For many visitors, George Washington Birthplace National Monument is a surprisingly complex historic site. It is a place where people come to remember George Washington, but also find a story of how the past can be lost, reshaped, or rediscovered. Historical documents and archeological resources that contain critical information about the lives of all who inhabited this land are only beginning to be understood. This podcast series explores the history, mysteries, and monuments of the park.
On this episode, we interview Dr. Philip Levy, the author of a new historic resource study for George Washington Birthplace National Monument (GEWA). He breaks down how he began studying the Washington family and his involvement with unraveling some of the mysteries surrounding George Washington’s birthplace.
Intro music courtesy of Wolf Patrol. Outro music courtesy of Brumbaugh Family
Dustin Baker: Welcome and thank you for joining us. I'm Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. Upon first glance, one might assume that we have a pretty straightforward story to tell. George Washington was one of the most recognizable names in the world, and he was born here. What more needs to be said than that? Well, for many visitors, George Washington Birthplace National Monument is a surprisingly complex, historic site. It is a place where people come to remember George Washington, but also find a story of how the past can be lost, reshaped and rediscovered. It is a place ruled by water. Although Washington, D.C. is only 60 miles up the Potomac River, this place has retained a rural character, and the surrounding area remains essentially undeveloped. Visitors here can still experience sights and sounds that would have been familiar to the Native Americans since the Washington family and the enslaved people from Africa who found themselves all connected by water here in the 17th century. This is a place where seven generations of the Washington family lived and prospered in a colonial Tidewater culture where acquiring land and cultivating tobacco through the use of enslaved labor was essential to building the family's wealth and gentry status. This is a place that was central to one of the earliest federal efforts to memorialize George Washington during the worldwide celebration of his bicentennial birth anniversary. Where inspired nostalgia in the spirit of the undertaking were more important than historical accuracy, leaving behind an interpretive conundrum that we still wrestle with today. And most surprisingly of all, this is a place where the archeological resources that contained critical information about the lives of all who inhabited this land over time are only beginning to be understood. So, on behalf of the staff at George Washington Birthplace National Monument, join us as we share our passion for this place with our new podcast series Upon This Land History, Mystery, and Monuments. For our first episode, we're going to be interviewing Dr. Philip Levy. He's the author of a new historic resource study for the park, which is titled “Upon This Land: Seven Generations of the Washington Family and the Residents of Popes Creek and Mattox Neck.” And you might find that title familiar because it's the direct inspiration for the title of our podcast series. Dr. Philip Levy is a professor of history at the University of South Florida and is an organization of American Historians, Distinguished Lecturer. He is the author of several books, many of which deal with George Washington both as a person and a national icon, where the Cherry Tree grew, the story of Ferry Farm, George Washington's boyhood home, and George Washington written upon the land, nature, memory, myth and landscape focus on the places of Washington's childhood. The permanent resident excavations and explorations of the life of George Washington, winner of the prestigious Society of Historical Archeology, James Dietz Award explores the many sites of Washington's life and how their stories have been shaped by archeology and issues of memory and commemoration. His newest book, Yardbirds the Lives and Times of Americans Urban Chickens, tells a very different story from his other work and explores the fascinating relationships both past and present between urban areas and domestic fowl. Interviewing Dr. Philip Levy today is lead interpretive Park ranger Jonathan Malriat.
Jonathan Malriat: What started you in researching George Washington? What was the starting point?
Dr. Philip Levy: Yeah, I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could say, you know, a lifelong interest in the first president to get an answer like that? And that would not be true. Largely an accident or set of circumstances. I was in grad school at William and Mary, and I was in the history program. I was working with the late, great James Axtell. I still working on Indian colonial relations, which is what I went there to work on. And she had been an advocate of historians coming to understand anthropology that you had to kind of work in different fields. And the program at William and Mary had an internship in historical archeology. So, you could be a history master's student, but you could also do some coursework and field work in historical archeology. And I did that partly because I just want to better understand that field and make some sense out of it. And what I found was that I had an aptitude for it and that I liked it. And over the course of my graduate career, I kind of doubled down on historical archeology, doing more and more work in archeology at the point where that kind of became what I really do. It sort of supplant. I wrote my dissertation, I wrote my first book on Indian colonial relations, but I haven't really worked on that all that much since then. The archeology sort of took over and I got very involved with Colonial Williamsburg digging sites there. And during that time, I worked with David LaRocca, who was a staff archeologist at that colony Williamsburg guy who kind of ran the sites that I was working on. I was supervising all this. And he sort of became my first field mentor, sort of learning a lot of stuff from him, working with other people like Amy Morocco, who helped a lot. So, learning the field from them. And Dave and I kind of struck up a friendship and which is still very much alive and a partnership. And so, by the time I was done with grad school, I had kind of built a little world historical archeology. I got hired at that point at the University of South Florida in the history department, and Dave took a job managing the excavation at George Washington's Childhood home at Ferry Farm. And we had been running field schools together since, you know, the 1990s, the mid-1990s through clay was boring. And we said, well, let's take our field school model and do it over at Berry Farm. This was take, you know, pack up our goods and bring it over there. We both walked into the world of George Washington studies really oddly, both of us sharing a focus on the 17th century. I think we both came in really with a very strong interest in 17th century Virginia landscapes and the rise of slavery. And you know what was going on in that arena. We didn't; George was going to be part of the story. We knew because that was the nature of the site, but that was not what we came in with. And gradually what Dave likes to say about Ferry Farm was it changes everyone, everybody who comes in with one interest, you end up with other ones. And I did not really anticipate it. I had a fellowship one summer nominally to work on 17th century Virginia landscapes. I'd written something about the area of what was called Middle Plantation, which is where Williamsburg is, and I had imagined expanding that into a larger study, and I had a fellowship to work on that, and I spent most of my time looking at 20th century photographs of Ferry Farm, so I got very obsessed with the sequence of buildings trying to understand it. And it took a little while to recognize that that this was going to take over that Washington and that landscape and subsequently other landscapes that that Washington and the memory of his memory in the landscape was going to become what I was doing. And it took a little while, but I got there. So that's sort of how that works. And it's just been it's been endlessly rewarding. There's- there's no reason to stop. There's always more to talk about and more to see. So, you know, one of the things that makes Washington so interesting is that there's- we could talk about Washington as a as an 18th century figure, you know, so he's an ultra for us into the world of the 18th century, which is useful and valuable and understanding American history, his role in American history. But he's one of these people because of his significance at the founding of the Republic. He doesn't go away just because he physically goes away. His memory becomes a very, very important national possession. And, you know, we have everything from national parks to all sorts of resources and objects and commemorations tied to his name. So, there's more to study than just Washington as an 18th century figure there. Also, his impact on the way America thinks of itself and remembers its past and so on. So, there is that I would say there isn't- It's virtually every single dimension of American history has some George Washington angle. What Washington has invoked in virtually every discussion that we have politically, he is always present in some way. You need to enlist him on your side in some cases to make it to make your argument effective. So, he's kind of a scholar's gift that keeps on giving. There's just a lot to talk about beyond just that 18th century life, which could keep people busy for their own careers. So, there's a lot there. And then when you add the materials dimension to it, when you start looking at landscapes and historical sites, it just proliferates. There's just a ton to talk about. So yeah, so I did not plan this, but this is how it has lined up.
Jonathan Malriat: It sounds like quite the journey to get there. one of the other ones. Would you mind taking a second to describe, since you've now talked about how you got into the world of George Washington, How about here the world around George Washington Birthplace National Monument. How did you get started here?
Dr. Philip Levy: Part of the same story. You know, when I began, we began the project at Ferry Farm at the at the childhood site in 2001. I think my first summer digging, there was 2002 Springs students up from Florida, which we do every summer, except for a few we're going to be doing again this summer. And part of that work entailed sort of developing a familiarity with other Washington sites at that time. Ferry Farm was not a preserved site. It was the beginning of a preserved site that had just happened there at GEWA you know, the birthplace was, you know, an established park.
Dustin Baker: Hey, Dustin here. Just wanted to cut in and explain that GEWA is another name for the park, in a way. Every national park site has a four-letter acronym. And so GEWA, G. E. W. A. is our four-letter acronym, and that's why Phil refers to the site as GEWA.
Dr. Philip Levy: And Mount Vernon was sort of the main site, but Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon was in a sort of it was before the library, right? The library, the building of the library about 2013 really changed Mount Vernon and super energized what was happening there. So, we had a few sort of established historical archeology, archeological centers and kind of becoming familiar with the larger world of Washington. We visited places. I remember visiting the birthplace at some point in grad school, and I couldn't tell you exactly when, but I know I visited some because I remember friends of mine and I talking about building X and just having like real suspicions about this, like what we saw on the ground. We weren't doing any research. We're just looking at things, but looking at this thing going, well, that doesn't make any sense. Something, something is amiss here and just not really knowing what was amiss.
Dustin Baker: Hey, this is Dustin again. I just want to clarify that. Dr. Phil Levy just mentioned a site called Building X. Building X is one of the greatest mysteries in the park, and it's a brick foundation. During the construction of the memorial house Museum in the 1930s, the National Park Service located that foundation just a few yards away. And shortly thereafter in the 1930s, it was excavated. Many artifacts were found, leading some to speculate that it was the true location of George Washington's birth house. But the foundation was named Building X due to the uncertainty of what it truly represented. And Phil Levy is going to be talking a lot more about it later on.
Dr. Philip Levy: So that would be before any of this began. But then that became more of an issue as we worked on Ferry Farm and started, started kind of entering the Washington studies world, if that's what you want to call it, a little more fully. And I remember in around 2008 that ferry farm, we were sort of ready to declare that we had what we were looking for. It took a little while before we were ready to say that we had located the home. There were a few problems there, a few things that lines that didn't line up, things we couldn't quite account for, and we sort of had to think our way out of those problems till you get to the point that you really feel like you're certain about something and that doesn't happen quickly. There often is some like one little irritating problem sitting there and you can't quite say that you're confident about what you have until you resolve that problem. In this case, our problem was a stone that was out of place that we couldn't make the wall line up because that stone was just in the wrong place. And you can't. A rectangle has to be a rectangle, it can't be a parallelogram. So, you know, as long as your building is shaped like a parallelogram, you're not reading your building correctly. If something is wrong and you haven't figured out yet what's wrong, but something's wrong. So we had this parallelogram, we couldn't make sense of it. And then we finally realized that we were reading the stone incorrectly the stone that we thought was part of a wall was actually part of a chimney base that was outside of the wall. And once we figured that out, everything lined up, all the lines were parallel and everything made sense. And they were like, okay, we got it. This is this is the building that was about 2008, And at that time I remember talking with the who was then the superintendent at the first place, Lucy Lawless.
Dustin Baker: Hi, Dustin. One more time. Not that Lucy Lawless. Another Lucy Lawless was the superintendent of this site in the early 2000s up until 2013.
Dr. Philip Levy: About that site and saying that, you know, there are questions there. We shouldn't be treating the birthplace site as has done and dusted. Right. There's there are there are questions about that. And there's a lot of research that needs to go on to really make sense of that place. And she was very excited about that enthusiastic and it was beginning with her, but also, you know, carrying through. She set in motion finding the money that enabled the 2013 and 2014 reassessment of the archeological record that we were able to do with some graduate students to really begin to say, all right, what is it that we know? What did the 1930 record tell us without sort of the- the overlay of the discussion of the 1920s and 1930s? And that really sort of started everything in motion that got us to where we are today.
Jonathan Malriat: And that's quite a journey as well on that.
Dr. Philip Levy: It's always like this.
Jonathan Malriat: It's always just like connected. They are how the world has been. As you said, you can always trace the connection to George Washington, it seems like.
Dr. Philip Levy: Yeah.
Jonathan Malriat: Now with all of that connections to George Washington, we know one of the books that you wrote, you wrote several. But Where the Cherry Tree grew of that very famous myth, how do you separate fact from fiction if there's so many people writing about George, there's so much out there, How do you separate that?
Dr. Philip Levy: Well, you know how as a question sort of the poses that you can, right? I'm not sure you always can. Certain kinds of stories take on the lives of their own. And they- they just become facts simply by repetition, Whether they're true or not. It doesn't matter because people believe them to be true and people act on their beliefs, not necessarily unverifiable data. So false assumptions, mistakes, errors, deceptions can become reality by people's actions. They can. If you're acting on false information, then you're sort of the information may as well be real, but it has a real impact on people's lives. When you get into the Washington biography, you know, the body of writing about his life. And that's an interesting place where a lot of different kinds of stories get told and a lot of different writing styles occurred. So if you watch if somebody to write about Washington now and people could do this, we're in a very strange golden age. The level of information that's available to anyone, not just researchers, but anyone about Washington's thoughts and ideas is- is without precedent. You can find online through Sander's online pretty much his entire his entire correspondence and not just their but but annotated like to transcribe that annotated. You can search virtually every letter. You could go to a library. You could pick up a book version of all of that. You can go to the Library of Congress and you can see photos of the actual letters. So if you wanted to move away from a transcription, look at the handwriting and see something in there, you can do that as well. His account books have been turned into a database, so you can go in and look at you can search through his accounts and see his transactions. So you have just an incredible amount of information that lets you really zero in on what he's thinking, what he's doing, where he is, and so on and so on. We're very fortunate that way. That was not always the case. So people writing biographies of Washington, going back into the beginning of the 19th century, had very little actual information to draw on. And what happened was certain stories crystallized certain ways of talking about this sort of became the way this gets done and what biographers generally did for a long time. To some extent, they still do it. Moviemakers do this as well to write a biography. A lot of people will just read five previous biographies and then and then start going and they look for some sources through those previous biographies and then start going. So you get the repetition of certain things again and again and again. And part of the historian's job is to sort of look at these things and sort out, well, what is what is this being repeated versus what is it that I can say, you know, from sources outward. So one way to get at the how of sorting these things out is by being aware of what's in the writing, but trying to move beyond that into the source material and try to look at it with fresh eyes. The same with the archeological record. Don't- don't walk into the archeological record automatically accepting the assumptions of previous excavations. That doesn't mean you have to reject them a priori or just say they're wrong. But- but, you know, be skeptical. Look at everything with fresh eyes. So in the case of Washington, because of the sort of repetitive nature of the biography, you get certain pieces, certain set pieces again and again and again, and you have to kind of comb that out, become aware of what's style and what's actually historical work. It's not really until the 1930s that people had substantive access to actual Washington documentation and there's a change in the biographies that they lose a certain romantic quality that they had of the night in the 19th century, the Washington bicentennial, sort of the publishing of the first major multi-volume edition of Washington's papers that people had access suddenly to actual Washington writing. And so then you end up with a tension in the biography between what sort of the modern practice of history can do and can say versus the way it has always been told. So you get a tension in there, how are you going to approach it? So, you know, there isn't a lot of proper mythology anymore in the Washington biography because of the quality of the information that goes into it. But there are certain assumptions and, you know, there's a lot of Washington biography is very what they call your hagiography or things like that that sort of tends to be in the writing. But there's been particularly, and you have to give credit where credit is due. I think the Fred W Smith Library at Mount Vernon has played a huge role in this. There has been a huge growth in Washington scholarship. So there's a lot of really creative, inventive material out there that is looking it's working away from biography and working into sort of how does Washington fit into a variety of different kinds of questions. So it's a great time for that. But the way to do it is to step the way to get to sort of something outside of the mythology of the 19th century is to is to work with sources, work outward. And that's- that's what we did with the birthplace. You go back to go back to primary sources and not accept just one particular reading. Simply because it's the reading that's there. That's what historians do. It's not what everybody does. That's the job of the historian.
Jonathan Malriat: So, you're just even connecting that story in with the mystery and the different research that had been done here and views on where the birthplace and the birth home once stood. Can you elaborate a little bit for the listeners on why we were and still even are to a bit uncertain where the George Washington birth home stood originally?
Dr. Philip Levy: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question because it touches on something that it's really interesting that I don't fully understand. I've seen several examples of this and I don't quite understand what's going on. I first saw it with Fredericksburg in Ferry Farm in Virginia, and that was that. When Washington died in December 1799, there was a sort of a period of national mourning. His star had fallen somewhat. You know, he was politically unpopular toward the somewhat unpopular toward the end of his political career. He had enemies in in Washington or not Washington, but, you know, in government, I should say. And, you know, he was he was showing his age and people were aware of that. He was he was venerated for his achievements. But he also was not seen as you know, not seen as what the future was going to look like. And if that was not caught up in politics in ways that I don't think he was entirely comfortable with. So when he died, he certainly was a national hero. But it's there was an unevenness to the commemoration of his life at the time of his death. here were a lot of speeches, a lot of, you know, bunting bedecked platforms erected in towns. People would read various, you know, eulogies to Washington. And one thing that struck me is really interesting was that that didn't happen in Fredericksburg. And I never quite understood that there is an acknowledgment in the newspapers references, but there was not everything they did, all the commemoration of Washington waving the flag, the bunting and so on was all pro forma. It all looked exactly the same as everyone else's. And I was surprised because I would think that the town of Fredericksburg would have made more noise about Washington having lived there. And they didn't.
Jonathan Malriat: Especially with how connected he and his mother were to the that town.
Dr. Philip Levy: Some of it may have to do with her, you know, that that her tense relationship with him at the end of her life in some ways may have colored the way the town understood him. They may have been sort of, if you will, marry Partizans, you know. You know, there's the odd question. There'll be a book coming out about this soon. We'll see what he has to say about this. But the there's an odd question around Mary's burial because it doesn't appear that George had He didn’t bring her to Mount Vernon and bury her in Mount Vernon all kinds of people buried Mount Vernon, but not her. He also doesn't appear to have paid for some sort of grave marker so that by the 1830s, when Americans are thinking about there having been an American history, it's not until mid 1830 after the death of Jefferson and Adams, that historians start to say that historians writing about that past identify that. That's kind of when Americans say something is passing, that the revolutionary generation is ending, and we are the next thing. And so, you start to get in the 1830s an awareness of there having been an American history and it's a little earlier example a bit earlier. I mean, the Washington commemorations go back to the 1820s and the Washington biographies go earlier. But as a large-scale interest, it's a new thing and end in Washington's first centennial of 1832 plays a role in this. You start to get a bit of an interest in Washington, and somebody pops up with the we should mark Mary Washington's grave. And he's probably being a bit hyperbolic with saying that, you know, she's in an unmarked grave in a field and the plow was like disrupting her bones. And, you know, I don't think that's actually true. But the point is that nobody's really sure where Mary was buried. It's not as clear as you would expect it to have been. And that sort of ties with this like only sort of halfhearted commemoration of Washington. So, they don't; they, the people of that time, are not really as concerned about this stuff as we might think. They would have been Ferry Farm itself feel this the John Gatsby Chapman painting about 1833 shows it to be a ruin. They know what the home was, but it's just a bunch of stones in the ground. It's not they don't have this preservation impulse. They don't have the sort of save the thing impulse. It's really not until the 1850s and Pamela Cunningham and the Mount Vernon Ladies Association starting the idea that, you know, that's one of the first American House museums. We have to preserve this building. This needs to be saved for the future. And they're not thinking that way in this period. And so, they're sort of lukewarm or maybe just pro forma sort of generic commemoration of Washington in Fredericksburg is an indication of that. And then at the birthplace, you have a whole other version of this problem where by 1813, there's no one now owning the land with the last name Washington, the last, you know, linear. Washington's still off the land and leave. It goes to people who are sort of kin, but they're distant kin and it's just a farm. It just gets farmed, and you have rather famously a park Custis, the George Washington Park Custis, who goes and does the commemoration of Washington's birth in 1815. But I think we've sort of misunderstood that event in some ways also because crucially, because Park Custis was connected to Washington, he became it was also a book coming out soon about him and his use of memory also. And he becomes a sort of interesting symbol so that during the siege of Washington, if I remember correctly, they- they sort of allow him to honorably fire off the first cannon at the British, because, as you know, George Washington Park Custis, this is very strong sense for Americans that the war of 1812 is in some way a second revolution. It's a repeat. And remember that British ships came up the Potomac, they burned Washington. You know, they burned homes on the Potomac as well. So, in 1815, the year after the war, Park Custis and some friends go and put a grave marker, put, sorry- the stone marking where Washington's home had been with the birthplace was. What they're doing in part is sort of rededicating the United States. It's much bigger. The project, in their minds is much bigger than where it was Washington's home. It's like the country has survived a second major war with threat with Great Britain. It is as if it were born anew. And we, these new Americans are sort of like starting the country over again. So the commemoration of the birth home in 1815 has to be read within the context of the war of 1812 and sort of the new rebirth of the country. But they don't know exactly what Washington's home was. They don't know exactly where the building was. We don't know the stuff we don't know about that. Building a lot. We don't know. And we're getting closer. But, you know, it's tricky. You're looking through some foggy lenses to try to understand something, but it's clear that there was no sentiment attached to that hope. The fact of Washington just isn't that important to these people. So much so that the maps of 1810 and 1813, when the land is being surveyed for sale at one of them is done by Samuel Lamp. And I'm not sure that the 1810 map is Samuel Lemkin, but it probably is. That's in private hands not in the park's possession. Neither of those maps make mention of George Washington. It's 1810 - 1813. They know who George Washington is. He's like a major, major figure. And, you know, by that point, they've already moved the capital to a new city named after him. So they just- And these are the people who, you know, live in the world where he was born. These are people who claim kinship to him. But when they draw the map of the land, they don't even refer to them at all. They're just they're surveys are functional documents. You don't do things on surveys. You don't have to. It's also possible that everybody just knows this, and nobody's really sort of paying that much attention. The only thing you get is a little area sequestered off where Park Custis says, or sorry, where Corbin Washington. George Corbin Washington says he keeps a little square where he says the birth home was and he keeps the cemetery. Cemetery out on the park grounds now is the same cemetery, but it wasn't marked. There was no wall. The wall was a product of the 1920s and thirties. So that area was safe for the family when they sell it off. But there is a lot of uncertainty as to where exactly the building was because for whatever reason it just wasn't worthy of their memory. They moved on. So, it's only later that people turn around and say, actually the stuff is very important. And it's interesting that there's another map from the 1850s around the time that they're commemorating Mount Vernon, and that map says, All right, George Washington, George Washington, Geroge Washington. But the one that's closer in time to the Washington family doesn't mention it at all in any meaningful way. So, they are not particularly interested in recording or highlighting or commemorating these things. And they were the ones who were there to see it and they didn't do it. So, we get a gap, right? They could have they could have answered somebody's questions for us. They could have made our lives really easy. Right? Maybe less productive, but certainly easy. But by marking these things, by recording them in some way, they just didn't. And so, we're left decades later with people now by the 1850s wanting to know this information, but not having a direct connection to get it. And they start guessing. They go with what they have, and they just start taking their best guess and they get some things right and they get a lot of stuff wrong.
Jonathan Malriat: So, you've really been the spearhead here on trying to find the where the location is of the birth home or even know more about it. Can you tell us about that search in all the different stages that's gone through the highs and the lows and how that journeys gone?
Dr. Philip Levy: Yeah, and we're still not quite there. So, I don't want to get too far ahead and make claims that, you know, that I might regret later that are contradicting what other people are saying. We're still we're still in a in a sorting out process. So, I'll reserve a definitive judgment. There has been way too much confidence in this whole discussion over the years, way too many people absolutely confident that they know what X or Y is. And, you know, maybe we want to be a little bit more restrained, a little bit more reserved. I think there are things that we can dismiss immediately. There's there are things we can agree upon immediately. One of those very important one is that when you are out on the historic land at the birthplace, you are on the Washington family home. Lot like that that I think we know. I don't think anything can disrupt that. So, there's a difference, though, between knowing that you are on the home lot versus like what this building was, this thing and that building was that thing that I think we're a little grayer on. But there's no question that the park grounds are the grounds. So, anybody who comes to visit, they are on that site. When they look out at Pope’s Creek, they are seeing the view, right, that that is all absolutely 100% real. So, we're not to worry about any of that. That would I mention that because that was a big concern in the 1920s and 1930s, they were not so sure. And a lot of the work they did then was specifically to make the case that that was the land. So, a lot of their research was focused on change of title and lands because there was there were contenders. There are people who made arguments some interesting, some less interesting about where Washington may have been born. There are several contenders in the 1920s for the possibility of Washington's birth site. I don't think we worry about that anymore. I think we know where we are and that the Park Service owns that land and curates that land effectively and that is the place. So, we should not be worried about that. Now, how that landscape functioned, what buildings did, what on that landscape, what dated to when the much trickier question. So, we don't necessarily have, you know, the clarity we will want on that. But what it comes down to and I think part of what motivated me in this is the way that the story of the birthplace site had been told for a long time was one of sort of commemorative error and then correction and everything focused on the memorial house and its reputation. Memorial house was very much sort of, well, here's this 1930s, 1920s commemoration, and it got things wrong in these ways. And I think there's more to say than just- just that. And for a while that was kind of the main focus. This looks like they got it wrong and that has been corrected with this. This building with the other Building X features, which would be fine if, you know, if one had absolute confidence in those identifications. It's not quite as simple as that. What's happening, though, is that, you know, we're headed into 2032 sooner than any of us think. The Washington birth tricentennial and I've said this many times, but it doesn't hurt to say it again. There is going to be a moment when the eyes of the nation, in quite probably the eyes of the world, are going to turn to that piece of land and look to the National Park Service and to the park to say, All right, you're in the spotlight. Here's your moment. And I felt very strongly, after all this work on Ferry farm that we wanted to make sure that the birthplace was able to answer its questions solidly and emphatically and without the shadow of doubt hanging over it. So, we have time to do that. But I think that's what we're working toward being able to say, absolutely. Here is this and this is it. And we know that with a degree of certainty that we've never had before, so that when the moment comes, there it is. It's correct and right. And that's- that's a big motivator. I think that's a very important thing. We're going to want to get this exactly right. And I think we're edging closer, but we know so much more now than we did even just seven or eight years ago. But we're doing well. We're doing well. But this is a national position. I think people are going to want this to be the right answer. I imagine that this is going to be. But I think it's going to be a big deal. I mean, they see what the- the bicentennial was. And I think it will be different because the world functions different. But- but I think there is going to be a moment that's going to focus everything on that landscape. And I think we're going to want to want to be able to deliver exactly what- what the world needs to see.
Dustin Baker: Thank you for joining us for our first episode of Upon This Land: History, Mystery, and Monuments. Next time we'll be continuing the conversation where we left off with Dr. Phil Levy, and we'll be exploring some of what we know about the birth home of George Washington and some of the myths and legends surrounding the state and where it went. So, thank you to Dr. Levy for his time and thank you. We'll see you next time.
Episode 2
On this episode, we're tackling one of the biggest mysteries of the park, and that's its name. We know George Washington was born at Popes Creek, but when we think of the term birthplace, we might also conjure a building. Yet, by the time the park was created in the 1930s, there was no longer a building here to preserve. Helping us shed light on this mystery is Dr. Philip Levy. Intro music courtesy of Wolf Patrol. Outro music courtesy of Brumbaugh Family.
Dustin Baker: George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born, only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So, join us as we piece together the past, present and future of this place brick by brick. On this podcast series upon this Land History, mystery and monuments.
