Katie and Dan's Travels

Both men ended their lives in debt, and largely for the same reasons: public service had high expectations of its high-level servants but was not willing to reimburse them for the expenses required to fulfill the expectations. jJefferson also bought everything he could lay his hands on related to his many passions and pursuits; he shipped back 86 cases of belongings from France. The Monroe house is small and was lovely and what original furnishings are left are beautiful. There were numerous things I didn’t know about Monroe, and the one that springs to mind is that Mrs Monroe, who had learned French well during their first term of service in France, was responsible for going in person to the Bastille to rescue the wife of one of the Monroe’s oldest friends: In Paris, as wife of the American Minister during the Reign of Terror, she helped secure the release of Madame La Fayette, wife of the Marquis de Lafayette when she learned of her imprisonment and threatened death by guillotine. … While in France, the Monroes’ daughter Eliza became friends with Hortense de Beauharnais, step-daughter of Napoleon, and both girls received their education in the school of Madame Jeanne Campan, who had been an advisor on court etiquette to Marie Antoinette.

…It’s especially pertinent when you contemplate the long hard work the people of that time put into building for their unknown descendants the civil society that we inherited and the value they placed on education as being critical to the success of the society.