Dumbarton House’s Daly to Lead Stratford Hall
By • October 26, 2020 0 1469
Karen L. Daly, executive director of Georgetown’s Dumbarton House for the past 12 years, has been named president of Stratford Hall, a National Historic Landmark in Virginia that was home to four generations of the Lee family, beginning in the 1730s. She will succeed John Bacon, who announced his departure earlier this year after a four-year tenure, in January.
Calling Stratford Hall “a spectacular example of the power of place to inspire,” Daly said: “I look forward to working with the board and staff team at Stratford Hall to connect this incredible historic site and landscape to visitors — in person and online — from throughout the country.”
Stratford Hall is set on nearly 2,000 acres along the Potomac River, about 75 miles southeast of D.C. Among the Lees who resided there were brothers Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot, who both signed the Declaration of Independence, and Revolutionary War officer “Light Horse Harry,” father of Robert E., who was born at Stratford Hall.
A former D.C. elementary school teacher, Daly has a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and a master’s degree in museum education from George Washington University. She is a recipient of the William A. Cochran Award from the Citizens Association of Georgetown and a board member of the Virginia Association of Museums.
Before she became executive director in 2008, Daly spent five years as education director of Dumbarton House, headquarters of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America since the late 1920s. As a museum, it is interpreted as the family home of Joseph Nourse, first register of the U.S. Treasury, displaying a collection of Federal-period fine and decorative arts.
In 1915, the house, at 2715 Q St. NW, was moved slightly north from its original late-18th-century site to open up Q Street as part of the Q Street (Buffalo) Bridge project.