Dustin Baker: Welcome to episode two of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments. My name is Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation here at the park. On this episode, we're going to be tackling one of the biggest mysteries of the park, and that's its name. We know that George Washington was born at Pope's Creek, but when we think of the term birthplace, we might also conjure a building. Yet, by the time the park was created in the 1930s, there was no longer a building here to preserve. And for over a century, people have searched for proof of where it once stood and what it looks like. Helping us shed light on this mystery is Dr. Philip Levy. And we're picking up in our conversation where we left off on the previous episode Interviewing Dr. Philip Levy today is Lead Interpretive Park ranger Jonathan Malriat.
Jonathan Malriat: One of the other mysteries tied in with that birthplace is why did it vanish? So not just why are we uncertain or where stood, why did disappear in the first place? What happened to that original birth home? There's always the Washington family story that it burned down. But what does the archeology and the historical record say?
Dr. Philip Levy: Well, remember, we have a few different features, so we're still trying to figure out that was sort of in the later stages of hammering out how to make sense of all the different features of the building that's been called Building X.
Dustin Baker: Hey, this is Dustin. Cutting in real quick to remind everybody that Building X is an archeological foundation in the memorial area of the park that shows 17th and 18th century features that have led some people to speculate that it could be the original birth home of George Washington.
Dr. Philip Levy: There are some questions that of hang over this and become very, very deeply immersed in the facts of 18th century records. So, it's like I can present you with a lot of confusion here. Here are things we know, what things we don't know there. So, let's go to before we get to the end of the building, let's get sort of the beginning of what we understand to be the beginning of the building and Augustine and Jane Washington, -
Dustin Baker: Hey, this is Dustin again. Philip Levy is introducing us to two important people in the story. This Augustine Washington is George's father. Jane Washington, though, is not his mother. She is Augustine's first wife and mother to George's surviving brothers, Augustine Jr and Lawrence. She will pass away in November of 1729.
Dr. Philip Levy: - when they got married, they were living in a home that was on the west side of Bridge's Creek up along the river somewhere. It was probably the home of Daniel Liston, who was a compatriot of John Washington. That land and that property meant something to Lawrence Washington, Augustine Washington's father. And I have to, as always with this stuff, it's you know, but it's always good to stress with people. We all have to apologize for the fact that the Washington's only used a few names because there's an endless stream of Johns and Lawrence that gets you know, it gets very difficult to clarify which one you mean. But Lawrence, Washington, Augustine's father, John's son, had some attachment to that piece of land that his family didn't own, because he one of the major things he did was fighting to acquire that property. He was in court. He was dealing with people in England to try to get the rights to it. It was a big project for him. He clearly cared. You know, it was difficult to do something. You know, they would have stopped. But he fought for this. He wanted that piece of land. And then he left it to Augustine Washington after his death. So, when Augustine came of age, that was the home that he moved to on, probably an older home. We know they're older because Laurence Washington referred to the buildings being older. So that's he's on that property. He and Jane Washington were on that property were they living in an old home or something that they built there. We just don't know. But by about 1723, he acquired land on the other side of Bridge’s Creek, the Pope's Creek land. He bought it from a guy named Joseph Addington, who was a descendant of a very large family called the Brooks, who Henry Brooks was one of the first English settlers on that piece of land. When people coming over from Maryland in the 1650s. He was one of the first people to come over from Maryland. And a whole other story which we could deal with another time. But a really interesting one. You know, the Marylanders coming over to Virginia, but Brooks had a bunch of daughters. The daughters all got married. They all had children. And you end up with this Brooks family land being divided into many little, smaller properties and little Brooks descendants all over the place. And Abington was one of these people. He was late in life, and he sold his land. He's going to go live with his sister in Baltimore, and he sold it to Augustine and Jane. They also acquired a couple other properties. And immediately something interesting happened, which was that at that point they had two young sons, Lawrence Again, because that's how they do this. Lawrence and Augustine Jr and Augustine Sr, the father was getting involved in a mining enterprise, very different than the tobacco planting at enterprise, which of course he did. But the mines really matter. He puts a lot of energy into that. He went to England several times, really focused on these mines. And here's the interesting thing. When he acquired the land that Pope's Creek, he immediately sold it to the two allies. And what he did was sort of bequeath it to his son, Augustine Jr, and sold it to these other people for like £5 for them to keep in security. So, he didn't own that land any longer. He was basically a lifetime tenant on it. So that's a logical it's a very shrewd business move. What he's doing is protecting his children's inheritances from his own possible financial ruin and possible financial ruin associated with these mining enterprises. If they fail and he ends up in debt, then these properties that he's going to leave to his children cannot be taken from him because he no longer owns them. So, he buys it and immediately puts it in trust for Augustine Jr. So, it's kind of a funny thought that the land on which George Washington was born was owned by his brother, not by his father. So, it's got a fun little trivia detail there. But here's where it becomes very convoluted where did Joseph Addington live? He sold the land, and the deed of sale has all the usual language of referring to the buildings and the orchards and the fences. But he seems to have lived there. But where did he live? Did his building survive? Is it of another piece of the land that we've just never located? That's one of the things about archeology. We don't ever there's no system for digging the entire property of something, you know, there are always going to be places we haven't seen. We see a lot of one area, but we see nothing of huge swaths of the other area. We have methods for figuring out where buildings were. We're habitations where we also can miss things because we're not allowed to dig everywhere. So, there are places we just don't know about pieces of the property that we just have never seen. We don't know it's there. There are houses all over that landscape, 18th century or 17th century, estimating such ruins all over the place. I got five or six people identified who have plantations on that land. I know the names of enslaved people. We know stuff about their inventories. We had a carpenter living right near the dancing marsh. Right. Who's living on the on west side of that? I don't think he's on Park Service land at this point. Think might be the Muse property, but there's a lot of buildings there. We just haven't found them. We haven't seen them. So, we've seen what we've seen. But we don't want to assume that just because it's the thing that we've seen, it must be the most important thing. So where did Addington live when Augustine and Jane moved over from Bridge’s Creek, which we know they do, because he has a document where he says he's living on Pope's Creek. But that tells that he's shifted his main home. But did they build a home to live in or did they move into Addington’s Home? We just don't know. There's nothing to really clarify this. There's a little bit we're getting hints about this. We'll get to that in a minute. And then the next thing that happens is a guy named David Jones, who's a local builder, local carpenter, who probably was the tenants of Augustine's living on the land that Augustine Washington owned. He passed away. And there's some reason, some legal reason why there's a problem with his account in Augustine Washington's account book, there's some reasons the law needs to know about this, And the David Jones portion of Augustine Washington's business account book gets read into the court records. So, we have those. We have a record of all of that transaction. We have like a little miniature version of Augustine Washington's account book. We don't have the rest of the account book its lost, so we don't know who else he's doing business with. When you have an account book, you have an amazing glimpse into the detailed operations of this person's personal finances. We have an amazing body of records for George. The best thing we have for the birthplace is William Augustine Washington. We have his account from 1776 all the way through to about 1795 or so. So, we know a lot of detail about what he's buying, who he's trading with. And we know a lot we don't know a lot for Augustine, Washington. What we have is this one little portion of the account book read into the court records because the county needed to know about this. And that's what survived. And what we see is that the builder had died and hadn't finished whatever building project he was doing for Augustine. And Augustine referred to that project as my house. So now, okay, what does that mean? Is the carpenter completing a house? Is he adding on to a house? We just don't know. We just know that it wasn't finished and there's money involved. He also was building a church building one of the Washington Parish churches. So, now we know that they've moved that there might be the Abbington home out there and that David Jones was working on something, but he hadn't. But he died before the project was completed. So, we didn't we don't know, you know, the remaining piece there. So, a people looked at that record in the past and said, that's him building the first phase of Building X. And you could say that if you want. You can't prove any of that. All you can do is say, you know, I know that he's building something, but I also know that there's a building out there already. So, one clue, though, that's telling us that the Abington House may be somewhere else is when we looked at the archeology of the landscape and looked at the distribution of artifacts across the park grounds, we could see concentrations and we could put dates on those concentrations because the artifacts have dates associated with them. We do not have a lot of 17th century stuff on the site, and that's very significant because if Abington was living on the park grounds right in the area of the historic area. We would expect there to be at least some of the 17th century ceramics, and we don't see any. So that's a clue that Abington may have been living somewhere, not immediately there. And if that's the case, then David Jones may have been building a new building for Augustine and Jane. And that part of that new building may be the earliest phase of Building X. So, if you see what I mean, the earliest part of that building may be exactly the building that David Jones was working on for Augustine Washington. So, I think that's the direction that we're headed, that there's a core of that building that built by Augustine Washington in the years after 23, after he had taken property, taken possession and started to live on that land. But then what happens to it afterwards? It would it would seem to be sort of what my thinking is, and this is just where my mind is, that with the thought, I'm inclined to think that there's a core piece that is the Augustine Washington building and then additions put onto it later, and I would put those additions in the hands of Augustine, Washington Jr, who was an exceedingly wealthy planter who between he and his wife Ann Aylett Washington, they lived on that property for about 40 years. So, they had plenty of time to make additions after additions after additions. And he's got his inventory is remarkable. I think I mentioned it in the report. It's-
Dustin Baker: Hey, Dustin, again. Phil's just mentioned a report that he completed. That report is the park's current historic resource study upon this land. Seven generations of the Washington family and the residents of Pops Creek in the Mattox Neck. If you would like to explore it for yourself, it can be found on our website.
Dr. Philip Levy: - something you can gain access to, but it's a remarkable inventory. He's got all kinds of fancy stuff, like a big, big four horse carriage and he's a very wealthy planter and it makes sense that he would have a large, impressive home. Augustine Washington's a little different because he moved a lot, but he was living he started out life in Virginia. He moved to England when he was young. He came back from England and lived with a cousin and on maturity he took the possession, took possession of the property on Bridges Creek. Then he purchased the land over by Pope's Creek, which he then left to go to Mount Vernon. And then he left. Mount Vernon wasn't called Vernon then, but you get the point. At this point in history, Mount Vernon was known as Little Hunting Creek, a native actually already been in the Washington family for three generations. The name was changed to Mount Vernon by George's half-brother, Lawrence. After his commanding officer, Admiral Edward Vernon of the Royal Navy. So, the home that is almost synonymous with George Washington was named after a British admiral. He left Mount Vernon to go to Ferry Farm where he finally passed away. So, Augustine was not a let's sit in one place. Let's build our empire and build a beautiful home kind of guy. Is he's that's not that's not his temperament. He finds houses, then he moves into them, and he's been doing that his whole life. So, he's not a great builder and he's only at the Pope’s Creek property for about nine years anyway. He's out of there pretty quickly. So, when we look at who is the great builder, who is the person there with the wherewithal and time to make a massive home, it's Augustine Jr, it's his son. So, I think that's a lot of what we look at building. A lot of what we're seeing is there's Augustine Jr's building and then what happens to that? That's a good question. Augustine Jr passed away. And so, when you get the date wrong, it's like 1764, I think.
Dustin Baker: Just a quick correction. Augustine Jr. passed away in 1762, not 64.
Dr. Philip Levy: And left to his wife, Ann Aylett Washington, a lifetime tenancy in the estate and she's an interesting character a very interesting thing happens with her that nobody really has picked up on. But I think it's really fascinating. Up until throughout Augustine Washington, Jr's life, this is just called the Washington home or the home, because this is the building just where they live. The Washingtons don't do a lot of naming, but really their habit. George is a bit of an exception. Lawrence names Mount Vernon. But George So George didn't name anything, right? It was Mount Vernon when he got it. The Washingtons just don't do a lot of naming. The ferry farm home is called the Home House, and a lot of people do not remember his last name on their home. Just like today, not everybody names their home, so it's like the home. But then when Augustine Washington Jr. died and Ann Aylett Washington takes over the property and lives there for about ten years, suddenly she's getting mails sent to her at Wakefield. She the name Wakefield is her choice, and it appears only in connection with her. There are a few letters that are addressed to Wakefield and references to Wakefield, and then when she died, I think it's 1774 and the property goes to William Augustine, Washington, her son, the name falls out of favor and they're not using it anymore. It's gone. So, it's really, it's her thing. It's her choice to call it Wakefield, and it only lasts her lifetime. That habit falls away. It gets resuscitated in the 19th century because it's romantic. You know, it fits it fits the way the 19th century commemorators and the 20th century, early 20th century collectors want to imagine an Anglophile colonial past. They love the idea of this property having a name, and they think the property special because they care a lot about the fact that Washington was born there. His immediate family. They don't care so much about that. But that's land. They're going to make money off of that land and sell it if they want. So, they're not particularly invested in the romantic side of this. But later, people who are invested in the sort of colorful, charming English countryside stuff there, they really love the name Wakefield and they attached to it. But the only person or historical person who uses that name is Ann Aylett Washington, and it comes with her, and it dies with her. William Augustine, Washington never, never used that name. So. So, what happens to him? Well, he ends up inheriting that property. He he's very young at the time, I think about 17 when his mother died. And he's got a brother-in-law and older brother-in-law who I think it's a brother-in-law who plays a big role, plays a custodial role, and there's all sorts of weird little sales and transfers. I don't quite understand what's going on there, but William Augustine Washington. Mary's within sort of the family network and he's there. He's living there presumably until about 1780, when we suddenly see him living at the Blenheim home, which is about a mile inland. There isn't anything to specifically account for exactly why he stopped living there. It's hard to tell. And the archeology of the features of building X have the building being a ruin. It's hard to tell exactly when we'd have to kind of look really closely, but it seems to it's a little bit earlier than that. Maybe the 1770s, we start to see the beginning of it being a ruin. What that means archeologically is that the cellars were open, they were open holes and they filled with rubbish. So, they're collecting garbage into the 19th century, into the early 19th century, and visitors say that they can see the depression of the of the cellar in the early 19th century. But we don't have we have a silt at the bottom and a chimney that got pushed in. That's the main set of ruined features. So, bricks that got just some bricks get shoved in. Not a lot, not enough to suggest that the building was made of brick. It's mostly just dirt, some burned stuff, but the burned stuff is all fireplace refuse. It's not house fire, it's all small bits. Things burned in varying degrees and a lot of dirt at the bottom. If you have a house fire, the first thing you get is burn and you get large, burned things. Whatever was in the house the night of the fire that gets burned and it ends up in the bottom and then dirt goes above the burned stuff. In this case, we've got dirt and silt going into an empty building and then fire ruptures on top of that. So, either it was abandoned and burned down later, or people are just throwing garbage in it, meaning they're living somewhere nearby and they're dumping their fire, refuse their fireplace, refuse into it, filling the hole. And gradually we know that there was a chimney that was pushed in most of the bricks that are in the future. In the 1930s, those were associated with a chimney that fell in. So it appears to have been abandoned at some point. Again, we know that William Augustine Washington had moved away from it by 1780, and then a decade later, he's moved again, moved up to Haywood, which is another property on the Potomac. So, he's another one who's moving. But, you know, one of the nice things about having his account book, which nobody had looked at, nobody had taken that account book into account, nobody had nobody considered what was in that account book. What you don't have in his account book in the period of 17 nights, 1779 and 1780. Crucially, what you don't add is him re acquiring the things you need to run a domestic, you know, a gentry home. If he had had a major fire and needed to get a new mirror and a new sofa and a new bedstead, you would see that in the account book that we have, his account book. He's not buying any of those things. None of that is happening. That's possible. We're not seeing those transactions. But, you know, we have the account book. He's not doing that. He's a merchant and he's selling a lot of stuff. It's possible we're looking at his business account. Nothing is domestic one, I don't know. But we also see him we see him hiring bricklayers when he's building Haywood and some extent when he's building Blenheim. We see him. We're working up. Let him. We see him hiring the people. He needs to do the work on building the new homes. So, we do see something of the domestic economy. So why does he leave? I don't have a simple explanation. My inclination is to say it has something to do with the American Revolution in 1781, an English gunboat named the Savage went up the Potomac River a little bit like what would happen in the War of 1812. This gunboat went up the river. It burned some plantations on the Maryland side, didn't burn anything in Virginia. As far as I know, the enslaved people of the area were fleeing because the English offered them freedom. So, they were getting in boats and pushing off and going to the going to the English boat because that would make them free. And that they went all the way up to Mount Vernon, had a whole incident there. So, you've got this disruption now it's we know the outcome of the revolution, but, you know, the people in it don't. And it's pretty terrifying to have an English gunboat going up the river, burning homes. One of the things that happens when the savages going up the river is they open fire on two smaller sloops on the river because they see them in there, they see them moving quickly. And so, the British opened fire on them. And when the boats strike their sails and the English catch up to them, they turn out to be English privateers. So, the English first thought they were American and opened fire on them. Then when they get to them, know another two boats are actually English privateers. Well, that's really important because that tells us that there's raiding happening on the Potomac. People are people homes being robbed by English privateers. It may well be that Augustine, that William Augustine Washington said, let's move a little bit inland. Let's let's get away from the river front here and settle ourselves a little further back. So that's speculative explanation. But I think it accords with the way the world looked in 1780 and 1781 that there's ample reason to move away from the coast and settle a little bit further in and avoid the conflict a little bit, which again, the alarm was all up and down the river. People were terrified. And you can understand why. I mean, it's you know, this is a terrifying thing. So, at that point, though, sometime around that time, the building was abandoned and that's that. Now we know that there's a fire at some point because by 1810, they're referencing a burned house on the landscape. But 1810 is not 1780. Right. I mean, still, you got, you know, 30 years for something to burn between 1780 and 1810. There's no reason to assume that a fire reference 1810 was in a 1780 fire. Right. It's a lot of time between them and buildings burned all the time. There are any number of burned house roads all up and down the Potomac, all up all across the Chesapeake. It's a very common marker. There's also a piece of land called the Ruins, which is over near Blenheim. So, there are these place memories in the landscape in 1810. A burnt house, something called the ruins. So, there's been a long habitation there and lots of opportunity for these buildings to vanish in a variety of different ways. And a lot of people living there. There's a change, there's a decline in the number of people living there over the period of the Washington occupancy. At first there's lots of small planters, but gradually under the Washingtons, all that land gets bought up by them and it starts to be one plantation rather than about a dozen or more small ones. So, there's a lot of buildings around, a lot of buildings that can burn. The other thing about what's called the road to the burned house is typical of these maps. We don't see where it goes. We just see the beginning of it. We just see it going up. The neck of land. We don't see where it goes. So, it's the main road is what used to be the county road, the maintained road that appears in the documents of the 18th century as the road up Mattox neck. There's a road, there's a road to the Mattox Ferry, which is another one. And unfortunately, you can look at that map and see it's like we are part of that, but we don't have the whole thing, so we don't know to which burned house that road went. We just know that there's a burned house somewhere along that road in 1810 or a memory of a burned house in 1810.
Dustin Baker: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Upon this Land History, Mystery and Monuments. And this episode, we talked a lot about the ongoing research around the archeological sites in the park. But on the next episode, we're going to dive into the oral traditions, the stories that have persisted through generations about what took place here. Where did the buildings go and how do we collectively remember the birthplace of George Washington.
Episode 3
On this episode, we are going to dive into some of the oldest oral traditions about the home George Washington was born in. It is not hard to find references to Wakefield being the birthplace of George Washington but who gave it that name and when? Another big one is the ultimate fate of the house. Joining us again during this episode is Dr. Philip Levy. Intro music courtesy of Wolf Patrol. Outro music courtesy of Brumbaugh Family.
Dustin Baker: George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born, only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present and future of this place brick by brick. On this podcast series upon this Land History, mystery and monuments. Fact or fiction? History or mystery? When studying the biography of George Washington, it can be tricky to piece apart. The same is true for the place he was born. Hi, I'm Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. Where does history come from? The power of a place largely comes from how we remember its history and how we talk about it. An oral tradition is a form of human communication held in common by a group of people where knowledge, ideas, and culture are passed through stories from one generation to another. Whenever we are told a story about the past, it might be best to view ourselves as participating in a centuries long game of telephone with specifics and data changing slightly during each retelling. And well, when these stories are repeated or printed by what we might perceive as authoritative or trusted sources, well, then they can go unquestioned as fact. Yet sometimes when we try to trace back a piece of information to a primary source or record, the trail goes, well, cold. Sometimes we even find the answers contradict long held beliefs. On this episode, we're going to dive into some of the oldest oral traditions about the home George Washington was born in. Just before you enter the park on route 204, you'll pass a sign that reads the following:
Jonathan Malriat using a radio voice: Virginia Department of Historic Resources highway marker J 69. George Washington's Birthplace, Wakefield. George Washington's birthplace, is two miles north on Pope's Creek, just off the Potomac River. He was born on 22nd February 1732 and live there only for three years. Washington's father, Augustine, purchased the land in 1718 and built the house by 1726. President Washington's half brother, Augustine Junior, inherited the property after his father's death in 1743. The dwelling, a U-shaped timber frame house, burned on Christmas Day 1779. The present memorial house, erected in 1930-31, is a Colonial Revival style version of a medium size planter's house. Originally known as Pope's Creek, the property was renamed Wakefield about 1770 by George Washington's half nephew, William Augustine Washington.
Dustin Baker: What is presented as simple facts upon closer examination, may actually be rooted in oral tradition. For example, if you were from Westmoreland County, Virginia, Wakefield might be a place name you use frequently, and it's not hard to find references to Wakefield as being the birthplace, or sometimes the birth home of George Washington. So who gave it that name? And when? But the big one is certainly the ultimate fate of the House. On our previous episode, we discuss what we know about building X with Doctor Philip Levy. We know that historical records indicate that the Washington family was no longer living there by 1780. We also know that by the 1800s, visitors were describing only a depression in the ground where it had once stood. So where did the house go? The story of George Washington's birth home burning down on Christmas Day, 1779, is a story that's been told here for over a century. In fact, it is so ingrained that new oral traditions have been born about certain objects in our collections, told to have been saved from the fire by the Washington family themselves. We're going to continue our conversation with Doctor Philip Levy where we left off on the previous episode and trace this story back to its origin. Will the story of the birth home burning go cold? Interviewing Doctor Phillip Levy as myself and lead interpretive ranger Jonathan Malriat.
Dr. Philip Levy: Augustine Jr passed away and left to his wife Ann Aylett, Washington, a lifetime tenancy in the estate and she's an interesting character. A very interesting thing happens with her that nobody really has picked up on. But I think is really fascinating. Up until, throughout Augustine Washington Jr's life, this is just called the Washington home or the home, because this is the building just where they live. The Washingtons don't do a lot of naming, it’s not really their habit. George is a bit of an exception, well Lawrence names it Mount Vernon. But George, so George didn't name anything, right? It was Mount Vernon when he got it. The Washingtons just don't do a lot of naming. The Ferry Farm home is called the Home House, and a lot of people don’t. Not everyone slaps a name on their home. Just like today, not everybody names their home, so it's like the home. But then when, when Augustine Washington Junior died and Anne Aylett Washington takes over the property and lives there for about ten years, suddenly she's getting mail sent to her at Wakefield. She, the name Wakefield is her choice and it appears only in connection with her. There are a few letters that are addressed to Wakefield and references to Wakefield, and then when she died, I think it's 1774 and the property goes to William Augustine Washington, her son, the name falls out of favor and they're not using it anymore. It's gone. So it's really it's it's her thing. It's it's her choice to call it Wakefield, and it only lasts her lifetime. That habit falls away. It gets resuscitated in the 19th century because it's romantic. You know, it fits it fits the way the 19th century commemorators and the 20th century, early 20th century commemorators want to imagine an Englified colonial past. They love the idea of this property having a name, and they think the property special because they care a lot about the fact that Washington was born there. His immediate family, they don't care so much about that. But it's land, they're going to make money off of that land and sell it if they want. So they're not particularly invested in the romantic side of this. But later, people who are invested in the sort of colorful, charming English countryside stuff. They’re, they really love the name Wakefield and they attached to it. But the only person, historical person who uses that name is Ann Aylett Washington, and it comes with her and it dies with her.
Dustin Baker: And Phil, I'm glad you brought this up. I promise I'm not making this up for the purpose of the podcast. But I was driving home from work yesterday and I stopped at a gas station, so I'm still in my park service uniform. And a gentleman at the pump across from me goes, “hey, you work up at the state park.” And I said, “I work at George Washington's Birthplace”. And he goes, “You mean Stratford Hall?” And I said, “No, George Washington's Birthplace”. And he says, “I don't think I've heard of that.” And I go, “Well, most people around here call it Wakefield.” And he goes, “Wakefield, yes, I know where you're talking about.” So I guess I just would like to know why you think these place names persist for so long into the present era and why stories like the House Fire on Christmas Day. Why do those persist for as long as they do up until, you know, being something that someone today might reference this place as Wakefield?
