Considerable uproar continues in the aftermath of last year’s “woke” takeover of Montpelier, the museum estate of American founder James Madison .

One year ago today, George Urban signed a contract to be the chief financial officer of Montpelier, a job that, in effect, he had already been doing without the formal title. On March 31, Urban filed a lawsuit claiming Montpelier had breached his contract by dismissing him without the severance pay guaranteed therein. Urban’s suit also suggests his dismissal stemmed at least in part from a claim he and three others filed on the same day he signed the contract, May 16, 2022, alleging that the four had been subjected to a hostile work environment by staffers supporting what amounted to a board coup in which the left-wing forces took control of the foundation.

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Now two of the other three high-ranking employees who signed on to the claim of a hostile work environment, both of whom also no longer work for Montpelier, have told others that neither the board nor the new, hired management followed up in any way. They have said nobody seemed to investigate the claim, no apparent effort was made to ameliorate the situation, and certainly nobody reported back to them on the status or result of their complaint.

Cara Sisson, the former chief advancement officer, and Colleen Morrissey, the director of human resources, joined Urban’s May 16, 2022, claim of a hostile work environment. The document they filed says, among a list of specifics, that “the ongoing hostilities include glares, snares, snippy comments, being called racists, avoidance … inappropriate outbursts, angry yelling, spying, lying, open defiance of authority, harassing communications, and physical intimidation.”

Urban’s suit says that the board and incoming management never addressed these complaints.

Earlier this month, several other well-informed observers told me they believe Urban's suit played a role in the surprise, late-April replacement of board chairman James French , who had led the coup that ousted the original board majority in 2022. The signed contract attached to his lawsuit clearly says Urban was due a full year of severance pay unless he was terminated for “cause,” with a requirement that Montpelier provide “written notice of the purported violation of a work rule and a period of at least ten days to cure such conduct.”

The lawsuit says Urban was dismissed without any such notice of “cause” and that Montpelier has refused to provide him any of the severance pay for which the contract calls.

After and clearly in large part as a result of the woke takeover (which I described in a big feature story last September), Montpelier suffered severe cash flow problems. Its new management began reducing staff and cutting salaries, including for employees such as Urban who signed the complaint about the work environment. Urban’s suit says that on Aug. 9, 2022, new interim CEO Elizabeth Chew and a lawyer “held a surprise meeting with Mr. Urban in which they suddenly stated that the Foundation was unilaterally declaring the contract invalid, and would not honor its binding terms. They told him that he was being terminated immediately without cause, but that he would be allowed to ‘resign’ if he signed a new agreement that purported to declare the contract ‘null and void.’” The suit said Urban was told that “‘two former colleagues’ had ‘nullified and disavowed’ their own such agreements as part of forced resignations obtained by similar threats.”

Urban refused to sign the new agreement. Montpelier refused to pay his severance. Urban sued.

This brings us back to Morrissey, the former human resources director who signed her contract the same day as Urban, May 16, 2022, with the same sort of severance agreement. When I tracked her down and read her the excerpts from Urban’s suit, she described an almost identical experience to me, about which she had told several others long before Urban filed suit. Morrissey said that on July 15, 2022, Chew brought her into a closed-door meeting with a lawyer attending by phone.

“They ambushed me,” Morrissey told me. “They wanted the contract to go away.”

She has told friends that they demanded that she sign a lengthy agreement declaring her May 16 contract void so they could downgrade her title and her salary. When she asked for time to digest the new agreement and perhaps talk to an attorney, she said she was informed that if she so much as left the room, she would be fired. She protested, but they reiterated the threat.

The document they handed her was called “Nullification of Contract.” It began: “The purpose of this agreement is to nullify the purported employment contract you attempted to enter into with the Montpelier Foundation, dated May 16, 2022.” The new “agreement” asked Morrissey to “declare the Attempted Contract null and void and of no effect as though it never had been made ... including but not limited to its salary and severance provisions.”

The document contained paragraph after paragraph of stark language emphasizing and reemphasizing that the May 16 contract was a nullity, along with several thinly veiled threats if she didn’t agree.

Never mind that Montpelier had, by its actions, already ratified the May 16 contract for two full months by paying her the salary, affording her the title, and giving her the responsibilities and authorities noted in that contract.

Morrissey, frightened, signed the new “agreement.” Other than telling a few friends about the closed-door threats, she had not shared or confirmed the specific language and terms of the forced “agreement” with outsiders until I called her and read her Urban’s suit excerpts which described the exact same tactics used against him. She said the document I have in my possession speaks for itself and she has nothing to add to it.

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Chew remains on staff at Montpelier, although no longer as interim director. She did not reply to an emailed request for comment. French remains on the board, although no longer as chairman. Morrissey and Sisson, who along with Urban signed the complaint about the work environment, both eventually found jobs elsewhere — but without any severance pay and without a shred of concern ever offered to them about their reports of being subjected to “angry yelling, spying, lying, … harassing communications, and physical intimidation.”

And Urban’s lawsuit hangs over Montpelier, which now stands as an object lesson in how a hostile takeover, partly engineered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation , can badly tarnish a treasured legacy.