We’re bringing the Menokin story to the Hampton Roads area with our traveling exhibit of Menokin landscape photographs by our own Hullie Moore and Frances Benjamin Johnston. The exhibit is up now at the Botetourt Gallery of William & Mary’s Earl Gregg Swem Library and runs through October 2. Please be sure to check it out!

The exhibit and our portrait of Francis Lightfoot Lee hang in Swem Library’s Botetourt Gallery near the 18th century statute of Lord Botetourt himself. I think Frank Lee would be pleased to hold court with Botetourt.

This is what he wrote to William Lee in July of 1770:

“Lord Botetourt, in the opinion of every body is a polite, agreeable man, & it is probable from his universal character that we shou’d be very happy in a Governor, if it was not for our unhappy dispute with G. Britain in which he must no doubt think & act with the ministry, indeed he honestly says so, & from what little he speaks about it, it appears the ministry are determin’d to enforce.”

Lord Botetourt died only three months later and was replaced by Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s last royal governor (the Lee brothers were no fans of Dunmore to say the least).