Dr. Philip Levy: Yeah. I mean, the house fire story is its own complicated thing. There are, its fun to consider this, there is a house fire story for every Washington home, every one of them burned down. Ferry Farm has a story associated with 1740, where we are able to archeologically identify this, but there is two letters that referenced the 1740 fire, one in 1741 that specifically said sorry about your fire. And then in the 1790s you get another letter to George, someone who's reminding him about the fire at Ferry Farm, and that fire was on Christmas. So you got a 1790 letter saying, I lived across the river. And I remember when on Christmas your father's home burned and everybody had to go live in the kitchen. Its a very good letter. Right. That’s a very, that letter documents an actual event that that kind of memory in the lifetime of the people who are writing it. That's good stuff. Tied with another letter at the time in 1740 that references a fire that it immediately happened. So the very farm fire is very, very solid, very well dated and very real. What ended up happening is, remember I said in the biographies, people don't have access to a full range of information. They don't have all these documents. So you get somebody who does have some documents and they write about it. So you can find in the biographies people trying to figure out what house burned. So when a guy named David Humphreys, who was an officer in Washington, Army, one of Washington’s sort of supporting officers, decided to write a biography of Washington, the first attempt at this, in the late 1780s. Washington gave him access to some of his papers and he wrote a biography that ultimately wasn't published in his lifetime. It got published much later. But one of the things that makes that biography really useful is he gave a draft of it to Washington to look over, and Washington commented on some details. And I've always thought the details that he comments on are incredibly important because we get so little where Washington talks about his family. So we get these little bits. They're really quite telling. And one of the comments he makes is when he talks about the events of his childhood, which there's very little mentioned in Humphreys’ biography. He says, My father's house burned. That's it. But it's I think it's either his, I think I think, he, I think Humphrey’s writes his father's house burned, referencing what Washington has said. I don't remember the pronoun, but but the point is that Washington says my father's house burned and he associates that with his childhood. So that's probably the Ferry Farm story. Right, you with me? But that all speaks to the Ferry Farm fire. But the notion of a fire gets locked in the mind. And so you have some biographers in the 19th century who were just trying to solve problems. They know that Augustine left Pope's Creek and they know he left about 1740, 1738, 1736 right, pick your date. They know he leaves in that period. And so they say, Oh, a fire and he left. The home at Pope’s Creek must have burned down. So they look at the existing fire documentation in the letters and say, that must be why they left Pope’s Creek. So you start to get people saying, no, the fire was at Pope's Creek. Ferry Farm gets ignored in that story. In that version, they just ignore it. It's just not enough to say they just ignore it entirely. Parson Weems, the guy who wrote the Cherry Tree story, wrote, you know, one of the first major Washington biographies he wrote a story about, and this is a wacky thing, but he wrote a story about Mary Washington having a dream. And in the dream, Mount Vernon burns down, except that George was like five or six years old, saves the home by running up and down a ladder, pouring water on the fire. So little six year old George saves Mount Vernon from burning down. This is a dream that Mary Washington had and Parson Weems tells us, It's a political allegory and he explains the politics. It's a very strange, but, you know, but any time, any time you have an allegory, and then you got to explain what the allegory means. You haven't done the allegory very well. But that's exactly what he does. Here's what and here's what it means. But the point is, like, now there's a Washin.. Now there's a Mount Vernon fire story also. And the Mount Vernon fire story involves a fire breaking out on the roof of the ell of the house. They are not sure exactly. I mean, I guess you could have sparks coming out of the chimney and landing on wooden shingles. That could be the beginning of a fire on the roof. But there's a crucial pair of details here on the roof of the ell of a house that is buried in in Weem's Life of Washington. So now we've got a fantasy story of a fire at Mount Vernon. We've got documents from the period about a fire that probably tied to Ferry Farm, and the archeology supports that. And we've got historians trying to explain why they left Pope’s Creek and saying, it must have been the fire. So fire is now being used in a bunch of different ways. Then there's a series of biographies and the writers who in the 1880s and 1890s start writing a version of a fire at Pope's Creek and a letter emerges about 1883. It's credited to Sarah Tayloe Washington, who would have been in her eighties at the time. And she says that she learned from her grandfather who she she couldn't have been any older than nine or so when her grandfather died and he was in his seventies at the time. So you've got in 1883, you've got the memory of an 80 year old recalling a story told her by a 70 year old roughly 70 years earlier. It's not exactly a great lineage for a story, not great evidence. And she says there was a fire and they pulled the furniture out. She's a few details and she says it was, she says it was during the revolution. Then you get a landowner, Wilson, who lives nearby, and he knows a version of that story that he learned from her. And he says, no, it was 1779, so he puts a date on it. But then you get a guy who's from New York who's a kind of a forger, forger of credentials for, for objects and. He tells another story and his story says, No, it was 1780. And he says, of all the most wonderful things in the world, that sparks came out of the chimney and it started a fire on the roof of the ell of the house. And that's the story that the Wakefield Memorial Association uses as their fire story. It uses the elements of Mary Washington's dream to tell this story. And it's garbled. It's all, it's like all the stuff gets garbled. It's like you take all these little details of fire and put them in a blender and just, like, blend them all together and pour them out. Like, here's this one, here's that one. So all this, you see what I'm saying, all of this is so corrupted by cross-fertilization and different storytellings, that none of it is credible. There's no reason to to put any stock in any of this. The only one that works is the Ferry Farm story, because it's the only one that's documented in the 18th century by the people alive at the time are talking about it. And then it gets even more confusing because there's a letter from, these are the thing people don’t refer to, that's why you want to go back to documents, there's a letter from 1790, I think is the date from William Augustine Washington that he says he talks about what a bad year it's been because he's had two major barn fires and that would be at the Pope’s Creek property somewhere around it. By 1790, He's living at, living on the Potomac. He’s moved away from Blenheim, but he's in the same area. He owns that land and we don't know where the tobacco plants are. They may have been on the Pope's creek land because they would be all over the place. They'd be wherever they need to be. But two of his barns burned down. And he writes about it as like this kind of disaster that he befalls. So when you go back to Sarah Tayloe, Washington, as a nine year old learning a fire story from a 70 year old. Maybe he was talking about the barns. I mean, the loss of the tobacco barns is a huge financial loss for him. That is a very bad thing to happen to somebody who's growing tobacco. So winter fire that means those barns were full of tobacco. That's why they burned the way they did. He lost it. He lost a year's crop. And that's going to stick with you. You're going to remember that. So maybe what she remembered as a house was actually the tobacco barns. But also everybody at that point already knew the Parson Weems made up fire story. And you find other people, there were biographers of Mary Washington. There's woman in 1902 who writes, I think its 1902, writes about Mary Washington. And she tells she tells the Weem’s fire story. It's a dream that Weem’s made up. She tells that story and sets it at Pope's Creek and tells it as, as if it's historical fact. The ell, the fire on the roof, it's all made up. But what happens is the stuff gets written and it makes it into a book. And when it gets into one book, it makes it into the next book. And when it makes it to that one, it makes it into the third book. And the third person, when somebody says, Why did you say that? They say, Oh, it was, uh, I got two citations worth two other biographers told this story. And so these things just take on lives of their own and they become the ways that people understand a place and that becomes deeply personal. Becomes who you are, how you associate yourself with a landscape. Who, who you are in relation to the community and the story. So having this knowledge, knowing these things, knowing the name Wakefield, is a way of belonging in the community. It's a way of being part of the community. And people take that very seriously and will often hold on to those things and treasure them because they're, they're about identity. They're not the kind of project that we might be interested in, which is historical reality. What can I cite? What can I prove in documents, you know, without necessarily without sort of calling, you know, winners and losers before says, well, what do the documents help me see? what do I see in the documents? But this other experience, this identity piece, this belonging, this being part of something that's less concerned about what the documents have to say and is more concerned with, what did you learn growing up? What did your grandmother tell you? How have you always referred to this place? What stories have you always told about it? And those are comforting. And again, they're about belonging. So they stay because they do real work for people. They're very important. They don't have to be real to be important, though. Historians are not obligated to sort of honor them as if they are historically viable. But they play a role in people's understanding of a place. And in that way they're extremely important. And that's why they survive. They survive because they matter to people.
Dustin Baker: Yeah, and speaking of peoples understanding of a place, you know, we have so many stories that are blended and intermingled with facts for this location, but we also have an idealized physical landscape here now with commemorative buildings that are what visitors see and with, you know, nearly 100,000 visitors coming to this place, trying to form a connection with George Washington every year. As someone who's based in historic fact, I'm just interested in what you make of that.
Dr. Philip Levy: I mean, first of all, 100,000 is great and you'll be grateful more. I mean, that's a great number, particularly for a place that is, you know, off the beaten track. That's a great number. So that's a very exciting. It's a very exciting thing. People want that connection. you know, one of the things that that Park shows that's important to interesting in the Memorial House, is when you read the work of the people, Josephine Wheelright Rust, and people who are sort of working with her. When, what they were talking about was the idea of a fitting commemoration. So remember I said earlier that 1810 people marking the landscape don't really reference George. They either know it to the point where it doesn't feel like it needs to be referenced or it just is just not that important to them. But later generations will completely turn that around and make George the most important thing about the landscape. That's indeed the world that we inhabit, Right? The reason we're talking about the landscape at all is because of the Washington association and the sort of national recognition of the importance of the Washington association. So when they're doing their first commemorations in the 1920s, they they are completely bought in in Washington being great and important and fabulous. And, you know, they want to be the people who commemorated Washington. Like that that is their that's a big identity project for them. That's who they want to be in the world. And so they talk about things. They want to make a fitting a fitting commemoration. In other words, they want something that they think honors the greatness of the memory and the image. That's what they're going for. That's not the same as saying what sat on the land in the 18th century. And let's look at that. It's a very different kind of project. Augustine Washington, whether he built or moved into a home, knows nothing about the future greatness of his son. He’s just building, he’s the guy building a home with with whatever resources he has, and then he's leaving anyway. He goes to England all the time. Right. So, you know, he's I don't know how deeply invested in building a great home Augustine Washington was. That's not his priority but the people who are commemorating George's birth centuries later, they they're very interested in fitting and you read some of their work, particularly Charles Arthur Hoppin, who was an historian for that project, he’s a genealogist, but he does the historical research for them. Hoppin’s an interesting guy because he’s very good at finding documents, but he's terrible at understanding them. So his reads of documents are always a little bit wacky. The, one of the things he is very concerned about, people who are arguing that Washington may have been born somewhere else. Obviously he's concerned about that because he's involved in raising the money for this project. He doesn't want to suddenly find out that they're wrong, right? So so he does everything he can to sort of undermine them by writing stuff mostly, you know, writing snarky things about them being wrong. But there's that painting or that there's the the the Currier and Ives lithograph of of the birth place and that we won't go into that. That's a whole complicated Ferry Farm story. But there's a chain of image that gets us to the to that Currier Ives image. And Hoppin hates that image. He's really, really upset about that and writes extensively about how it's it's an affront to think that Washington could have been born in such a humble, simple, poor looking home. How could that have happened, a man as great as this could never have been born in such a simple home? It's like, Well, that's absurd statement. But it shows you where his personal investment is in this and what he wants of Washington. And so he's part of a project that builds a grand brick mansion to commemorate Washington because they think that fitting. Their Washington, their understanding of him needs to have been born in a grand, magnificent building that befits the status that he will have later in life. We would not talk that way. And this is why it's very important to to recognize the people doing historical work in the 1930s and 1920s. It might be called historical work, but their project is not like our project. They are they're operating on very different sets of assumptions. And what constitutes historical is just very, very different. So, so what do you do then when you have a landscape like the one you have at the birth place, where you have a lot of commemorative buildings? You know, I think you can explain that to people. I'm not sure everybody's going to get that. But I think I think a lot of times people just want to know what's real and what's not real. And while I and many people like me love reconstructions, I love a rebuilt building. Nothing makes me happier. Not everybody's going to see it that way. They want, they want real. Real and not real. I would reject those categories, but I understand it. The best thing to do in those circumstances is to use them as teaching tools. In one nice thing about a rebuilt building is people can handle it. People can sort of touch it and come in contact with it and be in it in a way that you would not want with an actual 18th century building. You would have to keep them a bit at arm's length. So you had these great interpretive platforms to talk about 18th century life. I also, when I've taken students out there, we've talked about the memorial house. It's true that the memorial house sits probably in the wrong place and is not a good representation of what we can tell was on that land. However, it is a pretty good mock up of something like Gunston Hall. It does look like a nice 18th century home and there are a lot of Virginians who would've been very happy to have lived in that home in the middle of the 18th century. And I think there's a lot you can do just by saying here is a good sort of imagined setting for elite, elite Virginians lives. So a lot of the stuff about how you move through a home, how central passages function, how rooms function, which I think is already part of the interpretation, that stuffs all available to you. So I think you can use it very much to your advantage to talk about the world of the 18th century.
Dustin Baker: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments. We want to thank Doctor Phillip Levy for his time, and we will be continuing the conversation with him on a future episode. But for now, we're going to shift gears. National Park Week is right around the corner, and we want people to leave their national parks not just informed, but also inspired. One of the ways we do that is with the Artist in Residence program. But how do you inspire people with art at a historic site? Well, we're going to be interviewing former artist in residence Selene Jarvis and talking to her about how she did just that at George Washington's birthplace. So join us for our next episode.
Episode 4
Today, art thrives in our national parks. The sights and sounds in national parks inspire artists who communicate that inspiration through painting, photography, poetry, and more. But how do you take intangible inspiration from a site like this and turn it into art?
On this episode we are going to ask that question to our most recent volunteer artist in residence. Joining us during this episode is Selene Jarvis. Intro music courtesy of Wolf Patrol. Outro music courtesy of Brumbaugh Family.
George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born, only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present and future of this place brick by brick. On this podcast series upon this Land History, mystery and monuments.
In the 18th century, as people began to expand west, stories emerged of trees that took 30 men holding hand in hand to wrap themselves around. Waterfalls that were thousands of feet tall. Bubbling mud pots and geysers. These stories sounded like fiction. And they were not to be believed until artists found themselves in these locations and captured the scenery firsthand on canvas. Through their awe inspiring works, the public came to see these special places in America for the first time. The works captured their imaginations, spurring them to preserve these lands for future generations. Hi, I'm Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. Today, art continues to thrive in our national parks. The sights and sounds in national parks continue to inspire artists who communicate that inspiration through painting, photography, poetry, and more. But how do you take intangible inspiration from a site like this and turn it into art? What medium would you use and why?
It's National Park Week, and on this episode we are going to ask that very question to our most recent volunteer artist in residence. Selene Jarvis is a textile and fiber artist working primarily in historical spinning, weaving and natural dye techniques. She embraces the value of making functional objects as a way to explore the intricate beauty of early American textiles. Her use of natural dyes utilizes local plants, linking the work to a physical location and capturing memory and fabric. Interviewing Selene Jarvis is myself and lead interpretive park ranger Jonathan Malriat.
Jonathan Malriat
So, Selene, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, sure. I live locally. I grew up in the area and this is my first residency. I'm a hand weaver and spinner, natural dyer. I do a lot of different textile arts, very interested in historical textile arts. And yeah, I've been here since February doing a lot of spinning and dyeing and working with local natural materials at the park.
Jonathan Malriat
So Artist in Residence program is a national initiative that the Park Service has been doing. And Dustin, explain what artist in residence is and what that means here at George Washington birthplace?
Dustin Baker
Yeah. So the relationship between artists and national parks goes all the way back to the very inception of preserving beautiful landscapes for the benefit of all people thinking all the way back to the 19th century, the Hudson River School painters Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, going out and documenting Western landscapes in those paintings and images, making their way back to the east and convincing people in government to preserve these places. It really speaks to art, has always been there when it comes to the history of the national parks, and I think everyone knows what I mean. When you go to some national parks and you're just immediately hit with this this surreal beauty of of of the landscapes and artists can communicate that in many different ways, very many different mediums.
And so the Artist in Residence program is really something that's kind of been there all along. When you think about it, there's there's always been people painting these landscapes and photographing them. And and today we, you know, can broaden that into all different kinds of mediums. And with the artists and residency program here actually using materials from the landscape to create that art.
Jonathan Malriat
So you're the one who implemented the artist residence program here at George Washington Birthplace. It's the first time we've had it. What was the motive behind wanting to do that?
Dustin Baker
Well, for me, I mean, I think when people think George Washington Birthplace, they do not come prepared for how beautiful this park is. And it really is. It's scenic. It has lots of flora and fauna that you can't find in very many other places. And it is an exceptionally beautiful place. But for me personally, this was an important program to implement because I actually got my career started in 2011 as an artist in residence and I was the sculptor in residence for two seasons at Mount Rushmore National Memorial and it actually really makes talking to young people fun, people who ask one of the most common questions we get is how did you get your job in the National Park Service? And I think the answer people expect is studying, you know, geology or some kind of natural science. But to say, you know, I began as an artist and you could do really opens people's eyes to all the possibilities that our national parks or service sites hold, both in terms of career opportunities, volunteer opportunities, but also what's important to, you know, something kind of impersonal, like the federal government. It's it's surprising to people to think about. That there's actually art programs that are funded and sponsored by, you know, our federal government.
Jonathan Malriat
So, Selene, you were the first artist in residence here at George Washington, birthplace. What interested in you in becoming an artist in residence volunteer?
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, it's a great question. My first introduction to George Washington Birthplace Monument was actually through 4-H. As a kid, I did 4-H here at the park and would run around and volunteer and just got to enjoy, enjoy being in the park. And I loved that. And I have come to now be finishing my studies in textiles, historic textiles focused. And I had heard of artists and resident programs and national parks, but I didn't know that that was an option here, or I wasn't even thinking about that being an option here. Actually, when I reached out, I was just curious about what was going on at the park. Currently, I had remembered coming here as a kid and seeing the weaving studio and just wanting to get more involved in my local community and involved in historic textiles and the like. Right where I live. So I had reached out and was put in touch with Dustin, and when I came here we got talking about the Artist in Residence program and it just seemed like a really wonderful fit for what I was doing currently. And it kind of just grew out of having that conversation about how parks can be.There's just they have so much to offer, so much to offer, and especially for artists and a really great place to be. But yeah, I didn't exactly come here with the intention of of starting out at the residency, but I'm so glad that that's what happened. Worked out really wonderfully.
Jonathan Malriat
What were some of the things that you did as an artist in residence? Because that's a pretty encompassing term.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, I worked a lot with, there is a flock of Hog Island sheep that reside at the Memorial Farm and I was able to get their fleece and process that entirely from just the raw fleece off the sheep to a finished woven shawl. I even was able to use some of the walnuts that were growing here at the park to die it.
I did a lot of natural dyeing, some with plants that were here, so I was able to work with the Northern Neck Master Gardeners some, with the dye garden here and getting that, getting some plants in and using some of those, which was really exciting. I did lots of natural dyeing. Some with things that weren't grown around here but still were fun to work with, some stitching.
I did a lot of writing. I really enjoyed the the peacefulness of this park. It's a very, a it can be pretty quiet, which is lovely for just writing and sketching and enjoying the gardens and the trails and sitting and drawing shorebirds or flowers and just really sitting with the land. Did a lot of that.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. I think one thing to add is that, you know, you ended up making these beautiful works and but it was more than that. You were using, you know, a a spinning wheel and using techniques and technology that people would have had in the colonial era when they lived here during, you know, George Washington's time and his family's time here. And so I think for me, the most exciting thing to see was that blending of past and present, using old lifeway techniques to make modern art was something I was really excited to, you know, start talking about with you when we first met each other. And yeah, it's stuff that people would like to have in their homes. I'm sure you know, the stuff you created, it's stuff that I think is modern, but it has that old world touch to it.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, for sure. And I think I think that comes through a lot with, like you say, using these historic techniques to make contemporary pieces. And you're using plants, using wool, raw wool in a really in a historical way, but also in this experimental or fun way as well. That's been so rewarding to be able to use so much material from the area.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And we, we didn't really put you in a box or put any kind of guardrails on the direction that you went in. We just kind of put some tools in front of you and, you know, told you what materials you could and could not use in the park. And yeah, it's it's just so fascinating to see all the stuff that you were able to make just, you know, manifesting it from the natural resources here.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, absolutely. I think I may have confused some visitors, or not confused, but it led to a lot of interesting conversations when they would see me working with a spinning wheel or with a table loom or something that they would associate with the historical object. And yeah, these are historical techniques for sure that I'm using. But getting to use them in a modern or fresh way was really fun to have those conversations with people and also show them, yeah, this is exactly how carding wool would have been done in 1750.
Dustin Baker
So and one thing you really taught me a lot about was all the natural dye plants that are even just in the memorial area of the park. I mean, so many plants now I see with a totally different point of view.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, you can't unsee it once you start identifying them. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I remember the spring we did the the scavenger hunt for kids with different dye plants and things. I've, I've loved getting to share that little bit of excitement about dye plants or plants in general or textiles with kids. It's been so fun.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. So one thing I wanted to ask you is that, you know, artists tend to see the world in a special way, kind of through a unique lens and what do you personally think was the most beautiful part about the landscape here, and how would you explain it to someone who isn't an artist?
Selene Jarvis
That's a it's a great question. I think. Well, some of the things that I found really striking, one, being here for a long period of time, I got to see, you know, the leaves emerge on the trees and the garden come up and then the summer flowers really be in full bloom. And now things are changing again with it being fall, colors are changing and leaves are falling and seeing migrating birds come and return. When I first got here, there were the tundra swans and now I think it's the geese, some geese that have come. But yeah, getting to see these like cyclical patterns in nature and thinking about that a lot in my work while I'm here and the patterns that repeat themselves in nature and, and history and thinking a lot about the people that have been here before us. And it's a it's a very special place. There's a lot a lot of history here. And I loved getting to sit and write and just thinking about how I get to enjoy it and look out over the same the same water that, you know, people have looked out at for hundreds of years. And yeah, really spending a lot of time writing during this residency, getting to think through some of those, those themes of, of seasons and circles and and different, different people through history and their experiences here.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And it's so hard to put into words. I think that's why artists exist because you're taking something that you know is unspeakable. It's intangible, it's unknown and you're, you're presenting it in a visual form instead of with words. So it's it's hard to kind of articulate that.
Selene Jarvis
It is. Yeah. I found a lot of a lot of repetitive stitching work to be a good way that I could think through some things like that. And it might not look direct when you look at the piece, but there's a lot of those those thoughts and meditations just as I'm working on it, I'm thinking and considering the land around me.
Jonathan Malriat
So I know as an artist in residence like the name indicates, you probably did a lot of art, but was there any surprising thing that you did as an artist in residence that you didn't expect when you started?
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, I was not prepared to talk to so many people. I guess that I. I have really enjoyed it. That was not a bad thing at all. But getting to talk and engage with the visitors so much was really exciting. It especially the kids. I loved getting to talk to the kids. I can remember going, coming here as a kid or places like Ferry Farm or Williamsburg or at Yorktown, any of the historical sites, and just getting so excited to talk to someone showing a craft. And that's just because I'm a nerd. But I always really enjoyed it. So getting to share that with kids was super fun and letting them feel different will or even try their hand at spinning or something. And I just loved getting to engage with the visitors. That was that was a little bit unexpected. Good, a good surprise, though, and also just how much time I would have to sit and sketch out ideas and think through concepts. Usually when I'm working, it's a very like I have an idea and I just want to get my hands on it and start making. And I definitely did a lot of making here, but there was a lot of contemplative time for writing and just enjoying the scenery and sketching, sketching ideas out, really planning stuff.
Dustin Baker
Did any questions that visitors asked you or anything really stick out?
Selene Jarvis
I'm you think Well, a lot of people thought that I was a re-enactor, which I wasn't. I was using historical techniques like we've talked about, but I wasn't a re-enactor. Got a lot of jokes.
Dustin Baker
Yeah.
Selene Jarvis
But it was always exciting when there was someone who had a connection with fiber arts. And I always really enjoyed when there was someone who would say, my grandmother had a spinning wheel or my aunt was a quilter, or my sister does weaving, and we could have a whole conversation about textiles and how it affected them, because textiles do affect all of us, like we all wear, wear cloth every day, and it's just such a part of human existence. So it was really exciting to have this tiny community for a moment with visitors over fabric.
Dustin Baker
Yeah.
Jonathan Malriat
So I'm assuming over a year you probably felt like you've changed a lot, but is there any one change as an artist or an individual that you felt was either most impactful for you or something that you really took away from this year out here at George Washington Birthplace?
Selene Jarvis
that's a great question. I, I don't feel that my art has, like, fundamentally changed or anything, but I, I do think that my time here has really let me sink into to this language of working with plants that I was starting to come into. And I've done a lot of natural dyeing for a number of years now, but that that language of working with plants as a way to connect yourself to a place I think really honed in here and being able to think about using using material from a location and how that how that links a person to the artwork and to a specific time to a specific place. That concept is something that I'm really excited about in the future, continuing with and just getting to be able to understand that even more.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, it almost seems like magic to be able to extract color and material from just the plants that people walk past every day.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, for sure. And it just and it makes everything part of that, that circle you know, you're like with the walnuts that I used here, I was gathering them and they're putting off oxygen at the park that all of us here are breathing. And then now it's in a piece of fabric that someone could wear and when I was finished dying, I put the walnuts in my compost pile and they'll become soil for next year's dye garden. And it's just now linking everything together. I think a really exciting way.
Jonathan Malriat
So, Dustin, I know Selene reached out to you, but is there any reason that you were thinking that Selene should be our first artist in residence? Was there anything about either her repertoire or the way she approached you that stuck out?
Dustin Baker
Yeah. So, you know, piloting an artist in residence program at George Washington Birthplace had kind of been in the back of my mind, but I didn't really know what that looked like. I, you know, was thinking of, well, people have painted portraits of George. We only know George Washington's appearance through painting and sculpture. So maybe it could be something in that realm. I wasn't even in the same neighborhood as Selene's medium, but when she came and I met her and we walked around and she was saying what she was interested in doing here and wanting to to volunteer and she told me about her background. I like in real time as we were walking and I was like, Wait a minute. Like, this is art you're talking about. This isn't you know, this isn't something else. This is an art form because we're talking about color. We're talking about creating from scratch, using, you know, the things that we're literally walking past as we talk. And I immediately saw a that what I was saying earlier about blending Old World with New World, because I didn't want to say, Hey, you know, I want you to come here, spin up the spinning wheel and make some socks.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah.
Dustin Baker
You know, I was I was really thinking about modern art, but people using that as a vehicle to connect to old world lifeways here, that that people from George Washington's family and the people who lived on the shores of Po... Pope's Creek would, would recognize.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, I think that that was definitely accomplished with the some of the stuff that was made during my time here and I think you you brought up painting and talking about George Washington and yeah, we we think so much about like we're at George Washington's birthplace. But there is something very the the sort of like textiles can get overlooked I think and they’re but they're just so present in our lives and thinking about yeah, they can be kind of kind of humble, but they're really Yeah, I do’nt know where I'm going with that. I'm thinking a lot about and all the women that were here too. And it is primarily women that are doing the textile arts, the spinning and dyeing and the wool processing, that is primarily women. And there's a lot of women behind the Washington family. There was interesting to think about while I was doing all these crafts.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, I think, you know, in our world today, especially for young people, textiles and clothing can almost seem kind of disposable, you know?
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, absolutely.
Dustin Baker
Almost single use. You buy it, you wear it, you get a mustard stain on it, you throw it out. But really seeing how much went into every single piece you made made me think about what it would have been like in the 17th and 18th century here and how special each textile object would have been, how much of a gift it would be to have a shirt or pair of pants made for you. And it it really makes me look at the colonial era in a whole different way that I'm sure a lot of people have already thought about. But it was it was new to me to think about how each item you had was, you know, hours and hours and hours of work put into it.
Selene Jarvis
Absolutely. Yeah. I was thinking so much about just monumentous amount of labor that was done here and is done to make anything by hand. But yeah, just that coming here a few hours a week and working, but thinking about doing that spinning day in, day out, maintaining crops of, of flax or the sheep herds, anything you would need to produce cloth. I mean it's just an incredible amount of labor.
Dustin Baker
Yeah.
Jonathan Malriat
I mean, I know you said that you got some of the wool from the sheep here. How long did it take you to process and have you finished processing all of it yet?
Selene Jarvis
I still have some leftover. The stuff that I did use, I probably used a third. So there's ah are six sheep here I think. I guess I used about two sheeps worth of wool if you wanted to look at it that way. And I wrote I mean it was several dozen hours. Yeah. It was just cleaning it alone is a huge process. And then there's carding and spinning, dyeing, weaving. It's a lot of hours.
Jonathan Malriat
So I know like one of the pieces you have on exhibit is a like a scarf. If you had to take a guess at how many hours it took you to complete that scarf from start to finish. Just to put that in mind for our audience, because like, we can go to the store. It takes us 20 minutes to get to the store. We get the shirt and there we go. That's it.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, I would, the spinning was the longest, the longest part. That for sure, just took forever. I would estimate probably about 40 hours of work.
Jonathan Malriat
So 40 hours for one scarf, a whole workweek. That just puts it in perspective.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, that's from sheep all the way to a finished product, product but yeah.
Jonathan Malriat
I mean that really goes to show you how how intensive it was to be able to create things historically.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And just think about how many things like that were made here that are lost forever just because, you know, textile itself is ephemeral in the sense that it degrades and disappears. And.
Selene Jarvis
You know, we're not digging up any fragments of of clothing usually.
Dustin Baker
Right. Why do you think it might be important for someone of the next generation to learn these skills?
Selene Jarvis
I think that they're just such important, important skills. Some of the people that I have learned these things from are an older generation. And it seemed to me when talking to visitors, a lot of the people that had the strongest connection were an older generation. And I just think it's really valuable to preserve some of these traditions or techniques so they're not lost. And so that younger generations and children coming into the world have an appreciation for things that are handmade, have an understanding at least of, some sort of understanding of what goes into making objects by hand and the value of that and the time that goes into it and the respect for nature if you're using natural, naturally gathered materials. I think that it's a whole way of life you can get talking about for sure, but boils down to, I guess, yeah, just keeping these keeping these hand crafts alive. There's a whole list of endangered craft, and when you look at it, there's so many things on that list that you would never even think about, like you know hat making or certain broom making techniques. And yeah, making things by hand is important.
