The most exciting scientific find of the period was Charles Willson Peale’s exhumation in 1801 near Newburgh, New York, of the bones of the mastodon, or mammoth. Peale displayed his mammoth in his celebrated museum and in 1806 painted a marvelous picture of what was perhaps the first organized exhumation in American history. Peale’s discovery electrified the country and put the word mammoth
on everybody’s lips. A Philadelphia baker advertised the sale of mammoth bread.
In Washington a mammoth eater
ate forty-two eggs in ten minutes. And under the leadership of the Baptist preacher John Leland, the ladies of Cheshire, Massachusetts, late in 1801 sent to President Jefferson a mammoth cheese,
six feet in diameter and nearly two feet thick and weighing 1,230 pounds.
Randolph, Peyton
Philadelphia, PA — Completed in 1770, this Georgian building was the meeting place of the First Continental Congress in 1774.
Williamsburg, VA — Originally built in 1715, it was purchased in 1721 by Randolph’s father — who build a second structure — and willed it to his son. Peyton Randolph built a middle structure to unify the whole.
Richmond, VA — Completed in 1741, it was the first church in Richmond; in 1775, it was the site of the famous speech by Patrick Henry ending with “Give me liberty or give me death.
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Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)