main librarian Anna Bekkes (a bit abruptly, I thought). I was asking in the pursuit of more proof that hardwood lives up to its name, shining through the centuries on some of the most famous floors in America. Step into almost any historic house and you’ll be standing on hardwood floors that have literally stood the test of time. So, phantom hoof marks or no, you can visit Monticello, built from l769 – 84, and still admire the original cherry-and-beech parquet floor that Jefferson himself designed for his parlor.
Monticello is a youngster compared to Shirley, another venerable Virginia plantation, this one down on the James River. Dating from l613 – a scant six years after the first settlers arrived in Jamestown — Shirley is known as one of the oldest family-owned businesses in America (10 generations of the Hill Carter family have lived there – the 11th still does, on the upper two floors).
The present mansion was built in 1738, using walnut timbered on the place for its world-famous “flying” staircase. Soaring three flights up with no visible means of support, the stairs are a feat of engineering that still dazzles visitors today.
Meanwhile, out on the Other Coast, other hardwoods are still dazzling visitors to Pasadena’s cherished Gamble House (1908), where the nature-loving Greene and Greene brothers, Charles and Henry, finished the dark, warm Arts and Crafts interiors with hardwoods like maple and oak.
In Southern areas like Charleston, South Carolina, you can add cypress to the list of hardwoods still on duty in America’s important sites. Boldly carved cypress paneling wraps the walls in the upstairs drawing room of Charleston’s 1751 Brandford-Horry House. And guests luxuriating at the famed old Sea Island resort designed by Addison Mizner in l928 can still admire the pecky cypress beams in the Spanish Lounge.
Never mind that the original resort – built as a summers-only escape for the privileged—was suffering severe decay and had to be razed in the l990s. The owners tenderly set the old cypress woodwork aside and built it back into the new “old” building.
Further proof that history does repeat itself…thanks to the long-lived beauty of durable American hardwoods.