Oh gosh, I completely I was going to say, yeah, the community, the community that you can find in craft and in making things by hand, I have found to be so I mean, just a huge part of my life. Some of my closest friends are in that craft community and I think that you can just find a lot of friendship, a lot of connection with people in it, very similar and similar ways of life that.
Jonathan Malriat
So any final advice you'd have for either someone looking to get into the textile arts or even someone who's interested in doing an artist in residence program for themselves?
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, I would say if you're interested in getting into textile arts, one of the great things about textiles is how accessible it is, and it's pretty available to most people. It doesn't cost a lot to get some yarn and knitting needles, and there's so many different types of textile art that you could try out. So if knitting isn't for you, maybe you enjoy felting or embroidery. There's just lots of different things you could pick up and reach out and ask people. People love to share their craft and are always happy, in my experience, always happy to to talk about that and and share share some of their knowledge with you. I think that that's something I really love about textiles and just how easy they are to to bring with you everywhere. And for the residencies, again I think just reaching out to organizations, I was not expecting a residency here when I reached out, and that is one thing that I would definitely consider in the future is reaching out to places that haven't offered residencies, but seeing if they would be interested and developing something, that's been so exciting here. So I would certainly encourage people who are interested in artist residencies to to just inquire. Yeah, you never know what might happen.
Dustin Baker
Rapid fire question, like, if I'm, if I'm walking around out in the park and I need to dye something yellow, what am I going for?
Selene Jarvis
Right now it might be difficult because it's just there's been a frost, But…
Dustin Baker
Time and season are no object.
Selene Jarvis
Okay. I would say marigolds. If there's marigolds growing, those are my favorite source of just you can pick the flower. That's great. Another one that I use a lot is osage orange wood. That one's a little bit more tricky because you don't really want to cut down a tree, but if there's any fallen branches, you can gather some of the woodchips from that and that makes a really bright yellow as well. And both of those things grow here.
Dustin Baker
What about red? What if I'm out and I'm needing something red.
Selene Jarvis
Oh, red. Um red? Locally, that's a little bit tough.
Dustin Baker
And I just also want to point out for the audience, there's a difference between staining and dyeing.
Selene Jarvis
Oh yeah, for sure. There's a lot of misconception that you can just grab any berry you see and it will dye your cloth a beautiful purple or something and it might for a minute, but it will fade if it's not if the fabric isn't properly treated and you're not using a plant that is a known dye plant. Yeah.
Selene Jarvis
So red, there's a lot of some people have had good luck with Poke Berry. The term is fast for keeping the dye in the fabric is fast if it if it lasts over time. Having a fast dye with poke berry, I haven't had great luck, so I usually use madder root, which is not native but I do grow it in my dye garden at home.
Jonathan Malriat
So where is madder root originally from then?
Selene Jarvis
Asia and Europe, it would have been imported here for sure in the colonies.
Dustin Baker
And total wild card. Any other colors out there that might surprise us?
Selene Jarvis
Well, I've been very recently in my home studio getting some really exciting purples from oak. Oak leaves, the tannins in oak leaves with iron. The iron and the tannins react to get some really beautiful purple shades, which if you just do the iron, it's gray and the oak by itself is sort of a brown. But when you combine them, you can get really cool purple tones. Yeah. So a bit of chemistry.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. I was about to say this is this is art, This is chemistry.
Selene Jarvis
This is it's so exciting about dyeing. You know.
Jonathan Malriat
Are there any colors, because a lot of the ones you've talked about, you can almost guess what color its going to get, but are there any like ones you can think, oh when you dye it, this dye or use this object or plant, it comes up with a color so different than what someone would expect?
Selene Jarvis
Let me think I off the top of my head, nothing. I, I can't think of anything that is like shockingly different from what you would expect. I think the thing that gets people the most in my experience is how hard the color green is to get because green is just so prevalent in the natural world. People often think you can just use leaves or grass or whatever, but you actually there is no plant that will just dye something green without a mordant like the iron or mixing a blue and a yellow dye to get to green. So that's always a little bit of a fun surprise for people.
Jonathan Malriat
I’d say, I would have no idea on that one. I thought you could use like copper or something.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah, well, copper or iron. Yeah. People do use those to shift browns to more of like an olive or a nice park ranger green. But yeah, like a Lincoln Green, you really need indigo and a yellow dye.
Jonathan Malriat
That's a cool fact that I had no idea on when it comes to dyeing.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, so just remember when you have grass stains in your clothes or your kids have grass stains in their clothes, they have not dyed their clothes. They’ve mearly stained it.
Selene Jarvis
Yeah. So stain it for a while..
Dustin Baker
Thank you for listening to this episode. We want to give a special thank you to Selene Jarvis for her beautiful work and for this interview. And since we're highlighting artists on this episode, we also want to give a special thank you to the band Wolf Patrol for providing the acoustic music we use at the beginning and end of each episode. So thank you. If you are interested in becoming an Artist in Residence at George Washington Birthplace, please contact us through our social media or our website. On our next episode, we're going to be turning back to the past. We'll be hearing from someone who has an intimate knowledge of our park, because they saw it being built in the 1930s with their own eyes. You'll hear their story with their own voice as we open up a portal to the past. On the next episode of Upon This Land: History, Mystery and Monuments.
Episode 5
The Washington family lived on the Maddox Neck for seven generations, and just like most families today, they had neighbors. The Latane family lived alongside the Washingtons during the colonial era and after. They, just like other families here, would have seen their community transform into a federal monument to honor George Washington in the late 1800s. Join us as we listen to parts of a 1976 interview with James Latane, who was born in 1888, and lived near the park his entire life. Intro - Wolf Patrol
George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born, only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present and future of this place brick by brick. On this podcast series upon this Land History, mystery and monuments. The Washington family lived on the Maddox Neck for seven generations, and just like most families today, they had neighbors. Hi, my name is Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. It might be hard for visitors today to imagine that in the colonial era, the Maddox Neck was a community of different families and home sites. These families would have formed friendships, business arrangements. They would have married and had feuds. One family that had been neighbors here to the Washington since the colonial era are the Latanes. And just like other families, they would have seen their community transform into a federal monument to honor George Washington in the late 1800s. What you're about to hear is a recording from 1976. It's an interview with James Latane, who was born in 1888 on Christmas Day. Interviewing James, is park ranger Tom Danton. Now, much of this recording is inaudible. So unfortunately, we can't play the whole thing for you here on this podcast. But we are going to take snippets from the interview and discuss them in detail.
To do that, joining me is lead interpretive park ranger Jonathan Malriat.
Tom Danton
So that makes you 87, 88, almost 88 years old. Okay, what do you, how far back can you remember about this land over here? Was it all just farmland at one time back around the turn of the century?
James Latane
My Grandfather worked it when he bought it in 1946 or a little before
Tom Danton
1946 or?
James Latane
I think it was, 1880 when he first sold the plot about the birthplace, 12 acres and 10 acres for the right way to the river.
Jonathan Malriat
So that can really be broken into two parts. The first part he's talking about his grandfather acquiring the land. Now, he says 1946. I think he's stumbling over himself because as we introduced here, James Latane is 87 years old when he's saying this. I think he's meaning 1800s, 1846. And then he's ignoring Tom Danton, the interviewer's, correction of meaning 1946, to then continue to the second part, which I think is really the most interesting part to me. So that's the selling, his grandfather selling the land in 1880. 12 acres at the birthplace and ten acres on the right of way. So this is, I think, some of the most interesting parts of his interview, even though it's not specific about times when he's alive, he's learning about this from his grandfather in his youth. But the reason it's so important to the park and our story here is because this is the start of federal memorialization here. So earlier in the 18 late 1870s, 1879, specifically, Congress started to want to preserve the stories of George Washington, and they were looking at trying to preserve the birthplace, which was mostly still aware of. So they sent Secretary Evarts and the US president down to explore it. We know this from several articles, including an article from the Northern News that talks about specifically in July 25th, 1879. And this is verbatim here. Congress, at its last session, after a century of forgetfulness and indifference, passed a bill appropriating the enormous sum of $3,000 to erect a monument to mark and perpetuate the spot where Washington was born. So that in itself is interesting that they're calling $3,000 an enormous sum of money. So that does give you a context for the power of the dollar at the time period. But it goes on to continue. That was announced in the Washington papers that President Hayes and his family and the Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts, would visit Wakefield on the eighth of this month to carry into effect the act of Congress. They were to come in the war steamer Tallopoosa, people who lived within six or 5 or 6 miles a week all their lives, and had never been there, manifested a great desire to see the place on the day the Tallopoosa would arrive. The Tallopoosa came, however, when she was not expected, and there his fraudulence, in keeping with his character, defrauded this people out of a sight of him, as he did the people of the United States, out of the presidency, the president and party landed and got a plowman to pilot them to the birthplace, and stayed only a half hour. It is rumored, however, that the Secretary of State's efforts and the president will come again and make several visits in the neighborhood. So this whole visit by the Secretary and by the president was to be able to come and scout out land to acquire, to create this monument that Congress had appropriated. It is interesting seeing how the Northern News is referring to the president, his fraudulence and defrauding the U.S. people out of a presidency. So for added context, this is talking about the I want to believe it's 1877 election that was contested. basically, it's similar to the Bush v Gore election of 2000. And it went to the courts to decide. And it came out that Hayes got the election with then the agreement that reconstruction in the South would end. So this snippet from Latane, from Mr. Latane’s interview where he's talking about selling the land, this is the direct results of that, that visit from Hayes, this visit from Evarts is all tying it with now creating a. So now the federal government has a total of 22 acres here, plus then land that'll be acquired in 1883 from the state of Virginia to create the monument that we have today. So we'll go back to the Latane interview. And here's some things else from Mr. James Latane.
Tom Danton
Do you remember when they put the monument up? You would have just been a small boy then.
James Latane
Yeah about 7 years old, I think. Yeah, I remember.
Tom Danton
Remember how they brought it in?
James Latane
The whole neighborhood was there.
Tom Danton
Oh how did they do it? How did they bring the monument in?
Mrs. Latane
Oh, look out in the hall
James Latane
(unintelligible)
Mrs. Latane
right out there.
James Latane
(unintelligible)
Tom Danton
Okay. You're just showing me the series of photographs in your hall of the construction of the monument and transportation of it, and how it was done on railroad ties using tracks rather than a wagon. You say they built a long pier. Now, this was down at the end of the beach road, so they brought it straight on up the road on railroad tracks.
James Latane
Of course, when they got to the bottom coming by the ice pond. They had to build a trestle up on the level rather than going down and up.
Tom Danton
Oh yeah. That's about the only real dip in that road right in there.
Jonathan Malriat
So that snippet we started with James Latane talking about acquiring the land. So 1880, and then we now have the actual construction of the monument. Now this is quite a bit later. So he doesn't give an exact date on this. He says that the 1890s. So he's 7 or 8 years old. And that's because it is specifically 1896.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And just so our listeners understand, this is when they say that they're building the monument. It's not the monument as we understand it today. today, the entire 551 acres is the monument. But during this time, they're talking specifically about the granite obelisk that you now see at the entrance of the park. And so, logistically, this would have had to been transported, about two miles from where it landed on the shore of the Potomac to where it was placed, over at the time, being believed to be the spot where George Washington's birth homestead.
Jonathan Malriat
So it's really interesting that they're talking about building a railroad trestle, doing all the tracks to get out there, because that's a pretty already large amount of work to do this, because it's not just put the railroad tracks down and roll it across. It. That means they have to put the ties down. They have to secure the ties that secure each of the iron track pieces the whole way. And then when James Latane is asked later what happened to it, he doesn't remember. And there's no tracks that we're aware of any more under the road. So it disappeared fairly quickly afterwards. But it was a lot of intensive work just to get the granite, and that was the only purpose for it was to get the granite to where it is today.
Dustin Baker
And that's after it made it to shore. They had to build a wharf just to receive this thing, that stretched nearly 1000ft out into the Potomac.
Jonathan Malriat
So the next piece we're going to hear is from James Latane where he's going to actually, tell us what happened to that wharf. Because if you come visit us today, that wharf that thousand feet long does not exist anymore.
Tom Danton
What happened to the dock that was built down there, the wharf?
James Latane
Well, the ice finally took it away.
Tom Danton
It got demolished in the winter.
James Latane
It would freeze and the ice break up the pylons and finally it all broke up
Tom Danton
That was in the early nineteen hundreds?
James Latane
Yeah, give or take. We used it forever. I reckon it stayed there, part of it stayed there until 1830, only parts of it. It went a long, long, long, pier with a wide driveway or walkway with a big pier for boats at the end. It went about a quarter of a mile.
Tom Danton
Did many people use it as a way to visit the park? Coming by boat and walk on up?
James Latane
A few would come from Colonial Beach. And the farms used it. Later on we had to ship all our grain by sailing vessel. And they would drive the wagons out on that. And I don't know the (inaudible) the boat, but then it got too bad for that. We’d have to unload right in shallow water in a little boat, then tow it out to the big.
Tom Danton
I bet you were glad to see the road come in about that time.
James Latane
And practically everything was shipped, the lumber, grain, everything was shipped by sailing vessel. (inaudible) Baltimore or Washington you know.
Tom Danton
The river was still the main interstate highway at that time.
Jonathan Malriat
So, James Latane there is talking about our thousand-foot-long wharf that was created to carry the obelisk. The second part actually shines even more of a light on it, because he talks about how not many visitors were using it. Visitors from Colonial Beach were using it, but it was actually mostly farmers like himself and his grandfather that were getting the primary benefit out of it because they were using it to sell and transport all the supplies that they needed, and sell and transport the goods that they had produced, which is really interesting for us talking about the site, because we almost always interpret everything from around that 1883 start of the Memorial.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And but it also just, you know, when you think of the sheer engineering feats that have occurred here to to memorialize George Washington, people would probably guess that the house and, you know, would that would be the biggest thing that's ever been built here to, to memorialize him. But that wharf, I mean, that was made really just to receive that obelisk and bring materials and supplies and people here to commemorate this site. So that, to me, seems like the biggest engineering feat on the property that is, you know, in the history of the site to memorialize George.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah. And in many ways that for a long time was almost a footnote.
Tom Danton
Did you, did you watch any of the moving of the monument from the one location to the..?
James Latane
Somewhat, because I was busy. I was in touch with it, the fact that they must (unintelligible) OG Taylor was the engineer in charge of getting the bricks made and building. He lived, he stayed here while he was working.
Tom Danton
He was responsible for building the Memorial house?
James Latane
Yeah. He did the engineering work. He was a fine fella too.
Tom Danton
Do you remember. How they moved the monument from the site of the house out to the entrance of the park?
James Latane
I can’t say that I know too much about it. I was there the day that they raised it, they raised the shaft. But they had already moved the base and had it ready.
Tom Danton
just for your information, others, you know.
Jonathan Malriat
Okay, so let's break down a little bit of that section. so he's talking about moving the monument. So as Dustin had said earlier, it was a lot of effort to go through to be able to build and create the monument when they've had to build the wharf and all that engineering and move it. And now we got to move it again. So they're moving it again in the 1930s, at the behest of the Wakefield National Memorial Association. But there are some other things that he talks about that's really interesting. OG Taylor is a Park service employee that comes in to assist with the program after it gets moved from Department of War, specifically Army Corps of Engineers, to the National Park Service. And it's interesting seeing this and how it's being talked about, because we the records we tend to have indicate that OG Taylor's primary job was as an engineer, but primarily doing initial archeology and then assisting with a lot of the building. But another really interesting part about OG Taylor is actually in our previous podcasts episodes with Phil Levy. Phil Levy talks a lot about Building X, this site that is a home site that he's done a lot of work on, trying to unlock more of the mysteries of it. OG Taylor is the first person to uncover that and identify that site, so we're now full story connecting the story of Building X thanks to James Latane's interview and having met OG Taylor. It is also interesting that he mentioned that he didn't get to see it being moved with because the moving process. We have a few photos some showing of that moving process in our visitor center and it's done using logs. So almost in many ways, technologically, it is less advanced than how they got the obelisk there in the first place, because they're just putting down log rollers and rolling it down the road.
Dustin Baker
And I believe it's being dragged by a flatbed truck.
Jonathan Malriat
So it's very interesting the difference in how methodologies of how they go about creating and moving the obelisks throughout the different eras. So kind of an interesting thing to see.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, it's just remarkable to me that the obelisk only stood in that spot for about 30 years. And despite being the Great Depression, the Wakefield National Memorial Association was so determined to build the Memorial House Museum in that spot that they petitioned the government to finance the moving again of a 30 plus ton obelisk.
Jonathan Malriat
It is really interesting that they still wanted to preserve it because they could have just destroyed it. And that could have been done fairly easily. But it was important enough that they wanted to keep it around and go through the engineering headache of moving it, rather than just. Nope, this served its purpose. We're getting rid of it. They still wanted to keep it and you can still even see it today. It's the same obelisk right in our center of our traffic circle. So the next section that we're going to hear from James Latane is talking about the time period in between when the monument was built in 1896 and when it was moved in 1930, and how he interacted with it because he wasn't just a neighbor of the monument in the obelisk. He actually was tasked with being in charge of it, because at the time period that this is going on, the Department of War very rarely had staff to fully manage the sites that they were in charge of. And even the National Park Service, which didn't exist until 1916, didn't have a huge amount of park rangers even in the parks that they managed. So a lot of sites, including this one, were left with caretakers that were local. And James Latane actually will serve as the caretaker to take care of the monument for several years. So we get to hear him talking about that.
Mrs. Latane
Weren't you supposed to look out for the monument?
James Latane
Yeah, I for a great many years, I would go out there every day and look around and keep things cleaned up. See if everything was alright! (laugher)
Tom Danton
Did the government paid you for this?
James Latane
Paid me $25 a month (laughter)
Tom Danton
A dollar a day almost (laughter)
James Latane
Later raised it to $40 and after that I got out of it then.
Tom Danton
Was there anything except the monument, (mumble) were there some lawns that need to be mowed or?
James Latane
All the way to the river, and when the (unintelligible) the fences need rebuilding (unintelligible) and I would write and tell them what we needed and they would tell me to send them a list of the things that needed and hire help and go ahead and do it. Send the bill.
Tom Danton
How did people visit the monument back then?
Jonathan Malriat
So that's interesting hearing James talk about that. That one, he made $25 a month to help out the Department of War by keeping an eye on the monument, and if it was needing repairs and let them know and then do it himself and send them the bill.
Dustin Baker
And it'd be interesting to know what kind of problems they might have had, or that James would have encountered out there keeping an eye on it.
Jonathan Malriat
At other times he actually mentions and if you want to hear more of those, listen to the entire recording on our website. But at one point he mentions that some of the visitors coming from Colonial Beach would damage the cherry trees that apparently were lining a bunch of the areas. Rather than just take the cherries, they would take whole branches off. And he was concerned about it. But unfortunately, later on, the cherry trees developed a blight that he said took them all out. So in the end, it didn't really matter. But he was concerned about the damage that they were doing. And he has another anecdote from when he was mowing and cutting the grass around the monument, that he found a boy up in a tree, specifically the hackberry tree, which is a fairly famous tree, and it's supposed to be right outside where the obelisk was and supposedly is from right around the original home site area.
Dustin Baker
And the stump is still there.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah, unfortunately the tree passed away not terribly long ago, and but this kid is up in the tree and he's carving into the tree. So these definitely are a few events that James talks about during his time as caretaker that he had to deal with. So our next section we'll look at is talking about the land in the park and how, as I said, James Latane, he's a farmer and how he was connected to the site and continued to operate as a farmer in the park and around the park after it opened in the 1930s.
Tom Danton
All of the acreage inside the monument, though, was either cultivated or pasture land...
James Latane
Yeah, that’s right
Tom Danton
before the park came about?
James Latane
We cultivated even after we sold. We sold it in 1929, (unintelligible) and we bought it in 1919. And we really wanted to farm and we needed land. We just didn’t want to sell it. But Mrs. H.L. Rust Washington, she was the one who got the whole thing started…And she almost stayed down here until she got us to agree to sell it. Then we sold, 300, I think it was 360 acres. Sold all the home, the right side going to the river. (unintelligible) sold 39 acres by the birthplace. And we sold it with the agreement that we would go ahead and farm it. It worked for a little while. Then without our knowing anything, they got money from Rockefeller foundation. Then we had a deal with them, we worked it because we paid taxes on it. (Laughter) And that went on for two or three years, we didn’t know anything till they just, they turned it over to the Wakefield Memorial Service. Bout that time, we was when we had to get out, when they got set up. Philip Hough was the first superintendent. Made arrangements with him later on to still work the land. And then the government took the work. They made such a mess of it, that it go so they couldn’t do anything with it.
Tom Danton
How did they make a mess of it?
James Latane
Well they didn’t have but one pair small horse, and the land was heavy and wide grass. The horse wasn’t able to pull the plow. The grass got so rank and tough they couldn’t plow it. Then they asked (unintelligible) (laughter) I bought a special plow for the time and we had a tractor. We got it back in good shape. And then took it again. (laughter)
Jonathan Malriat
So that three minute snippet from James Latane actually had a lot of parts to it. So let's break down some of the key parts. So he mentions that they sold the land about 300 acres to the Wakefield National Memorial Association. They had initially got the land just ten years before that 1919. Now he mentions that they were convinced to sell it to a Mrs. H. L Rust Washington. Now, that name initially doesn't really ring a lot of bells for us until we actually realized that H.L. Rust in this case, is Henry Lee Rust. It's his wife, Josephine Wheelwright Rust, who is the president of the Wakefield National Memorial Association, that group that is pushing to move the obelisk and rebuild or more accurately, build a new version of the Washington family farm that was here. So it's really interesting because one, he's using an older reference to a married woman. So referring to her by her husband's name, but then he's throwing in Washington, which is because Josephine Wheelwright Rust has always claimed to be a descendant of Washington. And yet Henry Lee Rust has, as far as I can tell in general readings I've done has never referred to himself as Henry Lee Rust Washington. He's just Henry Lee Rust. So it's interesting that he's using an older reference in which you would refer to a woman, married woman by her husband's name, but then adding in the Washington to it and not Josephine or Wheelwright. So but here we today, we normally referred to her as Josephine Wheelwright Rust. And you can actually see a cutout of her in our new exhibits in our Memorial House Museum that you can see during tours in the park. So then the second section is so he had an agreement with them when they got the land in 29 to continue to farm it. And then the Rockefeller Foundation came in and he does a separate agreement with them. And John D Rockefeller Jr came in and actually supported the Wakefield National Memorial Association financially. He donated over $100,000, I want to say it was $130,000 and they had to have a matching grant of it. And so they have another agreement with them. And then once it all gets turned over later to the National Park Service, he has an agreement with Phillip Hough, the first superintendent here. So it's really interesting. All of these big names are a lot of the foundation of the national monument from the 1930s. So for our next snippets, we're actually move and change a little bit to how things have changed here on the lands during James Latane's time here, not only his time when he was visiting his grandfather, but also when he's lived here himself, partly in how transportation was done, but then also moving into how the rivers themselves have changed.
James Latane
To Washington, what most of us used the Potomac river going to Washington. They had wharf in, two wharfs in Maddox Creek up there. Steamboats would spend the night there and leave, bout seven o’clock in the morning, (unintelligible), you would have to get up at two o’clock (laughter)
Tom Danton
The people who were traveling say from further south to north, would they, like, come up the Rappahannock to Leedstown and then come across the Northern Neck to Maddox.
James Latane
More likely go on to Fredericksburg
Tom Danton
and and then go by road from Fredericksburg
James Latane
the railroad
Tom Danton
to Alexandria.
James Latane
Yeah. We were Fredericksburg was the closest railroad road that and in the winter, if you had people that had to go, we would have to drive teams to Fredericksburg to get them on the railroad.
Tom Danton
How long did that take?
James Latane
Bout 7 hours
Tom Danton
Now it takes 45 minutes (laughter)
Mrs. Latane
Heavens!
James Latane
When my brothers, two brothers were going to college (unintelligible) I think I was about 10 years old. And the river froze and they couldn't get back to school. And so, I drove them to Fredericksburg, stayed there overnight, and came back the next day.
Jonathan Malriat
He's talking a couple different things in there. Again, he's talking about steamboats were the primary transportation in the Potomac River. So most of these are not the big like giant paddlewheel steamers we tend to think about like in the Mississippi River. There are still paddle wheelers, but they're much smaller, more and along the lines of like a larger tugboat size today. You could fit a couple dozen people, cargo and different things on to them, and they would transport up and down the river, stopping at multiple different wharfs on the way. But then he mentions that when the river froze, you had to get your team together and you had to drive. So that means it's a horse or two behind a carriage and you had to ride seven hours. One way to get to Fredericksburg to catch the train. And then he also mentions, and it's a little hard to decipher, that when he was ten years old, he was asked to do that, to pick up his brothers from college. And I'm just imagining ten year old me having to in the winter, when it's so cold that the river has frozen, having to drive two horses seven hours in the freezing cold. I mean, I'm sure a lot of us have heard our parents talk about going uphill both ways to school. And that old adage, yeah, I think James Latane actually has that. I think he earned that badge of courage right there.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. My back hurts just thinking about that.
Jonathan Malriat
Like today, if you were to try getting to Fredericksburg, you'd just take route three and go down 205, route 3, and it takes 45 minutes. And most people today, if you're trying to get to Alexandria or DC, you wouldn't catch the train in Fredericksburg. You just continue on to 95 and take 95 all the way up. And that even ties in with how people come to visit us. Very few people come by boat anymore to come visit the park. We might see a few crab boats out in the in Pope's Creek, and maybe a few people in kayaks.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, they're not really visiting us.
Jonathan Malriat
So it's very different seeing that change in that. So it is really cool seeing that. Now there are other changes that have occurred and it's and a lot of it is in the rivers themselves, the Potomac and even Pope's Creek itself. How it's changed and erosion has occurred throughout the time. And James actually spends quite a bit of time talking about that. So I'm going to pull out some of the, I’ll say, key snippets of that and let you listen into it.
Tom Danton
I don’t know if you were aware of, of how much land right here, just north of here along the Potomac has eroded in your lifetime has disappeared into the Potomac River from the cliffs. Haywood is just washed completely out into the river.
James Latane
I reckon in the, on the (unintelligible) that we called it down on the low part. I reckon from close to 100 yards in my lifetime.
Tom Danton
100 yards have disappeared in your lifetime, you know, the, that little, pond at the end of the beach road?
James Latane
Yeah.
Tom Danton
That thing is practically right on the river now and a couple more years and its going to break open into the river.
James Latane
See, whenever you get a beach that slopes and the waves can roll up. (unintelligible) its where the banks are, they keep cutting under.
Tom Danton
And that beach has remained pretty much the same thing, it’s not really eroding much, but it's the cliffs that are.
James Latane
Yeah. And right. The water peaked cutting on them. Then when you have big freeze all that falls off.
Tom Danton
A lot of people are saying that, Pope's Creek out here in the big open area is down to about only two feet in depth, at you know, moderate tide. Do you ever remember that being much deeper, or just did you ever pay much attention to
James Latane
Put in at the sandbar. In the early days the mouth opened up enough for a steamboat to come in there and land, not in my day.
