The George Washington and Robert E. Lee Center At Fancy Hill
The Generals Redoubt (TGR) is thrilled to announce the purchase of the landmark property known as Fancy Hill, located just ten minutes south of Lexington on Route 11. This beautiful historic home, situated on one of the renowned Seven Hills of Rockbridge County, will serve not only as a permanent home, but as a welcome gathering place for students, alumni, and supporters.
Thanks to TGR’s Center for American Ideals fund and our many generous contributors, we completed the all-cash purchase of Fancy Hill on May 5 and are busily formulating plans to renovate the property to better serve our mission. We intend to make it an active place of engagement where we can celebrate the history, values, and traditions of Washington and Lee University without interference from a currently unwelcoming faculty and administration.
Fancy Hill provides TGR with an important beachhead to reverse the direction of our university’sactive campaign to erase its history and relinquish delivering a classical liberal arts education. To borrow a term, it promises to be a “safe space”—as much as we dislike that designation—for students and others no longer able to speak freely amid the repressive campus environment fostered by the university’s current leadership.
The Generals Redoubt is committed to the themes of character and meritocracy through the unapologetic support of the legacies of George Washington and Robert E. Lee, along with the Honor System and student self-governance. Yet so much that we hold sacred is under attack. We are now engaged in a critical struggle against inaneforces that seek to destroy not only Washington and Lee but America as well.
We did not start this fight. But in 2018we started pushing back, and Fancy Hill will play a key role in our ultimate success. We are reviewing a growing number of potential uses for the property, including promotion of a Turning Point USA presence at Washington and Lee, assisting with Mock Convention activities in 2024, housing a full-time Executive Director for TGR, hosting meetings and dinners, and accommodating occasional overnight guests.
We hope to be able to showcase valuable artifacts and memorabilia from our namesakes—George Washington and Robert E. Lee—and to host lectures, visiting speakers, and class reunions. Our wish is that this facility will become the unofficial Alumni Headquarters for Washington and Lee grads who embrace our cause.
The historic ambience of this beautiful home—combined with museum pieces and artifacts connecting us with our Founders—will provide an ideal setting for us to tell the story of Washington and Lee and to celebrate our heritage and timeless values. Througha key partnership with a global educational consultancy, we are planning to create experiential learning opportunities to further enrich Washington and Lee student perspectives. Further, weplan to co-develop complementaryonline learning and related programs with exciting new strategic partners. Finally, we are committed to restore and maintain the historic provenance of Fancy Hill.
The Generals Redoubt has achieved much over the past five years, with over twelve thousand followers and more than a thousand individual contributors. Your voices have and will remain a constant reminder to the Board of Trustees and the administration of the need to celebrate Washington and Lee’s unique history and traditions of honor, civility, and classical liberal arts education.
As Winston Churchill said after the Allies’ success in North Africa during World War II, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”
We are making great strides. We are punching back. We are striving to reviveAmerica’s historic touchstones— fairness, merit and individual initiative. Yet we have much more work to do. Thank you for your support. We promise to keep engaged, and we look forward to seeing you soon at Fancy Hill.
Board of Directors
The Generals Redoubt
Preserving Our History, Assuring Our Future
Imagine an independent institution in Lexington dedicated to educating students, faculty, and friends about the extraordinary legacies of Robert E. Lee and George Washington. Your generous support can help make this dream a reality. A powerful and permanent presence near campus—perhaps with a significant online platform—would not only protect freedom of speech and provide diversity of viewpoints, but it would strengthen our efforts to preserve Lee Chapel and other vital historic elements of Lexington. We are making tremendous progress toward this goal, but much work remains. Please help us achieve our goal of raising $155,000 by June 30, 2023. Thank you in advance for your support. See the link below for donor information.