ORANGE, VIRGINIA—Archaeological work at Montpelier, James Madison’s home, has uncovered an unusually shaped foundation near the main house. The eighteenth-century brick building is thought to have been taken down in 1808, when Madison added two wings to the mansion. “It’s totally different than anything else. It’s not square, and we have no idea what it is. It’s going to be cool, that’s all we know,” Matt Reeves, director of Montpelier’s archaeology department, told C-Ville. The house had eight owners after the former president and his wife Dolley died, and it was only in 2008 that the house was restored to what it would have looked like when the couple had lived there. Now the focus is on finding and returning their possessions to the house, and rebuilding the quarters where some 300 enslaved people lived.