Jonathan Malriat
So we have two things that are being talked about. Erosion on the Potomac River and then siltation that's been occurring here at Pope's Creek. And it's interesting because one of the homes of the Washington family, specifically William Augustine's Haywood, is completely vanished into the Potomac River and over 100 yards in just James's lifetime. That's a pretty massive amount of land just to fall, keep falling off in sheer cliffs, and you can still today see cliff faces that even today we're concerned about eroding into the Potomac. And even at Pope's Creek. But it is kind of interesting to think about a steamboat coming in to Pope's Creek today. If you were to look out at that body of water, it does not look like it'd be able to handle that large of a boat. But they were designed to go into shallow waters. And I guess at one point it could handle it.
Dustin Baker
And then as far as the cliffs go, not only are they, you know, pretty dangerous to, to visit, but, in terms of archeological sites, we don't even know what we've lost. The cliffs are eroding so rapidly that, you know, by the time people started to become aware that there was archeological sites on the shores of Pope's Creek in the Potomac River in this area, that, many of them had already been lost.
Jonathan Malriat
So this next clip of James Latane's interview is going to be discussing some of what he has heard passed down through the generations, through the different families, about the different properties that the Washington family owned and what happened with them and some of their stories.
James Latane
And I think. Augustine Washington added on to the acreage. Birthplace (unintelligible) they got Blenheim which is a right big tract. And I think you had Haywood. Yeah. I believe he built the house at Haywood which is all gone now. And William Augustine, his son, came along and he added acreage all the way to Maddox Creek, all that land. I think around 12,000 acres.
Tom Danton
That’s quite a hunk and.
Jonathan Malriat
So let's break down that section because there's a couple things in there. And even just listening to it, it is a little confusing to start with. So he's talking about Augustine Washington and that how they acquired land around the birthplace to start with. Then later on, they're acquiring a tract of land that was referred to as Blenheim, which is another home that actually does survive through to today. And then the final tract they're talking about is the track at Haywood and then the manor that they build at Haywood. Now, the house at Haywood, we know has since vanished. It is gone. It's believed to have dropped into the Potomac. Their origin, which we've talked about at other points. Now we start to get into a bit of confusion when we actually look at the details of what he's talking about, because we have a couple things that can get confusing. First is Augustine as just a name, because there's a bare minimum of two Augustine's that are interconnected with both. The property here at Pope's Creek, as well as even Blenheim and Haywood. You have Augustine Jr, which is who we believe he's referring to because specifically in there he mentions William Augustine, his son, which tells us that he's referring to Augustine Jr. But Augustine Senior is Augustine Junior's father. The reason I bring this up is because the oral history that James Latane is providing has discrepancies between our most recent historic resource study that our historian, Phil Levy, who was with us for previous episodes, has done research into surviving documents and surviving archeology to tell us and unlock more of the story. And there are discrepancies. Now, does that mean that the oral histories are completely wrong? No, because in a lot of cases, these discrepancies occur where we have incomplete records, and very rarely do we have 100% of the records written out that tell us everything when we're dealing with trying to unlock the mysteries, especially around here at the birthplace. It's kind of like trying to put together a puzzle when we don't know if we have all the pieces, we don't have the cover nearby to refer to, and we're just trying to make all the pieces fit, and there's going to be gaps. And so to fill those gaps, we look at other things that come back up and help fill those in. Oral histories are one of those, but we can't always take them as tried. In fact, 100% true because well, one when James Latane's talking about this this is around 1976 and he's talking about an event that has occurred just about 200 years before then. And even from when he's born, it's 100 years before he's born. So this had to have come to him from his grandfather. And so it's not a straight chain of connections. So it does lead to there being potentials for discrepancies. But there is a lot in here because it does tell us, one, that the Washington family is aware of all these tracks and their connections with it. Now our record, our historical records indicate that was probably William Augustine that built the home, not Augustine Jr.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And I mean, I think it's, maybe enlightening for listeners to hear that there's some confusion within The Descendants and their families themselves. and in the 1930s, when this park was being established, they were not so much concerned with archeology and physical remnants of buildings. They were trying to hunt down records and deeds of property to kind of piece together who was where and when.
Jonathan Malriat
And even speaking about the 1930s, it actually shines a light on the 1930s, because frequently we talk about the Wakefield National Memorial Association and their plans to rebuild or build the memorial area we have today. And one of the big ones get brought out there is that the house that they build is not based on anything archeologically in the ground, and its location is where it is, because that was an oral tradition, that it was there. Yet we have conflicting oral traditions that say it was in a different spot. So it helps shine a light on the challenge that the Wakefield National Memorial Association had in deciding which of the old stories do they believe when they can't go or they're not willing to go off of it in the archeological? So it does shine additional light on that, that yeah, there is confusion and it makes it so it's a lot harder just to say, oh no, the Wakefield National Memorial Association had it fully wrong. They just had their own ideas. They had a lot of conflicting information coming in too. And then how do you weigh that? And even today, when we take oral traditions and oral stories into our programing, we have to balance that along with the archival.
Dustin Baker
Right. And, you know, we have descriptions of this property in the first decade of the 1800s where people were just describing seeing depressions in the ground where buildings once stood. So, in a paradoxical way, the reason we have a park at all is because of these oral traditions that were held here amongst community members and descendants.
Dustin Baker
I mean, one could argue that that's the reason there's a national monument here at all. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments. And thank you to James Latane, who took the time to make this recording all those years ago, and for your work to take care of this park before it was even a national monument and after. Join us on our next episode.
Episode 6
In June of 1864, 475 men of the 36th United States Colored Troops embarked across the Potomac into Westmoreland County and the Northern Neck of Virginia during the Civil War. Their expedition began here at Pope's Creek, near the site of George Washington's birthplace. This month marks the 160th anniversary of the raid. Guest interpreter Steward Henderson joins us from Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP to tell the story. Intro music courtesy of Wolf Patrol. Outro music courtesy of Brumbaugh Family
George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born, only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present and future of this place brick by brick. On this podcast series upon this Land History, mystery and monuments.
When visitors first arrive to George Washington Birthplace National Monument, the first thing they encounter is a panoramic view of Pope's Creek, an enormous body of water that stretches out to the Potomac River. And this river would have been one of the dividers from 1861 to 1865, between the United States and the Confederacy, which has seceded from the Union during the American Civil War. In June of 1864, 475 men of the 36th United States Colored Troops embarked across the river into Westmoreland County and the Northern Neck of Virginia during the Civil War. Their expedition began right here at Pope's Creek, near the site of George Washington's birthplace. And this month marks the 160th anniversary of the raid, which lasted from June 11th to June 21st. Now, generally, our site interprets the time period between 1650 and 1815, and then we have a jump to the commemorative area in the 1930s.
So to help us tell the story of the time in between is our guest interpreter, Steward Henderson from Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. And interviewing Steward is myself and lead interpreter Jonathan Malriat.
Jonathan Malriat
In interpretation, we find our stories in many different avenues, sometimes inspiration comes from the most inane and avenues you don't initially expect from. The story for today is going to be around a spark that came from when I visited one of our nearby national park units, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. And every year, right before Memorial Day, they do a celebration called the luminaria, which is a big event that they do in the evening, where they lay out 15,000 candles in memory of all of the soldiers that are buried in the National Cemetery there. And when I was there, I got the opportunity to listen to a lot of the Rangers that are there, tell the stories of some of the individuals that have been identified who are interned in that cemetery. And our guest today, Steward Henderson, was telling a story about one of those soldiers that's buried there. Steward, I will let you give an introduction to yourself.
Steward Henderson
Okay. I am the co-founder and past president of the 23rd Regiment, United States Colored Troops, which is a living history organization. I'm also a member of the 54th Mass. Company B out of Washington, D.C., which is our reenactment arm. I am, lets see, a former banker for 35 years, and I have always loved Civil War history since I was six years old and visited the Fredericksburg battlefield, and eight when I visited Gettysburg.
Jonathan Malriat
So Steward was talking about Peter Wilson during the luminaria and he was talking about how it occurred in Westmoreland County and George Washington Birthplace National Monument is inside of Westmoreland County. And it sparked an interest in me in trying to make a connection to here, because if there were raiding us, forces us colored troops coming into this region. The people who were inhabiting the area around George Washington Birthplace National Monument would have been experiencing that, even if it wasn't right here. And when I dove into the records, it turns out that there was a raid that occurred June 11th, 1864, through June 21st that occurred right here at Pope's Creek. And it was all thanks to Steward that we found out about this story that has been covered before, but not has been a focus here at the birthplace.
Dustin Baker
So let's start by looking into the story of Peter Wilson.
Jonathan Malriat
Grave 814 in Fredericksburg National Cemetery belongs to Private Peter Wilson. So Peter Wilson was born in North Carolina and enlisted in company C of the 36 US Colored Troops, which at that time was the 2nd North Carolina US Colored Troops or North Carolina Colored Troops, in July 13th of 1863, in North Carolina. Prior to that, as you had mentioned during the Luminaria, he was enslaved by Doctor Turner Wilson, who had owned 32 slaves on his 2500 acre farm. In his previous occupation, Peter Wilson was listed prior war as being a farmer, and he's one of many enslaved people who escaped and joined the US Army. In the record it talks about in February of 64. So this is going to be almost six months after he joins the Army. He will, they'll move up to Point Lookout and then they'll participate in the raids in the Northern Neck in April and June of 64 and the 36th had a lot of success in there. So on June 16th, they engaged with the Confederate cavalry, and 450 local militia. During that skirmishes, Peter Wilson and two other soldiers of company C broke off and against their orders of the commander of the raid, Colonel Draper, they approached a house located about a mile from where the skirmish taking place, and fire and a group of mounted militia. According to a correspondent writing for the American and Commercial Advertiser, the rebels ran down a Negro soldier and contraband, both of whom were murdered in cold blood. The soldier was 37 year old Private Wilson. The unknown enslaved man or contraband as he was listed, was likely trying to escape with him. Wilson's comrade, Private Henry Lee, was wounded and probably killed, and could not afterwards be found, but the third soldier did escape.
Steward Henderson
One thing that I remembered from that story was that Private Wilson was operating against direct orders from Colonel Draper, but he was given that order by another officer, John O'Brien, who knew he was going against Draper's orders. But I think that Peter Wilson, from what I've heard, he's going to be trying to help other enslaved people escape. But, the point was, he was trying to help enslaved people.
Dustin Baker
So, Steward, before we get into the details of this raid, let's zoom out a little bit. And could you describe for us, where are we in the war in June of 1864? What's happening in the surrounding area and more broadly?
Steward Henderson
Okay, well, Draper is going to be part of the Army of the James. They're going to be under General Benjamin Butler. General Butler had first had black troops when he was in Louisiana. He had the Louisiana Native Guard. So when he becomes, the commander of the Army of the James, he has two divisions of black troops.
Jonathan Malriat
Steward, I'm trying to remember, the presidential campaign, 1864 is that the election year or the inauguration year?
Steward Henderson
That's the election year.
Jonathan Malriat
So that's the election year. So that's another part that's gonna be going on during this 1864 time period. Right. Lincoln's gonna be concerned about that 1864 election. And McClellan. Right. Who's up and coming as a rival for him from the Democrat Democratic Party?
Steward Henderson
Yes. Yeah. And, that's why when I do my tours in Fredericksburg, I always ask, you know, what's the turning point of the Civil War. When we have Ken Burns and the movie Gettysburg, they say Gettysburg is the turning point of the war. Well, some people say Gettysburg and Vicksburg together is the turning point of the war. Well, if that's the situation, why is Lincoln worried about being reelected all the way up to August of 1864? He thinks he's going to lose the election, and he needs to get a general that's going to win him the war. And that's where he picks up Grant.
Jonathan Malriat
So Spotsylvania, correct me wrong. That's May of 1864, right?
Steward Henderson
Right. And that's they start fighting every day.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah. That's then the start of the Overland Campaign. That's a nonstop push by Grant.
Steward Henderson
Daily, right.
Jonathan Malriat
So we have that occurring in May of 1864. So then are these raids like in conjunction with that.
Steward Henderson
So yeah, that's going to be in conjunction with him trying to keep Richmond from sending reinforcements to Lee.
Jonathan Malriat
Okay. So we have these big victories that have just occurred in May right before we get to the raids.
Steward Henderson
Well technically, stalemates and strategic victories. Yeah.
Jonathan Malriat
Tactical stalemates. Both battles are very large losses on both sides.
Steward Henderson
Both sides, yes.
Jonathan Malriat
So those are all coming into a lot of the zeitgeist that'soccurring around our raids that are happening here.
Steward Henderson
Right. Because out of 182,000 combined soldiers, you're going to have 60,000 casualties in those first two battles. That's a 30% rate of loss. We have a 30% rate of loss in any battle today, heads will roll in Washington, DC. But that's the kind of fighting they were fighting in.
Dustin Baker
All right. So now we understand more broadly what's happening in Virginia during the Civil War in June of 1864. So now we're going to zero in on the raid here at Pope's Creek. And to really help us understand it, we are going to do a reading, an abridged reading of a report by Colonel Alonzo Draper, who was leading the 36 United States Colored Troops, into Pope's Creek in the Northern Neck of Virginia. Doing this reading for us is Bill Etheridge, who's a park guide at George Washington Birthplace National Monument.
Bill Ethridge
June 11th through 21st, 1864 expedition from Point Lookout, Maryland to Pope's Creek, Virginia. Report of Colonel Alonzo G. Draper, 36 U.S. Colored Troops, Headquarters, District of Saint Mary's, Point Lookout, Maryland. June 22nd, 1864. Sir, I have the honor to report that on the evening of the 11th instant, I embarked on the steam transports Georgia, Charleston, Long Branch, and Favorite, with 475 men of the 36th U.S. Colored Troops and 49 men of the Second and Fifth U.S. cavalry under the command of first Lieutenant J.C. Denney, Fifth U.S. cavalry, and proceeded to Pope's Creek, Virginia, on the Potomac River for the purpose of procuring horses for the Quartermasters Department and farming implements, transportation, and such, for the contraband settlement on the Patuxent River. On the morning of the 12th, we landed at Pope's Creek and divided into two detachments, 300 men under Captain Hart, of the Thirty-Sixth, taking the road running by a northerly course to Smith's Wharf, and thence along the Rappahannock to Warsaw, where all detachments were to unite. On the evening of the 13th. The remaining infantry, under my own command, accompanied by 100 sailors under Captain Street of the gunboat Fuchsia, took the road to Montross. From this column I detached 75 men to canvas the road to Currioman Bay and rejoin me at Montross. From both columns, detachments were thrown off on all the road crossroads leading to Warsaw to collect horses and cattle, and to drive all scattering parties of the enemy toward Wind-Mill Point, where we hoped to meet and destroy them. One company was sent forward to hold Durrettsville, at the forks of the road, nine miles above Warsaw. Both columns reached Warsaw at the appointed time without any remarkable incidents, except occasional guerrilla firing, which did no damage. On the evening of the 12th, I rode with a cavalry escort to the Rappahannock opposite the town of Tappahannock, where I communicated with a gunboats Jacob Bell and Freeborn. The officers of these boats informed me that horses were abundant at the Occupacia Creek and Layton's Wharf, on the south side of the Rappahannock. Finding horses scarce and poor on the Northern Neck between the Potomac and Rappahannock, I resolved to transfer the field of operations to the south bank of the Rappahannock. We passed the night of the 14th at Durrettsville and marched on the morning of the 15th to Union Wharf, where we were soon joined by the gunboats and transports. About a day and a half was spent in rebuilding the wharf, which was burned by General Kilpatrick. On the 16th, Second Lieutenant O'Brien permitted three men of his company to leave the battalion and go to a house about a mile distant. Notwithstanding my orders that no man should be allowed to leave the column and all other respects, Lieutenant O'Brien performed his duties in a very acceptable manner. Of these three men from O'Brien's company, only one returned. Of the two of the other two, one was murdered by the rebel cavalry and the other wounded and probably killed as he crawled into the woods, and could not afterward be found. Hearing the firing on the afternoon of the 16th, I rode out with about 40 of the cavalry to ascertain the cause. Emerging from the woods about a mile from Union Wharf, we perceived a body of rebel cavalry about a mile ahead at a point of woods where the road forks. At a suitable distance, I ordered a charge directly, after which the enemy opened fire upon us. After riding in to within 60 yards of the rebel position, I found myself almost alone. Only my assistant adjutant general and a few faithful orderlies remaining by me. I tried in vain to rally my men, calling upon them a dozen times to halt and face the enemy. Finally finding myself enveloped in the dust of the rebel pursuit. Entirely alone, I followed the crowd. The rebels, after pursuing 200 or 300 yards, turned back, evidently astonished at their success. When I left the wharf, had ordered a detachment of about 150 men under Captain Hatlinger to follow the cavalry as of support, leaving the remainder of the battalion to complete the wharf. Captain Hatlinger, who is an inefficient officer, was very slow to execute this order, but when he did arrive, I posted one half of his men on the edge of the woods, and dismounting, took 75 men and made a detour through the skirt of the wood, hoping to get in rear of the rebels and cancel the account. By dark we were within 600 or 700 yards of the rebels, who had lighted their campfires and prepared to bivouac. At this juncture, the accidental explosion of a percussion cap gave the notice of our approach, whereupon they immediately removed to safe quarters. We soon emerged in the rear of their campfires, which we found deserted. After marching about a mile in pursuit, we returned to Union Wharf. On the morning of the 17th of June, the anniversary of Bunker Hill, I thought it proper to make one more attempt to wipe out the disgrace which the cavalry had brought upon the expedition, leaving about 300 men to load the transport. I marched with 200 men of the Thiry-Sixth and 36 of the cavalry under Sergeant Cain. We again found them this time, and force numbering according to the best information, 150 men of the ninth Virginia Cavalry and 450 Infantry, who were mostly Home guards. I ordered my men to fix their sights for 500 yards, and directed the company commanders to pass along the line and see that every sight was properly raised. Our first volley made a marked effect, evidently taking the enemy by surprise, as he expected a charge at the first fire, several of the enemy were seemed to fall, and heard the scream. They immediately returned afar. Apparently every man for himself. We poured in our volleys in rapid succession, and soon threw the rebels into great confusion. At every discharge, crowds of them took to the woods in their rear. When they moved upon the rebel position, which was entirely abandoned. At Pierson's farm, not one of my men received a scratch, the rebels firing too high their balls, in most cases passing directly over the head of the mounted officers. The gallantry of the colored troops on this occasion could not be excelled. They were as steady under fire and as accurate in their movements as if they were on drill. After giving nine rousing cheers on the rebel ground, we recalled the cavalry and march to Union Wharf, where we assisted in embarking the captured property. From Union Wharf we sent two more steamer loads of captured property to Point Lookout, with orders to return to the Rappahannock. We then steamed to Layton's Wharf, opposite Leedstown, where we were informed that two rebel regiments, the 59th Virginia Infantry, numbering 680, and the 7th Virginia Cavalry, numbering 440, had the night before across the Rapahannock three miles above Layton’s, for the purpose of helping to chastise our party. We landed on the 18th and marched to Loyd's, 7 or 8 miles, besides sending the cavalry out three miles on the Layton Road, four miles from Layton's, we found a large grist mill belonging to Robert M.T. Hunter, which had been turning out flour for the rebel army ever since the beginning of the war. This we burned to the ground. In this section we found an abundance of fine horses, mules, and beef cattle. Throughout the day, small parties of rebel cavalry were watching our movements. I therefore deemed it prudent to return to Layton's Wharf, where we arrived in the evening. Spent the night in embarking horses, mules and cattle, and sailed on the morning of the 19th for Tappahannock, where we landed and resumed our labor. We spent another night in loading the two transports and the gunboats, and re embarked. On the morning of the 20th, passing down the river, we sent boats ashore at Union Wharf, Urbanna, and Carter’s Creek for information, but failed to learn anything of importance. At the mouth of the river we met the two returning transports, which relieved the gunboats of their load. When the expedition returned to Point Lookout, a arriving early in the morning of the 21st instant, we brought in 375 head of cattle, 160 horses and mules, about 600 contrabands, including between 60 and 70 recruits for the army and navy, and a large number of plows, harrows, cultivators, wheat drills, corn sellers, harness carts and carriages and such for the use of the contraband settlement on the Patuxent. I have the honor to be very respectfully your obedient servant, Alonzo G. Draper, Colonel, 36th US Colored Troops Commanding District. Major R.S. Davis, Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Virginia and North Carolina.
Dustin Baker
As someone who's not incredibly familiar, reading military documents from the Civil War, it took me a couple reads to understand that when they say contrabands, they're talking about enslaved individuals. And they even mentioned that there's a contraband encampment. How many people do we think were liberated during this time?
Steward Henderson
Well, I can tell you from Fredericksburg we had, probably the largest self emancipation of enslaved people in the entire Civil War. During the first occupation of Fredericksburg, you had, over 10,000 enslaved people. And they only are able to escape because the Union Army is there. So when we talk about contraband, what we're talking about is, a term that Benjamin Butler brings up at Fort Monroe. Now, when the first three guys come to his fort asking for asylum, and it's because they had worked on Confederate works and, their owners came asking about getting them back because of the Fugitive Slave Law and, General Benjamin Butler, who had been a lawyer in his previous line of work, he told them that, well, since you have, seceded from the United States, then you are no longer afforded the United States laws. So I consider them contraband of war. So whenever you take over some possession of somebody else who has rebelled against your country, then you call it contraband of war. So that term sticks. Contraband camps were very important because they supplied a lot of the labor, like cooking, the, clothes washing and things like that for the Union soldiers. Now, many of the Union soldiers in Fredericksburg, some of them had never even seen black people before, and they really were not abolitionists. But from the letters that I have, seen and, some of them I had to transcribe, these, enslaved people just grew on these soldiers because they wanted to try to help them do whatever they needed, because they were so thankful that they were no longer enslaved people. And the Union soldiers gradually began to really appreciate them, and their whole demeanor changed. So they welcomed those 10,000, and they took them up to Washington with him. And you had quite a few contraband camps around the Washington, DC area. Alexandria was a big contraband camps, and so did Georgetown. And at first in Georgetown, they were considered a separate place from Washington, D.C.. Well, now we know it's a very affluent part of Washington, D.C., but they had contraband camps up there at that time.
Jonathan Malriat
So, Stuart, are you familiar with Point Lookout? What what's occurring at Point Lookout? Why in Maryland is there two whole U.S. regiments being stationed there?
Steward Henderson
Oh, Point Lookout, it's a prison camp for Confederate prisoners. So they had Union soldiers watching those, prisoners. And eventually, when United States Colored Troops are going to be originated, a lot of the Union white soldiers didn't want them fighting in battles, so they would be given jobs like labor jobs and jobs watching wagons, wagon trains, watching prisoners. And then they had the prison camps. So in order to keep them out of fighting and they would make them guard prison camps. Now, part of the reason was because the Confederates weren't going to treat them as prisoners and, they were going to be treated as either escaped slaves or they were going to just be treated as, they weren't soldiers, they were going to kill them. They going to execute them on the spot. According to the laws of the Confederate States, if you catch a runaway slave, you can kill it. But, that's one of the main reasons why you're going to have them guarding them. And, also for the white officers, you know, they were going to be treated as leading servile insurrections. So that meant in a lot of cases that they would be executed as well. So that's one of the reasons why they didn't want to put a lot of the colored soldiers into fighting in battles.
Jonathan Malriat
So if that's the reason for why the like, 36th and the 35th were moved up to this Maryland location, that was probably viewed as being less likely to see combat, why then in like the spring of 1864, do they kind of shift gears? And these regiments that are assigned to prison duty are doing raids across the Potomac into a section of Virginia that really hadn't seen a lot of combat?
Steward Henderson
Well, for one thing, they needed soldiers. And, you notice, not only in Virginia but North Carolina, South Carolina, they led raids into, slave areas so that they can get refugees from the camps or contrabands, that they would call them, and they would take them back to the camps, and they expected the males to actually enlist in the army. Especially if, in the contraband camps, they wanted their families taken care of, then some guys were coerced into doing that. So that's a good reason. And, in many cases, a lot of those men make some of the best soldiers.
Now, especially in 1864, because General Grant's taken over. And he calls this his strategy of exhaustion. He wants to destroy the infrastructure and the farming of the Confederacy and what better way to do that is to take the animals, take the enslaved people who do the work, and you take away their equipment, and they're going to be just about helpless. Then where they go have to come up with other ways of buying more equipment and more people to do the labor. And you have to remember like 80% of all the white men who were military age are already in the Confederate Army, so they don't have much of it in the militia. And a lot of the militia are made up of wounded soldiers who don't go back in. He does what Lincoln has always wanted, one of his generals to do. He wanted them to coordinated all of the attacks.
Jonathan Malriat
Do you know how many soldiers were in the US Colored Troops forces?
Steward Henderson
180,000 is the number that we use for the entire army, and we use another 20,000. But as people actually get into the records, we are finding out, it's probably going to be more than that.
Jonathan Malriat
Now, give us a size comparison, because like, those numbers are really big. How many would be in say like the 36 USCT the US colored troops? How large would that regiment be in soldiers and forces supporting it?
Steward Henderson
Okay, technically a regiment is a thousand men. Now I didn't look up the 36th regiment, but, I did look up to 23rd’s and I got the rosters of 1792 men in that regiment. That doesn't mean all of them are there at the same time, however, it shows that they at one time served in that regiment.
Jonathan Malriat
So another thing that it mentions is that, Draper brought along with the 475 men of the 36th U.S. Colored Troops. He also brought 49 men of the Second and the Fifth U.S. cavalry. So do you know why he would have wanted to bring the cavalry units as well?
Steward Henderson
Oh, yeah. Cavalry. They're going to be the eyes and ears of any expedition. So they're going to be the scouts that go out and find out where the enemy is and what kind of force the enemy is in. So you can cover a lot more territory on horseback than you can walking. So they're going to be cavalry units all over with the infantry.
Jonathan Malriat
Now, they come across on boats of what's called the Potomac Flotilla ofthe US Navy. How does that how do the landings happen? I mean, if you ask, like today in modern movies, we think about, like, say, like Saving Private Ryan where you have these boats from, they drop the ramps straight down and they all run right off. How would that have occurred here? Because we know they land right across the creek from us on the shoreline of the Potomac River. So how would that have looked in June of 1864?
Steward Henderson
Okay, you probably have, the boats that they bring over, they’re going to be low enough for the soldiers that they can get off them on planks. They'll just come up beside the area and put the planks down so the soldiers can come off. However, there were going to be some ships that are probably going to stay offshore, like, for the ships that would be taking over the, contraband, the ships that they're going to be having cattle in them and, say farm equipment. Those are going to be larger ships, and they're going to be more like a cargo ship. So you can put things on the ship. But the, there will be smaller ships or smaller boats that they're going to be having with them. And then, they can go over and some of them may have a row boats with them that they can just row over to the water.
Jonathan Malriat
Now that we really kind of talked about a lot of the details of this raid but why is this important to talk about? Why is a raid like this which we're only talking combined totals on both sides, maybe a thousand people involved that are fighting and then another 600 that are freed. So maybe 2000 people involved in this compared to like the Battle of Fredericksburg, where there's hundreds of thousands combined involved. Why is this important?
Steward Henderson
Well, it's important because at this particular time, you're not getting a black, a lot of black soldiers actually fighting so they can start fighting militia, start fighting some cavalry. But later on in the war, like the 36 is going to be in some big battles. They're going to be at the, the June 15th Battle of Petersburg, which includes, Baylor's farm and, the Dimmock line around Petersburg.
