Transcriber’s Notes Table of Contents added by Transcriber. Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. CONTENTS Introduction 9 Monticello 17 The Haunted House, New Orleans 29 Doughoregan Manor 43 The Jumel Mansion 55 Mount Vernon 69 The Quincy Homestead 83 The Timothy Dexter Mansion 95 The Kendall House 107 The Longfellow House 121 Cliveden 135 The Wentworth Mansion 145 The Pringle House 159 Appendix 169 [Illustration: © D.McK MONTICELLO “Mr. Jefferson,” said one of Rochambeau’s aides, “is the first American who has consulted the fine arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather.” With no continental travel for background, with only the meager pictorial record of the period to draw upon, he somehow responded to the simplicity and useful beauty of the classics, and translated it to his castle.] [Illustration] FAMOUS COLONIAL HOUSES BY _PAUL M. HOLLISTER_ Illustrated by _JAMES PRESTON_ With an Introduction by _JULIAN STREET_ [Illustration] DAVID McKAY COMPANY, Publishers _PHILADELPHIA, MCMXXI_ Copyright, 1921, by DAVID MCKAY COMPANY _Illustrations especially engraved and printed by the Beck Engraving Company, Philadelphia_ TO MARION FOREWORD There is no bibliography in this book. I confess freely to a snapping-up of ill-considered trifles where I found them. Those that rang true are here, those that proved false upon closer examination are not. Some were gifts, some purchases, some thefts--the latter are now shamelessly confessed, on the plea that as a citizen I have the right of eminent domain to the story of my country. I cannot put the volume out to shift for itself without blanket acknowledgment of the generosity of the people who put me in the way of finding reliable information. Several of them are the owners of the houses; some of them have even read this manuscript. --_Boston, September, 1921._ INTRODUCTION As I read in Mr. Hollister’s chapter on Mount Vernon of Washington’s long absence from the home he loved and of the eagerness with which he returned to it after the tumultuous years of the Revolutionary War, I was caught by the fancy that lovers of books have recently gone through a somewhat parallel experience. Dragged away by the Great War from the books they cared for, plunged into continual war reading, they now find, to their infinite relief, that they are getting home again--back to Mount Vernon, as it were. And it seems to me the change could not better be exemplified than in this charming, gentle book of Famous Colonial Houses.