Mount Vernon - Family Dining Room

"The "family dining-room," as it has been called to distinguish it from the banquet hall at the north end of the house, would indeed have been to small to accommodate the numerous guests who so frequently gathered at Mount Vernon in the years after the Revolution. An air of formality is imparted to the room by the ornate mantel and the decorated ceiling, executed in the autumn of 1775 by two master craftsmen, while General Washington was in command of troops before Boston. . . . The table setting which consists of nuts, raisins, port and madeira wines, is based on a discription of a dinner at Mount Vernon in February, 1799, left by one of the diners, Joshua Brookes, an Englishman then traveling in the United States" (Mount Vernon, An Illustrated Handbook, 1974, 57.) Photo: Howard B. Marler.