Jonathan Malriat
So in your opinion, why is important for us to remember these stories? Why is it important for us to talk about all this?
Steward Henderson
Well, it's important because for so long we didn't talk about it. Now I can go back, right after the war, say, the GAR and the Grand Army of the Republic. Those were veterans associations. They welcomed black soldiers in. But in the 1880s, the white Confederates and the white Union soldiers starting to reconcile. And the Confederates would put a stipulation there, we will reconcile with you as long as you keep the black soldiers out of it. So you carry it forward, in the 1950s and 60s, I mean, even looking at my park, they were segregated. So they didn't know anything about the Civil War. The history is very important and, especially for black men, because, when we go into the military and come back, we're not treated very well. So I've had lots of stories, even World War Two coming back. They're coming back home to places like Louisiana. They can't go into restaurants. But you got German prisoners in the restaurant. So the military history, I mean, that's when black men stop being slaves and start being soldiers and start being men. In fact, even as early as 1864, we're going to have black men voting because the fifth of USCT out of Ohio, Ohio gave black men who were free and educated and their soldiers, they gave them the right to vote, and they voted in the camps. But history is very important, and especially to, like I say, the black community, because, I mean, even in Fredericksburg, even if I give a talk tomorrow, I'll bet you there be people in that audience that didn't know that they had black soldiers in the Civil War, and a lot of them don't even visit our park because it was segregated for so long. Now, when I went there when I was six years old, and that was in 1958, I didn't realize it was segregated because I was going up to the top of Marys Heights, and I was such a small kid, I thought I was standing on top of the world there, so going inside didn't matter to me. I was on the battlefield and I could just look out and see this. Well, it wasn't quite as, developed as it is today, but, you know, I could see a long way, and I can imagine what those soldiers saw.
Dustin Baker
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and monuments. Next month, we celebrate July 4th. And joining us for that episode is a special guest from Virginia. 250.
Episode 7
On July 4th, 2026, the National Park Service will join the nation in celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We have already started planning for this national event and today we are going to get a behind the scenes look at what is to come. Joining us today is our very special guest, Cheryl Wilson. Cheryl Wilson serves as the executive director for the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Intro music courtesy of Wolf Patrol. Outro music courtesy of Brumbaugh Family.
George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born, only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present and future of this place brick by brick. On this podcast series upon this Land History, mystery and monuments.
The power of a place is shaped by its past, and one can hardly think of a place that was owned by the Washingtons in the Northern Neck of Virginia without thinking of the American Revolution. On July 4th, 2026, the National Park Service will join the nation in celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Parks from coast to coast preserve monuments and memorials that help us reflect on America's highest principles and the nation's greatest tragedies. The US Semiquincentennial offers us an opportunity to celebrate in national parks the vast contributions of individuals, both before and after the revolution, deepen our understanding of the struggles and triumphs of all Americans, and reflect on the aspirational ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and their relevance to our lives today. It's also an opportunity for all Americans to deepen their pride in place and learn more about the stories of their local communities and states 250 years ago. Joining us today is our very special guest, Cheryl Wilson. Cheryl Wilson serves as the executive director for the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission.
So Cheryl, we just want to thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. And for those of there... for those people out there who don't know who you are or what VA 250 is, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became involved?
Cheryl Wilson
Absolutely, and thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today, Dustin and your audience. Always happy to talk about VA 250 because it impacts all of us so much. VA 250 is the shorthand name for the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. And that's an agency of the legislature, the General Assembly, a legislative commission that is chaired by delegate Terry L. Austin of Botetourt. The vice chair is Senator Mamie Locke of Hampton. And we're honored to have as National Honorary Chair Carly Fiorina. The commission itself is composed of representatives of museums, historic sites, tourism destinations, and state agencies across Virginia. And, they've been working hard since 2020, in formulating the plans that we'll talk about. But I'm Cheryl Wilson, the executive director of VA 250 and of course have always been passionate about Virginia's rich history and have sort of carved out a niche with commemorations, I'll say. My career has been with the General Assembly and this VA 250 Commission is an agency of the General Assembly and part of that long career. And I think I have about 37 sessions of the General Assembly under my belt. Now, one of the things you do is, whatever the priority of the time is, so starting in about 2006, I was asked to lead Virginia's Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War and Emancipation, that's the sesquicentennial. After that, the 100th anniversary of World War One, 75th anniversary of World War Two, and now the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the Semisequincentennial. And I often laugh Dustin and say, it might just be because I learned how to pronounce Sesquicentennial and Semiquincentennial so quickly. But it's been a long and wonderful time of developing partnerships and all the good things that we'll talk about with the commemoration.
Dustin Baker
Right? Being able to pronounce those things is an important part of the job. I absolutely agree, it took me a while. You know, these, these big nationwide commemorations, states around the country are having their own stories told during, America 250. Why is this such an important commemoration for the state of or the Commonwealth of Virginia?
Cheryl Wilson
Yeah, another very good question. And you're right, every state is having its moment because, again, this is our nation's 250th. Much like the bicentennial and the the, passion that's exhibited throughout the nation in a moment like that. But I have to say, there is no better place than Virginia to experience history. We often say Virginia's history is America's story, and that's so much more than a tagline. It's true. Virginia was the first the place for the first encounters with indigenous people. The first slaves arrived in Virginia, in Jamestown. Whether you're talking about Civil War, Civil Rights, American Revolution, every layer of history can be found and explored in sites throughout Virginia. We offer the power of place, standing, in a place of significance at a time of significance that no other state offers. Virginia is, as many people would say, the birthplace of the nation. All the founding documents written by Virginia over and over. So I would say that Virginia is important for every American, certainly every Virginian, but every American to experience in this moment of the nation's 250th.
Dustin Baker
And we're two years away from 2026, which is the actual 250th anniversary of American independence. What are the biggest goals for VA 250 between now and then?
Cheryl Wilson
Right. Yes. there are three main goals. And you're right, that lead up to 2026 takes a long time. Our overall vision is to do our part in forming a more perfect union and the way we get there are three goals. Number one: Educate. There are so many people that don't understand Virginia's contributions to the forming of our nation in the American Revolution. But even broader than that, they don't understand the values and ideas and ideals on which this country was founded and continued to create a more perfect union. So educate and outreach is a big part of that. To that end, we'll have mobile museums that travel to schools and exhibit. The next is to engage Virginians and Americans by telling the whole story of our founding and connecting every community on a personal level, encouraging tourism and economic development as people travel throughout and engage in the history that we find here. And then the third is to inspire. To foster the sense of national unity that we all have, that we need by reflecting on these ideals that shaped our nation and that continue to perfected. So engage, educate and inspire, would be the three main goals. All of our programing works around that.
Dustin Baker
Absolutely. And you know, when we're talking about educating and inspiring people, about this commemoration, why should individuals care about Virginia 250 and America 250? What is it that we want them to get excited about?
Cheryl Wilson
You know, the easy answer to that is that when we take a moment to reflect on the past and our history, it's just as much about our present and our future. And that's what a commemoration does. Is it offers the opportunity by looking at the past to shape the present, bring us together in the present and bring us forward together in the future. We know, of course, that the American Revolution itself wasn't just a fight for Independence. It was about the fight for, again, these ideals we're talking about, liberty, self-government, the pursuit of a more perfect union. And if we understand that, you know, we can certainly appreciate the values on which they were built. But also, as we look back to the past, we see, you know, painful parts of our history. And when we talk about, acknowledge that, when we work together to, to discuss those, one of our... one of our key leaders, Carly Fiorina, often talks about the experience in places like Colonial Williamsburg and certainly National Park Service sites across the country have found over and over, when we take an honest look at history, it brings us all together closer. It's a it's a healing moment, and that would be why I think everyone should care about VA 250 and this moment for the nation.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And you know, one of the best ways to connect and engage and learn about history is to go to places where history happened. And, as a America 250, VA 250, as the commemoration really gets moving, people are probably going to start thinking about visiting well-known sites like Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Mount Vernon, but what are some lesser known places that you hope people visit?
Cheryl Wilson
Oh, yes. And I hope they visit all of them many, many times. I'll start by saying on our website, VA250.org, you can click and have an interactive map that overlays all of the many places to visit. The grand names that you've mentioned, Monticello, Mount Vernon, Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown. But then the sites like Red Hill, the home of Patrick Henry in Charlotte County, the Abingdon Muster Grounds out in Southwest Virginia in Abingdon, where militia, oh, goodness, I spent the most captivating afternoon there not too long ago, and the guide was telling me the stories of the local men who left their home and marched dozens upon dozens of miles to muster there. And then from there, go out and march dozens and dozens of miles before the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. Just these stories of everyday bravery and everyday sacrifice, so that's one that just always leaps to mind. We read a story not too long ago, in a series that runs about the 250th, about Chiswell’s Mines, for example. Again, that's out in Southwest Virginia in Wythe County. And I don't know if you know about that one Dustin, but that's where enslaved men as well, white prisoners worked side by side in lead mines to produce ammunition for the revolutionary armies. Some of these sites that you just hadn't heard of before. and then we talk about Colonial Williamsburg in the grand sense, but within that are such poignant and incredible stories. One of them that comes to mind is the Bray School in Colonial Williamsburg, which is the oldest building dedicated to the education of black children in the United States. And there's been a lot of work and renovation and the relocation of the school. And we understand, for example, when the Bray School itself, after being found, located, the... the historical ruins, was being brought to the place where it's now being renovated and in fact will be rededicated this year in the fall of 2024, in Colonial Williamsburg. The community members again remember, with one of the oldest schools, dedicated to educating black children, free and enslaved. So students from a local school as that house, the Gray School, was coming down the road, gathered, and they held up placards. Research had shown the names of some of the students who were educated in the Bray School, and they held up placards, if they just knew the first name, because they wanted to honor those students. The students of today wanted to honor the student of of yesterday. And remember them and say their name and let them know they weren't forgotten. If that's not just a snapshot of the power of a commemoration, I don't know what is. So again, you know, all these moments, all of those, places that we can go and experience. I would direct you to the website for a comprehensive listing of the well known and the lesser known, all of which need to be known.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And, you know, when I think of the semiquincentennial, I can't help but think of the Bicentennial Commemorations in 1976. And I think one of the biggest differences between that commemoration and the semiquincentennial is that now modern people have access to all kinds of information about these sites online, readily available to them. They can learn remotely, but why should modern audiences care about the preservation of these actual historic places and sites?
Cheryl Wilson
Yeah, it goes back to Dustin that power of place. And that truly, to me, having experienced this over and over again, that's the power of the commemoration. First up the power place is wonderful. Anytime when you can go and you can see, you know, the site where George Washington lived or was born and stand there, but there's something special. It's almost it is intangible. It's something about being at a place of significance, particularly on an anniversary day. And then you can narrow that down when you know the time. And I’ve stood in places, many times one, one that comes to mind, is the Manassas Battleground. When you know you are in the same place at the same moment that something significant happens and you're separated only by the thin veil of time. It's powerful. The stories that we hear or that we read or that we scroll through on our phones, don't hit as deeply as as them. And that's why one of the things we'll be doing is launching a passport, inviting people to, to go to sites, particularly on dates of significance. It it's, it's will, it's a changing, it's a transformative experience. And I hope that so many people here in Virginia, we have so many of those moments and places. And one of our goals is to make it easy for people to to experience that. But it's something quite powerful and quite a connection with the past that again, we carry into the future.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And, speaking of dates of significance, you just mentioned a few moments ago, George Washington, and in 2032, the tricentennial birth anniversary of George Washington will be another commemoration. How do you hope commemoration of the 250th will influence commemoration of that event in Virginia?
Cheryl Wilson
Oh that's wonderful, tricentennial! Well, first off Dutin that's easier for you and me to say isn’t it. but yeah, let's look at the dovetailing of that. 2032, that's going to be right on the tails. 2031 is the surrender at Yorktown, where here in Virginia, where American independence was won. So following that will be the tricentennial. That is the fun thing about Virginia. There are so many layers of history that you can be commemorating the 250th of one thing, while also the 100th of something else, and the 300th. So that's that's really lovely, to know that that'll be coming right on the heels of that. Right as history is is so peaked, as the national appetite is whet. But how this commemoration of the 250th will influence that commemoration, well is in number one is awareness. You know just the public appetite, the groundwork that’s laid. That during a commemoration on, you know, on the side that we do, the the working side of it, all of the many, many, many there hundreds of partners involved, for example, in the 250th commemoration here in Virginia. All working together, all ours rowing in the same direction every museum, historic site. Just the power of creating those strong partnerships and that network, brings together so many who will have a role in the tricentennial of George Washington's birth. And then again, as I mentioned, we whet the public appetite for knowing more, learning more, wanting to go to the site. And it just in, we lay the groundwork for ensuring that vibrant and inclusive commemoration as one ends the next begins.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, and VA 250 has actually already been active for some time. So, what are some events that, you've already conducted and what are the highlights that you have planned for the future?
Cheryl Wilson
Oh, so many, yes, and, Dustin, I believe you, might have attended or some of your colleagues, one of our biggest, which is a Common Cause to All. Let me say Virginia has very deliberately stepped out and in a leadership role in this national commemoration. And one of the ways we do that is through a program that we call a Common Cause to All. Now it started last year in Colonial Williamsburg. It's a partnership between VA 250 and Colonial Williamsburg and other museum But, that was the anniversary, the 250th anniversary of the Committees of Correspondence, the Founding Fathers meeting at the Raleigh Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg, well before text messages and emails, corresponding with other colonies at the time. In essence, boiling it down, something big is coming, how do we how do we unite together? We took that same motto. Thomas Jefferson called it a Common Cause to All. We took that same model. Something big is coming. The nation's 250th, we're planning here in Virginia. Other states are planning too. So unify, let's join forces and let's come together. We invited fellow 250th planners from across the nation, across Virginia. And we've now had two gatherings of that, we’ll have another one next year. Dustin, we hoped people would come. This year, we had representatives from, I want to say 37 states, 50 some localities across Virginia, more than 450 people registering and just collaborate. How how can we best work together? So that's one of our programs, a Common Cause to All. And it is tremendous. The speakers, the inspiration that we all share, again, full recordings of every one of those sessions are on our website, VA250.org, and I would recommend it to the attention of your readers, certainly. But even more than that, we have a robust calendar of events. There have already been more than 500 events added to our calendar of events happening across Virginia. And like you mentioned, we're two years out from what the nation sees as the semiquincentennial. For us though, it's already begun. In Virginia, one of the most exciting things and something that we're working on a lot here, in the office and, and within our commission and leadership is 4th of July. We will start 4th of July celebration this year, 2024, at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. We'll have another, we actually see this as act one of a three act play. There'll be another July 4th commemoration next year, in Tidewater area, Fort Monroe. And then in 2026, we’ll be involving, we’ll be at Colonial Williamsburg. So that's act one of a three act play. So if anyone in your listening audience is in or near Richmond or wants to travel, we would love to have you here at the State Capitol this year. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on. We'll have the Yorktown Tea Party this year in November, which of course was Virginia's role of participation, you know, as all the colonies, we certainly know about the Boston Tea Party, but there was a Yorktown Tea party here in, in, in Virginia. Patrick Henry's “Give me liberty or give me death.” Anniversary is next year. Saint John's church. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. So we've already had a number of just, programs that bring together the inspiration and enthusiasm and help set the course for what will truly be a commemoration to involve all Virginians and tell all aspects of our history.
Dustin Baker
Right. And, speaking of involving all Virginians, if someone's listening to this right now and they're just becoming aware of this and Centennial, what are some ways they can get involved?
Cheryl Wilson
I would say welcome, friends. There are so many ways you can get involved. And we want to have you. We want to see, we want to see you over and over. First thing you can do is visit and bookmark VA250.org and start looking at the signature events that the commission itself, is putting on for VA 250 and and then look for local events, what your area is. Certainly you can use this calendar, under events and places to visit to search by locality what’s near you. Start making your plan for the 250th and how you'll be involved. We want you at all VA 250 events again, including July 4th and Common Cause and I should say Dustin that each locality has a local 250th committee. The full listing is on our website. Look for local events, volunteer. It. Show up, be part of it. You’ll find something new at every one of these, I guarantee. So volunteer opportunities, educational resources. If, people if your audience or NPS sites and museums and historic home, those who work there, we have grant programs available to provide some seed funding. I always like to say, “like, follow, and share” on social media. We're on all social media channels, and you can find it by using hashtag VA 250. So tag us in your social media, follow along with ours, participate. That's one of the quickest and most granular ways, to be involved. And then of course, support. We have a VA 250 commemoration society for those who can support with their treasure as well as their time and donate, to further education efforts across the state. So they're very many ways, and we welcome, we welcome everyone and can't wait to see you at events.
Dustin Baker
Right. And, you know, Cheryl, this will be the the last question we have for you. With so many different historic sites across Virginia, so many different communities being engaged and involved with this, what can we do to ensure that everyone is included in this commemoration? When so many people have been excluded or marginalized in our country's history, in these very stories that we're going to be commemorating and telling.
Cheryl Wilson
Absolutely, because this is a commemoration for all Virginians, and everyone has a place at the table. So the VA 250 Commission, Dustin, which is, chaired by Delegate Terry Austin from Botetourt, our vice chair, Senator Mamie Locke from Hampton, and of course, our honorary national chair is Carly Fiorina has been intentional in, in involving every audience. Senator Locke chairs an African American advisory council. We have, Chief Steve Atkins from the Chickahominy Tribe who chairs the Tribal Nations Leadership Advisory Council, composed of Chiefs of all Virginian tribes. We very intentionally ask these groups to help program events like July 4th and Common Cause, and all of the things that VA 250 will do and we have many others, I just named two actually, there are many other advisory groups similar to very intentionally help in creating programing and designing events in which every voice is welcome, every person sees themselves and feels welcome. So that's been, an intentional outreach for VA 250 to involve all Virginians.
Dustin Baker
Well, great. Cheryl, we just want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. you know, as someone who was born in the 1980s, I didn't really appreciate the full scope and significance of this commemoration until I started looking back to the 1976 Bicentennial commemorations and how much that meant for the country at the time. And I truly appreciate the work that you're putting into commemorating the 250th here in Virginia and, truly respect the the task you have ahead of you. So, just want to thank you for joining us on the podcast, and, we look forward to talking with you again in the future. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land: History, Mystery and Monuments. Next month, it's the National Park Service’s birthday, so be sure to tune in to our next episode.
Episode 8
Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but sometimes those three pieces are not enough. On this episode of our podcast, we set the stage for how the Washington story began here. Who was living here before the arrival of John Washington in 1657? What were their lives like? Even at national parks that are based around historic events like ours, we find that the prologue can reveal important parts of our national heritage.
George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born, only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present and future of this place brick by brick. On this podcast series upon this Land History, mystery and monuments.
The National Park Service was created in the Organic Act of 1916, and it will be turning 108 years old on August 25th of this year. Hi, my name is Dustin Baker and I'm the Chief of interpretation here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. As of this recording, there are 431 national park units in the United States. When these 431 places became national parks, it also became the Park Service's duty to share their stories that go back thousands of years. Even at sites that are based around historic events like ours, we find that the broader story reaches beyond the boundaries of the park and can reveal the character of our national heritage.
On this episode of our podcast, we want to set the stage for how the Washington story began here and give our listeners a sense of this place. The Northern Neck of Virginia is a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay, bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. Who was living here when the Washington story began? What were their lives like? To help us paint the picture, we are joined again by Doctor Phil Levy.
Phil Levy
When the Europeans arrived, they encounter an indigenous population that had been living on these rivers for thousands of years. They'd had a very well structured, efficient, sustainable way of life. They’re people who will come to be called the Algonquians, referring to a language group, a language group that's identifiable all up and down the eastern seaboard, going as far as the upper ends of New England, all the way down to sort of the bottom of Virginia. They’re... they move into the area. I think it's about 4000 years ago, don’t quote me I could be mistaken, but it's right around then. This group of people, so it's called the proto Algonquian, the ones that are sort of not yet the Algonquians. Remember that we don't, we don’t see this stuff in records. We have to piece this stuff together. And it's a bunch of different clues, tell us about this. And one of the most useful ones are their ceramics. At first, indigenous people are using stone tools and making baskets. Baskets are not going to survive well in the archeological record. So in stone tools, well, but stone tools produce a large amount of what's called debitage or flakes. As you, as you break the stone tool downs, a lot of refuse that spalls off as your as you're making your your spear point or arrow point or knife. And that's all very valuable, but it's the advent of ceramics that really start to change things because ceramics have they change over time, and they can be styled very intentionally, and they're valuable for a few different reasons. For one thing, they survive. The indigenous people of the region make large vessels. They make small vessels. There's a whole variety of techniques that go into it. There's some stuff that simple technology like if you're going to make a larger vessel with larger sides, tall sides, you need to make that ceramic, the material stronger, so they can use shell temper and stone in the matrix in the ceramic to give it some strength. But design elements are very, very important, the edges of vessels, the shapes you put at the top or top edges and do you design, how do you design it? Do you incise it? Do you...what kind of designs do you scrape in it. There's a, one of the things they do is, they've a sort of rope net and they'll sort of lay that over and press that in. So some of the vessels have a kind of, almost like fabric like pattern to them. And that's valuable for helping see how people are doing stuff and identify people. But part of what it's doing for us is identifying social groups, because in order to teach someone to do these things. In order to learn these skills, you have to be able to talk with the people. You have to be able to talk to them to teach them, and they have to able to understand you to learn. So as you see a ceramic group, a particular style, up and down the side of the creek or along the river, you're seeing people that are in daily interaction with each other and that can communicate with each other. So a lot of times when we talk about these groups in the pre-contact era, we'll talk about them in terms of their actual ceramic patterns. We'll know them. There'll be a particular type of ceramic come from a particular site, and a group of people will be known by that ceramic. So it's not just imposed on them, they are all in communication with each other. But so they were living on the rivers of Virginia, living along the Potomac and the Rappahannock, which had a close relationship because of the narrowness of the of the Northern Neck peninsula. And there were more villages, along the Rappahannock than they were on the Potomac. But, their using the Northern Neck primarily as their, as their food supply, it's sort of the they have it all very well organized. They seek out areas that are fairly low lying, that give them easy river access. Marshes are very good, and if they can be near a marsh that's advantageous because marshes are good for food supplies. Then the upper land between, is is fine for hunting. So you have deer and all of the other regional animals there that are ready access. There will also be farms. They'll, you know, the lots of farming of corn and squash going on. So that combination, but then also, harvesting, seasonal oysters is a big deal. And one of the things that that does for us, archeologically is, remember there’s thousands of years of people doing this. There are habitual gathering sites because that's where the big oyster beds are. So they come back year after year. And as they gather those oysters, the shells pile up. In some cases for, you know, a thousand years or more, you have, like this mound of shells. Archeologists call them shell middens, but they have other stuff in them as well as shells. But they are wonderful indications of where people's activity was taking place. They dot the rivers. There's, there's there's at least two, I think, on GEWA. They’re, they're all over the place.
Dustin Baker
Hey everyone, this is Dustin cutting in real quick. Just reminding our listeners that GEWA is an acronym for George Washington Birthplace. So when Phil Levy says GEWA, he's referring to the park.
Phil Levy
You have people there seasonally, living seasonally, some people staying all year long, getting away from the village, you know, living in a smaller version of the community. But you would have seeing networks of roads, some of which translate into the English road system, which itself translates into, the current roads. Route three was a Native American path for time immemorial or a version of it. The, the road that goes over Maddox Creek where the Maddox... Maddox bridge, where, William Augustine Washington's store was, that's an old Indian path as well. And some of these make their way into records that referred to as an Indian path. But ultimately they’re, so they're moving around. They’re...everything is sort of well tied in. And, they have a variety of relationships with people living to the north and the south, both harmonious and disharmonious. There are Iroquioans who live further north, further up the Susquehanna at the top of the at the top of the Chesapeake and up the Potomac. And they will periodically come down, and there'll be conflict between those northern peoples who kind of quickly can float their way down. One of the things that, because the way the water works is, the, the people who are further north have the advantage of the flow of the rivers so they can move south very quickly. Which allows them to strike raids very quickly and then go back up the river after they've done their damage. But, they're able to make these kind of lightning raids and makes them kind of intimidating. But that's happening. And there's a variety of different relationships between all the different people living along that river. The Patawomeck Indians, the Rappahannocks, who obviously live on the the river that'll come to bear their names. People called the Nanzatico, who are in the area of GEWA, they're, [indecipherable] further down the peninsula. Mostly that tends to refer to villages, which tends to be the name of the village that, the people live in. And where sort of the main leader of the village lives, and then there'll be sort of satellite, smaller villages around, around them. They're sort of part of that family and clan. All in dialog with each other, all sort of connected in a variety of different ways, socially and through trade. So it's a well used, very efficiently laid out area that people have been using in that way for thousands of years. So it's not an empty land, as the English like to imagine it to have been. it's pretty well settled, pretty, pretty efficiently used.
Jonathan Malriat
So now that we've talked about that pre-European side, what is the start of European settlement here? How does it begin, and how does that connect in with the broader Northern Neck and even the broader colonial aspects?
