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There are quite a few people to whom I owe a debt of thanks for their help and support on this project. Foremost among them are the members of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, those “pioneers in preservation” who are still making waves 150 years after their founding. Singled out for special remembrance are the current regent, Gay Hart Gaines, who has always been an enthusiastic booster, and the estate’s executive director, Jim Rees. My current colleagues in the Collections Department have endured my eccentricities with good grace. I’d especially like to thank Linda Ayres, our associate director for collections, for her friendship; our curator , Carol Borchert Cadou, for her shared interest in the topic of religion; Dawn Bonner, for her help with the photographs; Laura Simo, for volunteering to look over the manuscript for glaring copyediting problems (because she thinks bibliographies and endnotes are fun); research librarian Jennifer Kittlaus, a never-ending font of helpful suggestions, for making me laugh; and John Rudder, for keeping me supplied with current events in the world of barbecue, as well as for dragging my chair each week from the office to our department staff meetings. The rest of you, although unnamed , are very much appreciated just for being there. My former boss, Mount Vernon’s long-time curator, Christine Meadows, will always have my heartfelt affection and loyalty for giving me a chance when no one else would. From other departments, I’d like to thank Ann Bay, the deputy director for education, for reading the manuscript, and Sue Keeler and Sandy Newton, who never stopped pushing me to finish. Licensing director Beverly Addington kept me sane. (The rest of you should be extremely grateful to her.) Outside of Mount Vernon, there are additional colleagues and friends who deserve recognition: historians Ken Bowling, Pat Brady, Bruce Chadwick , Phil Chase, Frank Grizzard, Peter Henriques, Don Higginbotham, Robert Jones, Jean Lee, Phil Morgan, and Jack Warren keep me on my Acknowledgments xviii Acknowledgments toes, and, although we don’t always agree on interpretation, have strongly encouraged me to publish. To Dr. Joseph Whitehorne of Lord Fairfax Community College and Dr. Thomas McDaniel of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, many thanks for reading over and commenting on a very early draft of this manuscript. Michael and Jana Novak have been active supporters of this project since they first read the manuscript several years ago; Michael’s kindness has been overwhelming. Peter Lillback and I were thrilled to discover that we had come to a number of the same conclusions about the place of religion in Washington’s life, even though we were working independently and using some very different material as evidence. Henry Wiencek was always there, passing along a pertinent piece of information he’d run across in his own research, which was applicable to my project; thank you so much for pushing me. Roxanne Merritt, director of the U.S. Army Special Warfare Museum, and I worked together at the Army Ordnance Museum; she not only encouraged a newcomer to the museum field, but also taught me to write. Dona McDermott, the archivist at Valley Forge, and I have found so many parallels in both our private and work lives that we suspect we might be twins who were separated at birth; she also has my undying gratitude for sticking up for my position on Washington’s religious beliefs during a contentious session at a symposium several years ago. Ellen McCallister Clark, the charming head of the library of the Society of the Cincinnati, is a former Mount Vernon colleague who is still interested in what happens—and what our research is uncovering—at this very special place. Most of all, I owe a great debt to Scott Casper of the University of Nevada at Reno for reading over this entire manuscript and making detailed suggestions. His enthusiasm for history and museums is infectious and much appreciated. To the Library of Congress mafia—Sheridan Harvey, Cheryl Adams, Josephus Nelson, Norman Middleton, and Stanley Bandong—thank you for expressing interest and putting up with the latest on George Washington over dinner, time and again. My former coworker, Anne Huber Gorham, who is working on the history of Pohick Church, and newer friend Eleanor Wilson, who shares a similar interest in Christ Church in Alexandria, have each been strong sources of support since the first day we met, as have the members of my Sunday School class (of whom Chris Amrhein, Tony Clarke, Kay...

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