Perhaps the most important public room in the house, and certainly the largest, is the dining room. This room features an elaborate plasterwork ceiling and carved overmantel. Tradition tells us that George Washington suggested the design of the overmantel, which includes Aesop's Fables of "The Fox and The Crow." On the tree branch at the center of the overmantel sits a crow with a piece of cheese in its mouth. Below stands a fox, who tricks the crow into opening its mouth and dropping the cheese by asking the crow to sing. The moral depicted in the overmantel for the Lewis children to learn was "beware of false flattery."

The decorative ceiling is one of three at Kenmore. Each of these ceilings contains plaster ornaments cast in molds or carved in place. The "stucco man" who created Kenmore's ceilings also decorated the small dining room ceiling at Mount Vernon. A series of letters written to George Washington by his farm manager in 1775 speak of the stucco man finishing work at Mount Vernon and returning to Colonel Lewis'.

According to the probate inventory of 1782, the dining room had a large oval table, a square table, fifteen chairs, china, silver, and glassware. The Lewises could dine with their large family and guests at the tables or use the space for other purposes after taking down the tables and clearing the floor.

The Lewises set their table for meals with the china, silver, and glassware stored in the closet to the right of the fireplace. The door to the left opens to a narrow passage that leads to the chamber and to an exterior door facing the kitchen. Through this door the servants and slaves brought the food from the kitchen hearth to the dining room table. Billy, one of the slaves who worked in the house, used this door as he set and cleared the table.

Betty and Fielding Lewis were painted by the artist John Wollaston. Traveling through the colony in 1754-1755, Wollaston painted members of prominent Virginia families. The Lewises were painted in the early years of their marriage, when Betty was in her early 20s and Fielding almost 30 years old. At this time they were living at their first house, which was in the village of Fredericksburg, four modern-day blocks away from Kenmore. Betty was Fielding's second wife, and his second cousin. His first wife was Catharine Washington, who was also his second cousin (Betty and Catharine were first cousins). Fielding had a total of fourteen children, three by his first wife and eleven by his second. Only seven of these outlived him.

The double doors in the dining room face the Rappahannock River. When the Lewises walked through these doors, they surveyed a terraced garden, an extension of the formal space of the dining room.

You may want to view the paint and wallpaper in the dining room now that it has been restored to its original 1775 look.

Go to the next room on the tour or select the room you would like to visit on your virtual tour of the house:

Photo of Overmantel by Dan Fitzpatrick
Dining Room Photo by Philip Beaurline
Photos of paintings of Fielding and Betty by Paul G. Beswick

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Last Updated: August 25, 2008