Phil Levy
So we tend to think of, these places as Maryland and Virginia, these two sort of like big entities, and they have colonial histories. Those names go back to the 17th century. So we tend to kind of project them backwards. And when we're talking about the period of the first half of the 17th century, we shouldn't do that. There's a lot of possibility. And, you know, they don't live knowing what the outcomes are going to be. So you get to say with the, the Virginia Company, with what establishes the colony at Jamestown, this group of financiers and, you know, well-connected people in London who pool their money, who bring in other backers who basically contract with, colonists, people to go run an enterprise, and they go and set up, set up their trade for it. Ultimately, they set up a village and, they're supposed to make a profit, supposed to find a way to make money for the company so that the the shareholders can, can make a profit. That project fails pretty quickly, and it's replaced by something else, replaced by something more organized as a colony, less as a commercial venture. But, there's no reason other people can't do that. And there are a lot of people around England at the time who're saying, well I can start a colony. I could start a colonial venture. And England, England’s policy is to sort of just let these people do what they want to do. You have to get papers, you have to get permits. But they're pretty generous in letting people have them. And there's no reason not to be, go start an enterprise. If it works, we'll make some money off of it. If it doesn't, then you bear the cost of it, and it's your problem. So you have little English colonies popping up all over the place. Some of them work, some of them don't. But there are a lot of guys who think, well, you know, maybe I could do a great thing. Maybe I could make a great colony. I could be the leader of a community. I can make a huge amount of money. And you have people like that on the Potomac. There is a colony at Jamestown, and it's, it's got some reach. You know, it has a whole bunch of settlements along the James and even further north, going on to the York and up the, a little bit up the Chesapeake that see themselves as part of that colony, that accede to the rules of that colony. They see themselves as sort of part of that project. But they're other people, other English people starting settlements who don't see themselves as part of that project. They're English people, so they all understand themselves as part of the same larger vision. But they're not necessarily Virginians. So there are a few of them. Maybe one of the one would be a man named John Mottram, who has a colony over a little community, at Coan Creek in Northumberland County and, you know, he's not really a Virginian in the 1640s, 30s and 40s. He's just there. He's he's trading with indigenous people. He certainly relates to Virginia. He's involved with them, but he's kind of his own thing. It's very far away from Jamestown. It's very hard for the reach of authority to fight them on a day to day basis. So he's kind of on his own. And there's a whole period of settlement where, where these little, little towns, these, you know, the plantation is the main unit of measure. And the leader of the plantation is kind of like in charge of a colony. One of the more interesting ones was on, Kent Island, which is up the Potomac. It's sort of near or, sorry, up the Chesapeake, sort of near Annapolis. and that was the fur trade settlement, because as you go up the Chesapeake, you get to the Susquehanna, and the Susquehanna will ultimately take you further to the interior. And so there's a fur trade kind of bringing furs down from more northerly climes and using using Kent Island as an entrepot to then ship them off to England. There’s a lot of money in the fur trade. These are beaver furs, and they're very interested in making that money. And you have a whole community that sets itself up there, complete with, you know, they bring a baker that they bring everything they need to run a small English village. They set up a garrison, a lot of them following the politics of the day. A lot of them, have Puritan sentiments, minister to them. I'm not sure. I mean, more than one. so it's. But it's its own little place that, it understands itself as its own little place. And then you get the Calvert's getting the permits to start a colony, sort of under their own little proprietary colony, meaning it's going to be a family project. But they are going to run, and they're Catholic and their allies are Catholic, and they sort of set up nominally a Catholic colony. The colonists aren't all, Catholic, but the leadership is. And this sort of immediately establishes their relationship with the Catholic Church. So it's it's it's own little thing there, on the north side of the Potomac. Which is a bit of a problem in the eyes of some Virginia planters, some of the people who are running Virginia in the 1630s, because they understand all of that as kind of being in their area of control. And the Kent Islanders who are north of where Maryland was established, they kind of see themselves as sort of allied with Virginia, particularly because of their religious sentiments. They're not too thrilled about there being a Catholic colony. They don't want to be connected to. They don't want to be under the rule of Catholics. So even though they're north of the Potomac, they understand themselves as being part of Virginia. And you've got John Mottram over there kind of being on his own. So you've got all these different little, little groups. So Maryland and Virginia have a little bit of conflict over where the border is going to be, but there's the Colonial Office that's going to make these decisions, that these are ultimately royal matters and they get settled. The Marylanders look at Kent Island and say, well, that's north of the Potomac. That should belong to us. And so there's a conflict. I think it's 1638. There's a conflict between Calvert, and the Kent Islanders and ultimately the Kent Islanders sort of yield. And they kind of fall under the control of Maryland. But they have resentments, and they harbor those resentments. They don't forget. They don't forget that there's an independent identity to, to being a Kent Islander. And some of that is connected to Puritanism. Some of it's just that they were their own. They came to be their own community and sort of were absorbed. And all the while, John Mottram’s kind of running his own show, you know, doing his trading and doing his tobacco. And so, all this might have gone on. I mean, it might have continued this way, with a few more settlements, settlements getting started here. And there's this man named William Claiborne, which was involved with Kent Island, but was involved in almost everything in this phase in Virginia, getting out and acquiring land patents and making alliances. He's another guy who sort of potentially could have been, you know, a major player in his own sort of colonial universe. Everything might have continued that way until England sort of fell into civil strife and, between roughly 1640 and 1650, you've got, a whole upheaval of the British colonial, the British, sorry, national system. You've got a civil war, you've got conflicts between first, at first you have, conflict between Parliament and the king, then war, then ultimately the execution of the king. And, the installation of a new form of government by 1650. It's the, the triumph of the Puritans. The Puritans take control of the entire nation and and those conflicts play themselves out in, in the colonies. They played themselves out also on the Potomac. Maryland, for example, is a prime target because of its Catholicism. So you have a guy named Ingle who sort of leads it comes to Maryland and leads a revolt against, against the Calverts. Who flee, and the whole place falls into into civil strife. Maryland’s a fairly small colony at the at the time. It's only couple hundred people at most. B their plantations are burned, alliances fall apart, new ones new ones are formed, the whole place falls into turmoil. And the Kent Islanders, who were, still harboring their resentment, they remember this, they're involved. And what starts to happen as this all settles out is a group of Marylanders, for one reason or another, there's been a lot of work to try to figure out exactly what they're thinking. It's hard to tell exactly what they're thinking. But they look to the south side of the Potomac and say, we can, we should be over there. We can, we can get away from some of the chaos of Maryland and and the and the way the Calverts try to control things. Sort of, it's sort of like a sort of a one-two punch. The Calvert's have a very controlling interest in people's business affairs, but at the same time, there's a series of rebellions, related obviously, but a series of rebellions that lead to a kind of chaos. And to some of these guys, they look across the river and they see someone like John Mottram, who by that point is, by 1650 that that has become part of Virginia, that that Northumberland County, that's become part of the, part of Virginia. And Mottram, sort of his land was the staging ground against the Calvert's during the troubles of the 1640s. They look to the south and say, if we start up there, we escape the control of the Calvert's and some of the chaos of Maryland and Virginia just looks very stable to them. Suddenly looks like a very calm place. And so a few of them head over. The first person to put a land patent in on, the south side in GEWA is the guy named Henry Brooks, who owned a large portion of the land at the park, where the park is. He was a Kent Islander and came over. A few of the other people who came over, Hercules Bridges was a Kent Islander, and sort of harbored that resentment. About a dozen guys, all former Marylanders who make this migration to the South and kind of start all over again. And one of the most significant for the park story, is a guy named Nathaniel Pope. Pope came to Maryland on his own dime in 1630s, not sure the exact date. If you came with money, you could buy your way into Maryland. You got land and status immediately, as opposed to coming as a servant. Well Pope bought his way in, he appears to have come from Bristol. Seems to have a very strong connections to Bristol. I don't think we have any document that tells us that he's from Bristol, but there is a Pope merchant family operative at the time in Bristol, and he refers to his business interests in Bristol. His son moves to Bristol, so he appears to be very well-connected there. That's presumably where he came from. But he moved in to Maryland, set up of his plantation, immediately got involved in the fur trade. So he had Kent Island connections. His Kent Island connections were so good that during the conflict of the 1640s, as things started to fall apart, Calvert sent Pope to Kent Island to make sure that the Kent Islanders wouldn't join the rebellion against Calvert authority. So he's an he's an ally of the Calverts, but he also has good enough Kent Island connections that he's the he's the Protestant guy they want to send to talk to the Kent Islanders to keep them onside. And it's not clear what happened there, because all this stuff ends up in court afterwards. And people say different things and contradictory things. But somewhere in all of this, Pope seems to say, you know, we could just go to the south side of the Potomac and start all over again. We can get away from this. So he seems like he may be double dealing. Pope, perhaps an interesting figure. Some people have read him as a rebel because because of this. Because we can go across the river and start again. But he's, he's, I read him as a weathervane. It's which way is the wind going? That's where I'm going. So he's, I think, he's a survivor. I don't think he's a rebel. When it's expedient to be on the rebel side, he's on the rebel side, when it is not to be, he isn't. He's, he's loyal to Calvert, but then he seems to be scheming to bring people away from Calvert's authority. But then afterwards, he signs a loyalty agreement once again to Calvert. But all the while he's acquiring land on the southside of the Potomac. So he purchased land or acquired lands, hard to tell exactly the system, because it's happening outside of our gaze. But he appears to be on Maddox Creek, probably up Maddox Creek, somewhere near Maddox Bridge, I believe is where he was living. And he's, he's a big guy who's wealthy enough that he could pay his way into the colony, and he's got a network of allies. And so finally, he shifts locations, we see in the mid 1650s reference to him being on the south side. And then at some point, he's of the south side. By 1658, Westmoreland County is its own county, separate from, Northampton County, ah, from Northumberland County. And and Pope is sort of the big man in the area. But still, I think it's best to see Pope in the same way we would see someone like Mottram or William Claiborne. Someone who's like, I'm going to be a big guy, I’ll start my own place, you know, I'll be a governor. I'll, you know, I'll have nice clothes and all that stuff. I think that's how he's seeing himself. It doesn't quite happen that way for him, but there's no reason to think that he's thinking any differently. He's just, he's an adventurer, and his story turns dramatically because he's he's aging by 16, you know, 57. And, the, by the time Westmoreland County becomes its own county and joins Virginia, sort of initially as part of, Northumberland, but then separates out. It's now really, these colonies are gradually, sorry these counties, these these colonial settlements are getting absorbed into the Virginia system. And I think that the reason the planters wanted that was they wanted the stability. Maryland was chaotic. And I think that the scars of the experience of Maryland stay with them. There's evidence for this. The Maryland families continue to marry one another. So there is this, even if they never refer to themselves as former Marylanders, there are family alliances that start to take shape on the Potomac that reflect the fact that the people had come from Maryland. So they seem to retain some sense of themselves. and what Virginia gives them is, is a stable court system, a stable government system. So they're able to conduct their business without a lot of, without a lot of worry of chaos. What you want, and it's very important to these people, you want to know that your debt, the debts to you will be honored and that there's a system for ensuring that, that you will get the money you are owed. And that's sort of a mutual thing. You know, I want to know that your debts to me are going to be paid, and you want to know that my debts to you are going to be paid. So when they see, and you need that for commerce to work effectively, so they're perfectly happy in some sort of Hobbesian way to, to sacrifice some of their freedom in order to have good, strong government systems that they can rely on. And of course, these big men, they all become the leaders of the, of the county anyway. So in their own way, they do kind of fulfill that dream of becoming the big men. They're just the big men of a county, which they basically run. So it works very well for them. The Virginia system also is sort of clever in that it enables the creation of new counties very easily. You just need to have, by the time as we spread out, we get further and further away from the county court. We all need to go to the county court all the time. That's what we conduct our affairs, our land patents have to be certified, our debts to one another have to be handled in court. So we always want to get to court. But as people move further and further afield, it gets harder and harder to go to court because of the distance. Likewise, the church, which is often near the court and eventually, now that a group of people live further away, they all look at one another and say, well, let's just let's get our own court, let's start our own county. And so Virginia counties proliferate that way, through the expansion, of the settlement. It's not like that New England, in New England its very hard to start a new county. They don't want you going off into, you know, the hinterlands and starting over again. They want to have more control, whereas in Virginia, more more land is more Virginia, more tobacco, it works fine for them. So that's sort of what happens. You also have at the same time people coming, you know, as more and more people are coming into Virginia, you have people coming, people who are Virginians, English Virginians who are coming, we could say sort of from the south into the Northern Neck. So the population of the Northern Neck at this period ends up being a combination of Virginians or, sorry, English people who who come of through Virginia into the into the Northern Neck counties, and Marylanders who are coming south and particularly, that matters particularly for GEWA. Doesn't matter for everywhere in the Northern Neck. But it's terribly important for GEWA because in 1657, John Washington is going to arrive and he's going to float right into Nathaniel Pope's world and just walk right into that and within three years of that, Nathaniel Pope will pass away, and John Washington basically takes over. And so he walks right into that Maryland echo world and becomes the new Nathaniel Pope. So very advantageous situation for him, but all rooted in this sort of this chaos of the first half of the 17th century.
Dustin Baker
Thank you for listening to this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments. On our next episode, we're going to continue the conversation with Doctor Phil Levy, and we're going to segue into the beginning of the Washington story here with John Washington.
Episode 9
George Washington was born here in 1732 but the Washington story in the Northern Neck began long before then in the 1640s, when the Pope family moved across the Potomac and settled in Virginia. In our last episode, we explored the story of Nathaniel Pope and the other early settlers of today's Westmoreland County including the Native people. Today, we will explore the arrival of John Washington in the 1650s, the first Washington to immigrate to Virginia and who had become the Great Grandfather of George.
Welcome back to Upon This Land: History, Mystery and Monuments. My name is Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. George Washington was born in 1732. But the Washington story began here in the 1640s, when the Pope family moved across the Potomac and settled in Virginia. Nathaniel Pope, in the early settlers of today's Westmoreland County, set the stage for the arrival of John Washington, the first Washington to immigrate to Virginia and who had become the great grandfather of George. To help us learn more about the society John arrived in and the society he helped to build, we're joined again by Doctor Phillip Levy.
Phil Levy
So he's a guy whose life was defined by the crises, the English crisis of the 1640s. That is the pivotal central event in his life. that sets him on a trajec...on a trajectory. You know, people have liked the fact that Nathaniel Pope got balled up in, the rebellions against Maryland, because you can read people wanting to sort of project a kind of genetic revolutionary quality. You know, here’s like George Washington's great, great, great, great and he was a rebel. So, you know, ergo, people want to do this kind of projection, you know, and it's fantasy, but it's, you know, it has a certain charm, certain, literary symmetry, even though they're not parallel cases, they don't mean the same thing. It doesn't really mean much. And it ignores a lot of English history, a lot of American history in order to do that. But, but John Washington, senior, the one we're talking about, absolutely his trajectory is defined by these events. That's because his father, Lawrence. And once again, these guys have this habit of just the Washington's use the name John and Lawrence over and over and over again. But, but his father, Lawrence, was a cleric. Was a... was a minister, cleric and was very well positioned, very well connected. And he got caught up in the, the, conflicts of the 1640s and ended up with the position, with a position at Oxford, where he was sort of there to keep Puritans out. That was kind of his job. So he's the real loyalist to the Crown and to the Anglican Church, and he's there to sort of swat back Puritans and make sure that they don't end up in the faculty. They don't end up getting ministerial certifications, because this is very much a conflict, about how the church is going to be run. So he's in that position. And when the parliamentarians, you know, when, when the Crown sort of fails and you get new parliament authority, they start enacting revenge. And one of the people who gets caught up in the revenge of the parliamentarians is Lawrence Washington, who loses his position at Oxford and is given sort of a little crap parish. Right. And sort of is not a wealthy man and sort of marginal and that sort of, you know, shakes his world. And John and his brother Lawrence, are caught up in this. So these are these are young men who had had there not been the English Civil War, they would have gone to Oxford. They he would have been presumably would have picked up exactly where his father was. And become, you know, a man of letters been, you know, a cleric and, you know, and, maybe if he had held the same position, who knows, who knows who he would have been. Right. But, but that doesn't happen. Instead, his father loses his position and ends up in a poor parish, and both of the sons are forced to kind of go find a way to make a living, particularly after their father passed away. They now have to figure out what they're going to do, and both of them go to London and apprentice themselves. So a completely different trajectory and in John's case, he apprenticed himself into the world of merchant houses. So he learns to become a merchant. Now we need to clarify that, because I think we we don't, it's too easy to misunderstand the 17th century. Being able to write clearly in a good, clear hand, being able to compose a letter well, that, you know, that's comprehensible and literary, being able to do sums, being able to handle basic bookkeeping and understanding, the basics of commerce, those are specialized skills. That's not something that people just learned in elementary school. Wealthy elites will learn things like writing, but most people none wealthy, you know, non-elite people, you have to learn that. And those are the skills of being a merchant. And that's what you learn when when you learn the business, being a merchant, the workings. You also learn these details of how to write, how to write a good letter, how to balance books, specialized skills. And John Washington had those. So he attached himself to a firm, run by a man named Prescott and and Prescott's brother in law, I think, is Prescott's brother in law. And, we don't know the details because we don't have a lot of records. Everything we know comes from one court case and it's all third hand. So, you know, we don't we don't get a lot. Nobody outlines this. But, John attached himself to this firm. And the first thing he did for that firm was go to Poland and then to Denmark on a tobacco mission. So he's working in the world of tobacco merchants. What's happening is Virginia tobacco is is being packed up. It's grown and packed in Virginia and shipped to European markets. Just the English markets. But not everybody's going to the English market there. Also, people are selling in the continental markets and the sort of remnants of the Hanseatic League, the old trade along the Baltic that sort of links these different ports together. There's a long established world of trade there, and the English and the Dutch, in the 16th and 17th centuries are breaking into that. So it's kind of a growing market for English and Dutch merchants. And there's all sorts of woolens and furs and, you know, all sorts of stuff that moves along those markets. And tobacco is a commodity. So there's there's a market for tobacco in Poland and Denmark and anywhere along the Baltic. So Prescott seems to be operating in that market. And so Washington went first to Poland and then to then to Denmark. And he goes, we know that he's he was in Copenhagen and he went up to, Elsinore up at the top. That's where Hamlet takes place. And he went so he's going up the, up the peninsula on an errand. So he's he's fairly low in the in the hierarchy. He's, his job, it's what was called at the time a “supercargo”, meaning that he's it's kind of what it sounds like. He's the superintendent of the cargo. So he's not a sailor. Sailors are a thing unto themselves. That's a, that's a whole other training, that you have. And you can't fake that. You either. You either know how to do this stuff or you don't. You either know how to tie complicated knots with one hand, and know how to climb the rigging. And your hands will reflect that you know how to do that, because they're going to be callused and blackened from tar. You can't pretend to be a sailor. And if you did not come up in the world of ships and go through an apprenticeship on a ship, you're not a sailor. So he's not a sailor. He's a merchant. But he's not a he's not a financial backer. He's not an investor. He's he's an employee. And the job is the super cargo. He's the guy who sort of is in charge of making sure that everything's handled well with the cargo. So as he's going up Denmark, he's he's on a merchant, merchants errant. He's he's either selling, he's either he's either making arrangements for delivery of tobacco or he's picking up payments for tobacco. It's hard to tell what he's doing. He ends up, though from there on another vessel called the Seahorse that went to Virginia with Prescott. And, they go into the Chesapeake and up to the Potomac. So Prescott knows where he's going. He's got this all worked out. Longstanding trade networks, long standing alliances. And he ends up it's hard to tell exactly where they are, but they're probably at the head of Maddo... sorry, at the at the mouth of Maddox Creek. And again, it's hard to know what's happening. But one thing we do know, the standard practices, the the tobacco loading season when the shipping goes out is the winter. Takes all year to do this. And the shipments go out in the winter. So the tobacco fleet, the boats that are going to come in and get the tobacco barrels and then bring them back to Europe, that's all happening in the winter. So they're there in the winter and something went wrong. There are a few things that go wrong, but, Washington. The first thing to go wrong is that, well, it's not the first thing, but the most important, their ship sinks. So fully loaded, and, it sinks, and it's, they probably hit a shoals that the river shoals are always changing. The the Potomac is a little turbulent, but it's also really cold. And so when they try to haul the cargo out, there's ice on, there’s ice on the ropes. They lose the boats that they try to rescue with. Its, just a, it's really a mess. It's a really bad thing. And then when they're able to bring the barrels up, to salvage the barrels of tobacco, they're all ruined. So they just have to get rid of it. So the whole cargoes lost, everything, all the investments gone, all wasted. It's a big deal. Not not a happy occasion. If you think about Washington sort of beginning this voyage and London going to Poland and then to Denmark, and that now he’s in Virginia. And then he's like trying to haul tobacco barrels out of the water, like, this is this isn't good. This isn't a good experience. So there's several different ways that people market tobacco at the time, conduct this trade. And one of the ways you do it is you have a long term relationship with, with the tobacco planter or several, enough to fill your hold. So, you know, you're going to be going back to a particular set of planters next because you've got a business relationship with them. Another way that people do this is they put someone in Virginia to act as their agent on the ground, and it might be that that's what John was going to be. That he was going to be Prescott's agent in Virginia, because he gets there and he decides to stay. Now, why does he decide to stay? Did he, was that always the plan? That he was going to be an on site agent who was going to sort of, you know, handle the business on the on the English, sorry, on the Virginia side. It's also possible that he found that he really hated, hated being at sea. I mean, that's a long experience. And, you know, you just might decide he's done with this. There may have been conflicts or personal conflicts between him and Prescott that we just don't see. We know that they went to court. So, you know, that doesn't have to be read as animus, but it's not good. Romantics have wanted to invent that, he fell in love with, Nathaniel Pope's daughter. So you have this romantic edge. I that's probably the least credible of all of these explanations. But, you know, that there's there's business opportunity. But, Nathaniel Pope becomes very important here because he sees in John Washington an opportunity. And it's significant that Pope had the money to set himself up in Maryland, was called Mister. So he's a gentleman by title, but he doesn't seem to know how to sign his name. So he might not have been fully literate. But here comes John Washington, trained as a merchant who can write letters, who can do sums, and more than that can teach Pope's children to do that. So he can act as a tutor who can teach Nathaniel Jr and Thomas how to do these things also, who both are still minors, he can teach them. He's, it's a very valuable skill set. And very quickly, Pope and Washington formed an alliance. And the alliance crystallizes in John Washington marrying Anne Pope. So Washington kind of walked into this world or floated into this world and immediately married the daughter of the wealthiest man, most influential man in that little corner of, in that corner of the colony and immediately sort of steps right into that role. What's interesting is that, the whole thing comes to a loss. The whole issue with him and Prescott comes to a lawsuit, which is how we know the details. And that had to just be great because prominent men step forward. I mean, this is a guy who's just a merchant, but he's got prominent men backing him. Washington asked for his pay from Prescott, which, of course, makes perfect sense. You know, people have misread this. And again, there's this projection that the same romantic mind that thought that he saw Anne Washington, you know, standing in front of the house and said, you know, that is my future wife. Like, none of that happened. but that the same romantic mind has wanted John to have been a partner in the firm. And the language of the court case leads to that confusion. But he's not the partner, and what he's asking for is the settling of the account, meaning he wants his pay. The role, like I say, is super cargo, we know this role. But the crucial thing is that, well, the way we know that he's not a partner is when they bring the barrels up, the barrels are marked with, the, with Prescott's name, but they're not Washington's name. So the barrels will always be marked with the partnership name. The sailors, if there were seven barrels, one of those barrels belongs to the sailors. And they will get the value of that barrel as their pay. So they have an investment in this. The rest will belong to the partners. The partners will get the wealth, and then they will pay their employee, the super cargo. So John Washington doesn't have anything with his name on that vessel. He's owed money and right as he sees, yeah, he sees his, employers basically having lost the entire cargo, he's like, alright, that's your problem. You still owe me money for the services I rendered. Right, so, so he takes it to the court to try to get that money, and, and Nathaniel Pope’s right there with him, like, backing him up. He's got some other people, too, who are who are like prominent men who are stepping forward to support John Washington. So he's very appealing. There’s something, there's something they see in him. I think it's his skill that he brings to things. He brings that merchant skill, he knows how to write, he knows how to, you know, knows how to, you know, cipher. He knows how to do the books. He also brings London connections because he's connected to the world of London merchants. He’s it, you know, he's very alluring. So you create an advantageous marriage, you're linking him to your family. And, and off you go. And so that's where we are by like 1660. Then Nathaniel Pope passes away with both of the sons are still minors. John is left as the, as the guardian of these two minor sons. He's got his wife, and the acreage, so he suddenly becomes Nathaniel Pope. You know, Nathaniel Pope did all the craft work and then obligingly passed away and John Washington sort of steps right in. And is like, I'll take it from here father-in-law and, continues to, continues to grow,
Dustin Baker
Hey, everyone, this is Dustin cutting in. We're about to hear about some of the many different roles John Washington had in his community. And I want to warn our listeners that this segment includes some graphic material, including the topic of suicide.
Phil Levy
John Washington was a justice of the peace, meaning he sat on the county court because he was, you know, the literate person who could, you know, write, write, in a legible hand, you know, and knew how to spell words, knew how to do these things that are special skills. He would be asked to do a variety of different jobs. That's normal. Right. That's. And you want to be asked to do these jobs. That's part of being a gentryman. And one of the jobs that he gets that's wildly misunderstood. I just, there are two positions to get misunderstood when people look back at the colonial records, one of them is attorney. And being an attorney in our world does not mean what it meant to these guys. There certainly are people who get like a little bit of legal training, and there are people in Virginia who had legal training, so they're there. But somebody is your attorney when you ask them to act as your agent in a court case, and the only reason you might ask them to do that is because they either are better connected than you are, or they know the law better than you do, you do, or they write better than you do. So you get a lot of these guys who act as an attorney for a neighbor, right? Meaning they they represent them in court. But like genealogies and ancestors will say “And he was an attorney!” Like, no, no, he wasn't an attorney. He's a farmer. He's a farmer who went to court and represented his friend. So this this word attorney gets given this like weight that it really sort of doesn't deserve in most cases. Well, there's another one that's even stranger. And that's the job of coroner or a coroner is a member of the county court who's commissioned to do an investigation of a suspicious death. It's not it's not, you know, it's not a full time position. They're not medical doctors. They have no medical training whatsoever. They're farmers who are on the county court who are given a position of responsibility in this case being a coroner. Well, there's an instance or two instances where John Washington is asked to be a coroner and you can find people in the romantic days who are trying to, you know, because what they wanted to do was, you know, manifest George Washington's greatness somehow in his ancestors. So they just puff up any achievement of these guys, you know, so, you know, John Washington went to war and he was a coroner. Like he wasn't a coroner. He had the role of coroner in two cases. He doesn't know anything about the physical body. So but he's, he's a trusted source who can look at a case and make an evaluation. So there's a guy named William Freake, with an E at the end, and he's a small landholder, landowner, one of the early patent holders from the 1650s over on Mattox Creek. Over, it's off GEWA land, but, but he's there, before John Washington, and he's there during John Washington. And at some point, I don’t remember the date. It's the 60s, sometime in the 60s. He has a servant, William Freake does, who waded out into Mattox Creek and drowned himself. So it's a suicide. Now, there's any number of reasons this would have happened, and nobody's really that concerned about the reason it happened, in the 1650s, the 60s. So that's not really what they're going to sleep about. They just want to understand what happened, not why. And John Washington's the coroner in that case. He conducts an investigation and it ends up in the county records. And his investigation is that this was, what they called at the times self murder, which is a crime. It's still a crime. It's a complicated crime. The crime resonates more for them than it does for us. They are very worried that, a sort of melancholia would spread over the servile labor force. They don't want their servants killing themselves. They have an investment in them. They don't want this to happen. So they have an interest in stopping this. It also has a spiritual dimension that scares them. Its very much a part of their understanding of the world. And so when John Washington concluded that, that this was a self murder, the servant is then buried at a crossroad near Maddox, near Maddox Bridge, with a spike driven in him. So, you know, those, those classic vampire burials. The person who has committed self murder is buried outside of sacred ground with a spike driven through them. And so that person, whoever they were, we don't know their name is never recorded, was buried, is still out there, presumably. You know, the roads haven't changed all that much, but that person was buried up there, and John Washington oversaw that, oversaw that investigation and that burial. And that speaks to place in a really interesting way, because it shows in an awareness, of, there's the the places people are supposed to be buried, when they die in good status, if that's how we want to phrase it, versus people who are problematic and everybody in the area would have known about this, they all would have known. They all would be. It was a place that people pass regularly, pass over regularly. They would know this. So, John Washington becomes very active in the church. Um, the parish is named after him. Like in his lifetime it get's named Washington Parrish, which is really quite a thing. And then, ah, if you had an doubt about his, um, convictions, his will is a masterpiece. It's, you know, his, George Washington's will begins, I believe, “in the name of God, father, God amen.” Right then, right. That kind of thing. Augustine Washington, George's father, same kind of thing. John Washington's will is like, this long Anglican preamble. I mean, it's it's like it's like a it's like an exercise in Anglican theology. It's phenomenal. It's great. But he's like, lays out the path for salvation and how salvation works through the church. And it's he really cares about this stuff like this serious business. And, and of course, you'd imagine that he would. I mean, his father, you know, suffered literally for the benefit of the Anglican Church, right? So he does not take this lightly. This is serious business to him. And so he's on the vestry of establishing this church. And when he passed away, he left in his will that there would be money for a sermon, which is a common thing to do, in his memory. And money for two objects that he would leave in the church. And one of them is the Ten Commandments, and the other is the royal crest. So like there it is, like it's he wants you to be in that church looking at the royal crest, because he is completely in on the Anglican church. That's who John Washington is. So, you know, at that level that's who he is. He's obviously involved in a whole bunch of colonial affairs, very prominent in the, in the lead up to the, to the Indian wars in the 1670s. He, arguably is instrumental in bringing on that conflict. When they went up to the Susquehannock fort, immediately opposite Mount Vernon, and besieged it for a month or more. And then the whole thing, sort of, the whole enterprise, kind of fell apart. So his one and only military enterprise, it doesn't go very well. It's paralleled in, in George Washington's early military escapades also being failures. People have seen a parallel there. John's a land acquirer. So he acquired the land of Mount Vernon. I mean, he's sort of opposite it and says, well, I'll patent that too and get about 2000 acres of land there. That stays in the family all the way through. He acquired lots of land near, near where he was living on Maddox Creek. He acquired the old Nanzatico land. He's given, he was given the rights to take the Nanzatico Indians land once they weren't there anymore, which, of course, only creates an incentive to make sure they're not there anymore, which is what happened. He ends up claiming the Nanzatico’s land. And then during, Bacon's Rebellion, true to form, he stays loyal. He's a loyalist to, to Governor Berkeley, which is, again an echo of the Anglican establishment. He as things got bad, he either went to Maryland or to the, Eastern Shore. We're not sure exactly where, but we know he left because people talk about him. They back of the boat and he goes, so. Yeah, so he's, he is, I don't think we can understand him without understanding what got Nathaniel Pope to be who he is, because he steps in and takes that hand off and then builds on it and creates, what begins to be the basis for the Washington family fortune that's going to lead, that lead to an extremely wealthy family with an enormous amount of local prominence.
