The Birthplace History: Becoming a Park

Colonial Revival Kitchen the Memorial House Museum

NPS / Stephen Girimont

Surrounded by water and situated on the cliffs of the Potomac River, lies a place where worlds, visions, and memories collide.

At this place, it is easy to forget amid George Washington Birthplace National Monument’s present rural calm, that the land and water here once bustled with activity.

Written on the landscape are stories of European colonial settlements, displacement of native peoples, and the development of the Atlantic World first dependent on indentured servants and later enslaved people. These events culminated in the shaping of a leader on the surrounding landscape that has since been built to memorialize the achievements of George Washington.

At the turn of the 19th century, a spirit of admiration for the founding fathers emerged among citizens of the United States. Inspired by this spirit, George Washington’s step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis traveled to Popes Creek, in 1815, to memorialize the birth site of his legendary namesake. Accounts of the story tell of Custis, having never been to the site, bringing a stone marker and placing it near a crumbling chimney on the presumed location of Washington’s birth home. This memorial came to be recognized in local lore and custom as the exact site of Washington’s birth.

Prior to the Civil War, a descendant of the Washington family, appeared to have given the Custis site merit, by deeding a sixty-foot square lot and the Washington family burial ground to the Commonwealth of Virginia. The land and cemetery were given under the conditions that the sites be protected and appropriately marked. This was the beginning of government involvement of Washington’s Birthplace.

With Virginia still recovering from the Civil War, the Commonwealth could not do anything to enhance the birthplace, but with the centennial of the nation coming up in 1876, the United States Congress appropriated money for a land survey.

The following year, Secretary of State William M. Evarts led a survey group of government officials and members of the public to Washington’s Birthplace. They found the Custis stone no longer existed at the presumed birthplace site, though a crumbling chimney did remain. Evarts considered the testimony of locals and accepted the chimney as belonging to the original building and thus the best approximation of the birth site location.

Agreeing upon a need for a memorial but with few resources to do it, the Virginia Governor officially gave control of the property to the United States. As with other federally owned historic sites of the time, Washington’s Birthplace became the responsibility of the War Department, under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers.

Delayed by needs to improve access to the site by both water and land and choosing a plan they felt appropriately memorialized Washington, it took over a decade to create anything on the landscape. In 1893, Congress finally approved plans for construction of a 50-foot granite obelisk and a wharf that granted access to the site by boat from the Potomac River.

The War Department’s ventures into historic preservation unfolded against the backdrop of a larger movement in the United States, generally referred to as the Colonial Revival. During this time, some Americans sought to preserve a national identity by honoring the founding fathers through preservation of their homes, lands, burial sites, gardens and other related historic sites.

In a country where women did not have the right to vote and had few options for careers, they found that they could publicly express their patriotism and political will through historic preservation. It was wealthy women who especially embraced the Colonial Revival movement as a means to Americanize an ethnically diverse working class to their standards.

Josephine Wheelright Rust was one of those women as she brought the Colonial Revival influence to Washington’s Birthplace. In 1923, she banded together several wealthy associates, mostly women, to form the Wakefield National Memorial Association. The group wanted to buy land around the Birthplace Monument that was built in 1896. Their goals were to build a replica of Washington’s birth home atop the presumed birth site, restore the Washington family burial ground, and make the site a prominent national attraction.

These women were well connected in governmental circles and with the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The government allowed the Association to implement its plans on the land where the obelisk stood, and Rockefeller acquired more land around the site and held it for the Association until they could finalize their plans.

As the planning process to build a replica of the birth house began, complications emerged in identifying the actual site along with having no existing credible record of the original building’s appearance. Various archeological investigations sponsored by both the War Department and the Association were inconclusive.

As the memorial landscape plans began to take shape, two forces were set on a collision course over how to best to memorialize George Washington. Aware of the events unfolding at Washington’s Birthplace, National Park Service Assistant Director Horace Albright, recognized that this site would further his vision of a historically minded and expanded agency.

Albright’s timing was perfect as Rust found that her fundraising efforts to complete her vision for the birthplace were failing and in desperation she turned to Congress for assistance. Faced with no other alternative but financial ruin, Rust reluctantly agreed to a bill that would turn over the land to the National Park Service. In 1930, with presidential approval, George Washington Birthplace National Monument was formally established under the National Park Service.

Over the next two years, the Association continued work on the development of the park in earnest, pressured by both national and international excitement for George Washington’s 200^th birthday. Despite the National Park Service disagreeing with the Association’s plans on how to shape the landscape and its questions over the authenticity of the design for the Memorial House Museum, George Washington Birthplace National Monument was dedicated on May 14, 1932.

The land that the park tells stories about is complex and has many layers. The years following the dedication of the park, many have grappled with a landscape that was imprinted with Colonial Revival architecture and modern understanding of the land that Washington was born on. On the eve of Washington’s 300^th birthday, what memories, visions, or cultures need to come together to tell the story of this land and the founding father?