Henry Clay's Ashland

Yesterday we made the hour drive from Natural Bridge State Park to Henry Clay's Ashland Estate in Lexington.

Ashland does not allow photography of the interior, much to my displeasure.  However, our tour guide Mike was very knowledgeable and gave a lot of information about the building as well as Henry Clay and his descendants. 

The original structure was built by Henry Clay sometime between 1805 and 1808, but was constructed of a soft sand brick that deteriorated easily and the home was rebuilt by son James in the 1850's according to the original floorplans and salvaging the foundation and some of the original ash wood. Much of the interior is decorated with items from the Clay family's collection, saved and preserved over the years and was in exceptional condition.  My favorite items were the light fixtures, the oil portraits and the marble fireplaces. 

Katrina was interested in the story of Madeline McDowell Breckenridge who was Henry Clay's great granddaughter and a leader of the women's suffrage movement and spoke out against child labor.  The nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920 in time for her to vote before her death in late November of that same year.  She also interested in Clay's role in the Civil War and its relationship to slavery and efforts at emancipation. Clay supported the abolition of slavery but felt that retaining the Union was of greater importance and worked for many years to prevent to splitting of the country over this divisive issue.  He supported the idea of colonization of freed slaves in Liberia and was concerned that a suddenly large population of freed uneducated slaves would be a burden that would cripple the economy and cause other societal problems.  We both thought his set of dueling guns was pretty cool, too!

I purchased the book "Ashland the Henry Clay Estate" from the gift shop so I'd have some information on hand to write this post and was disappointed that most of the details we learned on the tour were not in the book which was basically a description of the photos contained in it.  Luckily halfway through the tour I scribbled a few quick one word notes to jog my memory later.

Located on the estate grounds are some outbuildings, a Civil War Memorial, two extremely old Blue Ash trees and a lovely little garden.  We also wanted to visit the Mary Todd-Lincoln home in Lexington but it was closed for the season.  Ashland was a nice warm-up to our next big destination...the Biltmore!