Dustin Baker
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and monuments. October is archeology month in Virginia, and our next episode is one you won't want to miss. In 2022, Building X a significant archeological feature in the Memorial Area of the park was reopened for modern analysis. What did we learn about it? Find out on our next episode.
Episode 10- Part 1
In the early 21st century, advancements in historic archeology led park staff and archeologists to review the efficacy of past excavations of Building X, which in turn led to a recommendation to reopen the foundations. In partnership with New South Associates, Inc., Building X was once again opened in 2022 with the hopes of shedding more light on 86 years of uncertainty. We share findings from this recent study of Building X, bringing us one step closer to unraveling one of the biggest mysteries of the park
George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born. Only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present, and future of this place. Brick by brick. On this podcast series Upon This Land history, mystery and monuments.
In January of 1930, George Washington Birthplace National Monument was created as a unit of the National Park Service. At the same time the park was created, the Wakefield National Memorial Association was working to preserve the landscape of George's childhood. Among the association's plans was to build a memorial house museum worthy of the first president. During the construction of the Memorial House Museum, archeologists excavated a colonial era brick foundation yards away. The NPS waited until the completion of the Memorial House Museum before further investigating the foundation. When the large brick foundation was finally fully exposed in 1936, it led some to speculate that this was the original location of George Washington's birth home. Especially when coupled with the numerous 18th century artifacts recovered during the excavation, the foundation was named Building X due to the uncertainty of what it truly represented. In the 1970s, another archeological project was completed, but yielded no new evidence to prove that Building X was the birth-home of George Washington. The NPS, however, began to refer to this location as the definitive ruins of the birth home. During this period, the nation was celebrating its bicentennial in 1976, and the resulting pressure to identify the location of George's birth home may have been the driving force behind this dramatic change. In the early 21st century, advancements in historic archeology led park staff and archeologists to review the efficacy of past excavations and analysis, which in turn led to a recommendation to reopen the foundations for reexamination. In partnership with New South Associates, Inc., Building X was once again opened in 2022 with the hopes of shedding more light on 86 years of uncertainty. On this episode of our podcast. We share findings from this recent study of Building X. Bringing us one step closer to unraveling one of the biggest mysteries of the park. Hi, my name is Dustin Baker, and I'm the Chief of Interpretation and Education here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. Joining me today is Kerry Gonzalez, Chief of Cultural Resource Management for the park. Jonathan Malriat, lead interpretive park ranger. And Maureen Meyers, principal investigator of archeology with New South Associates.
All right, everyone, thanks for joining us. We actually have two new guests on the podcast this month. And if y'all could introduce yourselves.
Kerry Gonzalez
Hi. My name is Kerry Gonzalez. I'm the Chief of Cultural Resource Management at George Washington Birthplace and Thomas Stone National Historic Site.
Maureen Meyers
Hi, I'm Maureen Meyers, I'm a principal investigator of archeology at New South Associates, based in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Jonathan Malriat
Okay, so, Kerry, why don’t you take a second and tell us what does your job entail as the cultural resource specialist? What is that job or even what's your background in getting into that job?
Kerry Gonzalez
Well, the background's easier to explain, because I feel like I do so many things here, wear so many hats. My background is in, historic archeology. I've been doing archeology professionally since 2001. So when I got my first job as a field technician in Pennsylvania, and I've been working and, I worked in the cultural resource management industry for 20 years, I just recently came to the birthplace. And just for the listeners, I'll probably refer to the park here as the birthplace or GEWA throughout the rest of this. I came here in January. I was a lab manager for a long time with a firm. So I've got a strong background in material culture, artifacts from all different time periods. Here, I'm responsible for all the archeological resources and architectural resources. So both above and below ground, helping with compliance. If, something needs to be done to one of the buildings or there's ground disturbance, I help with research, plan excavations, and just, you know, help preserve and protect and interpret the the wonderful resources that we have here.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah, that definitely is an all encompassing title there.
Kerry Gonzalez
Yeah, it is.
Jonathan Malriat
So, Maureen, you said I think it was primary investigator. So do you wanna tell us a bit what that entails and also what your background is?
Maureen Meyers
Sure. Yeah, actually principal investigator. And, so that entails, I oversee about at least a dozen, 12 to 15 projects at a time for New South. I don't go in the field very much anymore. I do occasionally. So I do a range of projects. We have, contracts with most, I think, all DOTs in the southeast. Most of the DOTs. And then we also have contracts with different Park Service units, Forest Service, Corps of Engineers. So, for example, right now I have a crew in the field in Mississippi on a thousand acre survey, for pine beetle infestation that has to be done. And I'm also overseeing the report writing of other similar things. We have a lot of Corps, Corps of Engineers right now. But I also do things like I did a revised National Historic Landmark for a mound site in Arkansas. And, I write a lot of cultural context and do research on another site on the Natchez Trace in, Mississippi. And then I do a lot of overseeing a lot of Georgia projects and Virginia projects. So my I'm actually a native of Virginia. I grew up in the Fairfax area. I knew from an early age I wanted to do archeology, and my first archeology was as a volunteer in high school at Mount Vernon. Actually, because it was real close to my house. And they had Saturday hours and they were wonderful with volunteers. I went on to Radford, and then UGA and ultimately University of Kentucky for my degrees and, I actually did, I do a lot of my research on a mound site in southwest Virginia, and I still do research there and work with folks there. I have done a lot of cultural resource management, and for many years did it in Virginia, out of Richmond for different offices. But I've also worked in South Carolina. And my specialties are Native Americans of the late contact, pre-contact and contact period. And I actually study Native American women, in households and production of fabrics and dyes and those kind of things. So I have a wide ranging interests.
Jonathan Malriat
So so you mentioned an acronym of CRM. Do you want to take a second to explain what CRM is? Just so anyone who's not familiar with that term, aka myself has an idea?
Maureen Meyers
Sure. CRM stands for Cultural Resource Management. In, you know, there's there's about a 150 year history of archeology in the America, in America, in the US. But it wasn't until the 1960s, as we experienced a lot of, building boom and infrastructure boom, after World War two. So the, the, building, the construction of all the major highways, archeologists began to realize, that a lot of cultural resources, what most people would term archeology sites and important architecture, historic architecture, was being destroyed. And so the National Historic Preservation Act, passed in the late 1960s, was a way that, a lot of archeologists came together to make sure that those resources, if they were important, were not going to be destroyed and would otherwise be recorded. And so that created the National Register of Historic Places, which has different criteria for listing sites on it. And then also it created state historic preservation offices for every state, and it created a state archeological registry. And it mandated what's known as section 106. It's section one oh six of the NHPA, the National Historic Preservation Act. So it mandated that, any, any project that uses federal monies and often state monies has to, do a survey to identify archeological sites and determine if they are significant for listing on that National Register. As a result of that law passage, a lot of, CRM was sort of born. Cultural resource management in the 1970s and 80s and into today, we now have a multi-million dollar industry, really, of, private firms like mine that meet that demand. And so we answer any kind of, work proposals that are put out by any federal and usually state agency to, meet their mandates. And so that's a general sense. I think Kerry can talk more specifically to how the NPS works, and that if you all want.
Kerry Gonzalez
If I could add for the listeners to that, I would say, correct me if I'm wrong, Maureen, but at least 80% of the archeological sites identified in the United States are through CRM.
Maureen Meyers
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a great point. So I should follow up with four out of five archeologists. In the United States are employed this way. It's how it is, as Kerry says, how most of archeology gets done in the United States. It's really important archeology. And we have a massive data base. Every state does of all the archeological sites that's added to all the time, it's it's really quite a I think it's a tremendous thing and, and a great use of tax dollars. So yeah.
Dustin Baker
We are very lucky to have both of you on the podcast and what really is bringing us all together for this episode is a really important archeological feature here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument, known as building X. And this feature was reopened in spring of 20..2022. And it's been refilled almost exactly two years ago. But this site had actually been opened, as far back as the 1930s and studied. So after almost 100 years, what motivated the park and experts to take another look at this site?
Jonathan Malriat
The other thing I will put in there on that is Maureen is the was the lead on this excavation that was doing this. So that's why we have her and Kerry, who's our cultural resource specialist on this call, answering these questions for us.
Kerry Gonzalez
So, why did we look at a feature that had been excavated in the 30s and then looked at again and 1970s by Dr. Norman Barka, and it's, it's there's several reasons technologies change. And I'll let Maureen get into that a little bit more, since her firm was the one that that did that. But we wanted to take a whole encompassing look at building X. It was completely exposed and most importantly, we wanted Willie Graham, foremost expert on early buildings in the Chesapeake, to really get in there and get up close with the brick and the mortar and the joining and all of those construction methods to let that speak to him, to tell so he could develop a, construction phase narrative for us. And that was really important for us to understand how building X was constructed. And we were able, from what New South did and through Willie Graham's analysis, to determine that there were at least three construction phases. It started out as a one room building, and then it evolved and grew over time. It grew out, you know, it's a very it's a nice landscape. And when you have a lot of land, it's easier to to build out than up. And that was how building X evolved.
Maureen Meyers
Right. And so our, our, the purpose of our work was to really expose and analyze and record building X. And so let me say too, that, yeah, the site was excavated in the 1930s. It's actually, to me, a really interesting example. And, are really one of the first, earliest excavations, in, in the US and certainly in Virginia. It's really part of the birth of historic archeology as a discipline. And, so as an archeologist, I kind of geek out on that a little bit. I think that's really cool, because I really like looking at the history of archeology. And but one of the things I think we need to keep in mind is that when an archeologist, you know, when and I used to teach archeology a lot. And so one of the things we always say to archeologists is you kind of get one shot, right? You can't really you can't usually re excavate a site. Once you remove the fill and the artifacts, they're taken out of the context in which we find them. And so by doing that, you know, a lot of people think archeology is all about the artifacts and the things that you find. But for archeologists, it is equally, if not more important, to understand the context in which the artifacts are found so we can identify you know, if all the kitchenware is together, that tells us, hey, this might be the kitchen, or if there's non kitchenware things or we could separate where people are cooking versus eating versus doing other things, just as our own homes are separated in that way. So when you remove that context, it gets more difficult to do that. And so normally most sites you can only dig them once. And so archeologists are very good about keeping very good records. When you go back to a site that's already been excavated, there should be a pretty good reason to do that. Because you're not going to get a whole lot of information because the context is gone. So some of the things we were looking for was to see, well did the 1930s archeologist, excuse me, remove all the contexts? I mean, did they remove all the the original, filling there, the soils, or is there anything left to see? And just like we have advanced our, you know, all disciplines advance, our discipline is more advanced in methods. We had some interesting methods that we could apply just by, removing the the fill that was there and seeing the remains and having somebody like Willie Graham come and look at the actual remains of the structure. And then just see what other what else there might be. So there were a couple of good reasons in this case, I think, to go back to the site and look at what was there.
Dustin Baker
So not only was there this previous excavation, but there's also a lot of oral traditions about this site. So did any of you all come in with expectations of what you would find or, have any preconceived notions and were those challenged?
Maureen Meyers
That's a good question. I think if I had a preconceived notion, I think the thing that surprised me was that, that the archeology they did in the 30s was as good as they did. That was really, you know, kind of surprising to me. I was aware of some of the different stories, and I, you know, I take those into account, but just like, as I said, you know, I, I first learned my archeology at Mount Vernon. There's lots of stories about George Washington that, as we all know, may or may not be true. Right. And so the thing I like about the archeology is that it tells you, it tells you what, or it reflects the behavior of what people actually did. So we all know that people can tell you something or that ideas and stories are passed down, or maybe in our own families, they're passed down. But then, you know, the the way to test those is you can't you can't go back and ask the ancestors, but you can look at the archeology and see what it says, because it's showing behavior. And so, I don't know that I, I think I've done this so long now that I just, I listen, you know, I think oral histories are very important, especially when we're talking about, our, you know, indigenous ancestors and I, I use those as just another line of, of evidence and I, but I do rely on, I trained as an archeologist, so I rely on the archeology to see what it's going to say. So I'm not sure that I, I necessarily went in there other than I thought, well, I'm sure, you know, whatever we find that they did in the 30s isn't going to be that great. And I was actually really surprised as we, you know, we sort of dove into the records and saw some photographs, and some records that it was actually very good.
Kerry Gonzalez
When I started at the park, I was surprised, too, at how well the archeology was done. It's not necessarily, if we had building X to go excavate today, never had been excavated before, would we do it differently? Yes. But, knowing how other things were excavated early on and using that as a comparison where someone was just wildly digging, they they did do a good job.
Jonathan Malriat
So what are some of the differences between how the excavation was done in the 1930s and how the excavation is done today? Like you're saying that there is differences, like if you were doing it today would be different. So what are some of those? What has changed?
Maureen Meyers
Okay. Yeah. So probably the main thing, the main thing they did right was, they used, some they paid attention to the soil stratigraphy. And they also used what's known as arbitrary layers to excavate. So they excavated in each layer was I don't remember specifically, but we use arbitrary layers today, normally ten centimeters. And from there you can actually reconstruct the stratigraphy later. So they both recorded the stratigraphy and were able to reconstruct it. And that was really nice. The thing that wasn't great was they used a grid system, which is what we do. So, and that allows you to record where the artifacts actually are or where the different what we call features in the soil are. And then you can reconstruct this because that's all you're doing with archeology. You're, you know, meticulously recording everything you find so that later on when you can't look at it anymore because you've excavated it, you're going to be able to reconstruct it. And they did do that. However, their grid system was, to put it nicely. It was really convoluted. So it's, it's I'm, I'm, I'm sure don’t fully understand, I think Bill Levy actually, maybe the only person that fully understands that, and it you one of the things it did was use, I think it use the same letters or numbers again. And so it's very difficult to tell where if an artifact is actually from this part of the grid system or that part of the grid system. And if you, you know, grid systems are pretty new when they were excavating in the 1930s. So if you're new at using a grid system, that's a it's a common sort of newbie error. And I think we all learned from that. Like somebody learned from that then. And we don't do that now, but it does confuse some of the artifactual evidence, that that we got or not that we got that they got and it made it hard to reconstruct what was found where. So those two, those are the two of the main things. But then also having someone like Willie Graham. Right. The whole field of architectural history developed since, I think around that, I think it probably was starting to develop. And so it's much more developed. We've got many more excavations of historic 17th and 18th century architecture, especially in colonial Virginia, because Colonial Williamsburg was was created right from because J.C. Harrington did a lot of the excavations there. And so you've got someone like Willie Graham, who is using all of that information to then go back to this site and interpret it. So that's, that's pretty big. And then we did, a few other things. We were able to do a 3D laser scan, of the, of the remains. They certainly couldn't have done that in the 1930s. And then we also used, something called portable X-ray fluorescence (PXRF) to try to identify the mortar and the brick. What, what recipes were used to make both the mortar and the brick? We had more limited, success with that. But again, it was something that they wouldn't have used in the 1930s.
Kerry Gonzalez
And with the, the PXRF, they also were able to, determine the wash on the brick. Isn't that right?
Maureen Meyers
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they found higher levels of some elements in, in both the mortar and the brick. Which could indicate a few different things. So I did sort of, pull on my Mount Vernon knowledge a little bit. And my, you know, being an archeologist in Virginia, you, you tend to learn a lot about the 17th and 18th century. And I realized at some point that. Oh, right. They would they would do a lime wash on this brick or possibly painted the brick. And those would explain the higher amounts of those particular elements that were found in the PXRF. And one thing and Kerry and I were talking about this, a bit, on, on one of our conversations, that PXRF sort of opens the door for us to start to wonder or really be able to investigate, are they making the bricks and the mortar right there on site, or are they is it being made elsewhere and shipped in which I wouldn't expect, other than that would be an expense. And maybe maybe that's a way to brag to your neighbors or to show your increasing wealth that you actually had bricks made in an actual, you know, known brick factory and shipped in. But it would be very expensive to do that. So I would expect it's being made locally, and we'd need a little bit more work in order to follow that, that line of questioning, you know, a bit more.
Kerry Gonzalez
It's a very nice segue because it is, a research avenue that we are exploring here at the park to see if we can narrow that down a little more because it would be interesting to know.
Maureen Meyers
Yeah. It also allows you to compare those, those bricks or in general, the entire site to other similar sites in the region. There are a couple of good examples in the region. And you could examine those and just see, okay, well how does the, you know, the Washington family compare to other similar, planters, of that class? And how does that change over time and how far, you know, are there sites, say, in Louisa County that are similar or sites, closer to Williamsburg? I mean, I think it starts to show you a bigger picture of the founding of Virginia and how how wealth, increased and changed over time and how different families control that wealth.
Jonathan Malriat
So another question I have about the excavation is, so your team was the one tasked with doing the excavation. So when you're coming in to the site, how does that start? Like, are you coming in with a backhoe and just immediately digging right in or right, how does that whole process happen?
Maureen Meyers
Yeah, I will say so and I will. I should say that, another PI at our firm, Kevin Bradley, oversaw the excavation. He sadly couldn't be here, he was sad he had to miss it. So, but I will say also that this was a fun one because not only is it called building X, but in a sense X marked the spot. So because, because this had been, identified and excavated in the 1930s and then filled in, the park had outlined the, the building itself in white gravel and I believe Kerry, y'all did that again right after we were finished.
Kerry Gonzalez
Yeah. And so now it represents the archeological remains. What y'all exposed and it's, anyone who hasn't been out to come see it. You really should. It's it's pretty beautiful.
Maureen Meyers
Right, so because of that, it that made it easier to know. Okay. Well, I, you know, here's where we dig. And so we we started by, you know, removing, removing those, the original outline of the building that was visible at the ground service. And then you remove the, the grass, and you usually, you know, sometimes some places, like Mount Vernon, we would preserve the grass. And so there's a special way to re, to remove it, keep it alive so it can be put back on as, you know, sod pieces. And then at that point, what we did was use, shovels to, to sort of, to take off the topsoil. And we did it very carefully in layers. The soil is always laid down in layers. And so as archeologists, when you remove it, you remove it slowly in layers. And we did that till we found the top of, the, the brick remains. And then also did use a grader with a really smooth bucket, a small grader and a trained operator, who came in and carefully, you know, removed a lot of the fill. And then, he did that, in some places he was able to do that, in other places we did it by shovel into wheelbarrows. And then the, the backhoe person could, could move that farther off site. You don't want your backfill too close to where you're excavating, because it can become a really dangerous situation with unstable walls and things. So you've got to keep in mind safety issues, keep in mind, you know, the remains and that you need to carefully, remove the fill. And then at that point you move from shovels to trowels and really, identify and expose all of the brick remains. And so they're fully exposed and, and, and this is where, you know, most people think of archeologists as using brushes. You might get out of brush at this point to kind of clean the bricks and that kind of thing. And just fully exposed that and we used a lot we took a lot of photographs, and we took notes at every stage of what we were doing.
Kerry Gonzalez
If I could jump in for a minute because, yeah, some of the listeners might be like they used a backhoe that, why would they use that? But, but backhoes are used a lot in archeology, especially in CRM for, in this case the backhoe was used because building X was filled with fill that was not, it didn't have any significant artifacts in it, but we use them on other sites too. It's actually called the “Virginia Marshalltown” here in Virginia. Marshalltown is a brand of trowel that most archeologists use. It's, so backhoes are, you know, it's just another tool in our toolbox to expedite excavation, to get down to the your intact features. The stuff where you're going to get that solid data that's going to help you date in and understand the site.
Maureen Meyers
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. When you know that the fill is just fill, that it's already been disturbed and that we knew that in this case. Right, it had been taken out in the 30s. And then when they refilled it, they just kind of threw it back in there. There's no context for the artifacts at all. In fact, there weren't very many artifacts. And in some of the, you know, in the upper layers of that fill, I yeah, it is very common, in general. And when so when I excavated, a site, in southwest Virginia, I knew like the top soot was all fill, it was all plow zoned fill. And I used a backhoe to take that off. It's a quick way to do it. It's always monitored. I mean, every scoop by the backhoe operator is monitored by a trained archeologist wearing a hard hat, let me emphasize. And then once you find any kind of intact cultural features, the backhoe stops and you switch to the archeologists using hand tools, shovels and trowels.
Jonathan Malriat
So during the excavation, were there any thing you extracted or uncovered or any part of the excavation that you were really excited about, whether it be an artifact itself or even something else during the excavation that was interesting or surprising.
Maureen Meyers
I mean, first it's just it was it was just cool to, to uncover the whole outline and to see it. I mean, for me, that's always just a pretty cool moment, right? I mean, and you get more remains than you normally do at a lot of other sites. I do there was, there were a couple of, one artifact that stuck out to me was a piece of brick that had, I think it had a signature on it or some kind of lettering on it. And we never were able to figure out what that was. But it was a nice intact piece. And again, if we could do more brick studies, we might be able to figure out, you know, more information about who's making the brick. So that wasn't uncommon. Some of the brick pieces, might, you know, they they can just have these, markings from where you're taking the hot brick, right? Or you're taking the not fully formed brick, and it gets a mark of a fingerprint or something like that on there. And then other times we find brick that does have people's, you know, markings or signatures or something on it. So that was kind of interesting to see. And again, you know, I, I get really interested in, okay, who are the people that make the wealth possible or who are the other people around? And so to find indicators of those people, who's working at this family farm whose names aren't recorded in history and, and how might they try to be remembered in some way. And so that's a that could be an interesting clue to that.
Kerry Gonzalez
But we we can't forget about all the cats and the dogs that walk across that wet brick. I mean, we we always find those. And I will say that I had, the brick that you mentioned, Maureen, but the, the letters on it, we had that 3D scanned and through doing that we and maybe you knew this, but it's an I L L and that's what we have left on it, and I, I like to joke with one of our interp rangers here, his name is Bill. It's like, oh, Bill. That's what they were writing.
Maureen Meyers
Right? That's right. Yeah. Right. Right.
Dustin Baker
So you, mentioned Kevin Bradley earlier. I just want to give him a shout out. He was, if you're listening, Kevin, you were great to work with, and you really helped us and the visitors understand what was going on each day, so we really appreciate that.
Kerry Gonzalez
Can can I give an additional shout out to Kevin and, I apologize I can't remember the other staff member with New South’s name, but they came out with their total station a couple months ago, when it was probably at its hottest and spent an entire day out here, mapping the outline of building X so we could put the outline back in. And I think they were here till almost 6:00 getting that done for us. And that was a it was a huge effort and really appreciated.
Jonathan Malriat
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments. Our conversations with Maureen and Kerry are not over. They'll be joining us on our next episode as we explore the results of the excavation and what that tells us about building X. And they'll also talk about how we're preserving it into the future. Join us on our next episode.
Episode 10-Part 2
In the early 21st century, advancements in historic archeology led park staff and archeologists to review the efficacy of past excavations of Building X, which in turn led to a recommendation to reopen the foundations. In partnership with New South Associates, Inc., Building X was once again opened in 2022 with the hopes of shedding more light on 86 years of uncertainty. We share findings from this recent study of Building X, bringing us one step closer to unraveling one of the biggest mysteries of the park
Welcome back to another episode of Upon This Land: History, Mysteries and Monuments. This episode is the second part of our exploration into the 2022 excavation of building X, one of the over 20 foundations here in George Washington Birthplace National Monument that we protect and preserve. On the previous episode, we talked about how the excavation was conducted and who was conducting the excavation. So for more information on that, please refer back to our previous episode. On this episode, we'll be diving in to the results of that excavation and what that tells us going forward into the future. I'm Jonathan Malriat, the lead interpretive park ranger here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument and Thomas Stone National Historic Sites. Joining me on this episode is Dustin Baker, the chief of interpretation. And then our special guests, Kerry Gonzalez, the chief of cultural resource management at the parks, and Maureen Meyers, a principal investigator of archeology at New South Associates.
Dustin Baker
No pun intended, this whole project was a monumental task. I mean, dozens of people involved, the site was opened for almost ten months and I guess we're getting into the real heart of why we're here. What have we learned from this project? And I'll start with the first kind of leading question is, what was this? What was this building?
Maureen Meyers
Right. Well, I think the shortest answer is that the building was used as a residence. And then it changed, as Kerry's already mentioned over time. And so the the building itself, the the remains that we were looking at are really the basement of the building itself, or the lower levels. And it was added on, as she said, over time. So it initially started, well, first let me say we identified five rooms, which the, the archeologists in 1930s had identified and named. So we just of course used their names for those rooms. And room A is basically included an, an exterior entry staircase, into it. So you would go down into it, it had a chimney base with some storage, an enclosure for an interior staircase, and was really just a cellar space for storage. It included, what we were able to take out of there again. Out of the, out of context, was a lot of ceramics dating to the 18th century. Some bottles, some glass, wrought nails, which are early. Room B was then next to that, it had a rectangular brick foundation. And it, it allowed us to see evidence or Willie Graham saw it as evidence that additional construction was probably planned but not done. He could see some indicators of that attached to room B. Room C had, three sets of brick foundations and two chimney bases and some of the, some of the fact that we found fewer artifacts here suggested that it was an area that didn't have dining, whereas room B probably did. And then you finally had room D and E, which, room D was constructed off room A, and then room E was a chimney base as well. I mean, that's those are basic descriptions of the rooms themselves. And so, room A was built first, then added on room B and then C, D and E, and that C, D and E are probably separate bed chambers, and they each had, heated closets for each of them. Which sounds really strange. It sounded strange to me. I thought, why would you heat a closet? Although the idea of warm clothes on a cold winter morning sounded like a good idea. But these were more like, We should think of them as working spaces. Like a space where you might have a desk and, and a chair, and you would be able to work in those areas. So almost like little studies. Yeah. And, Kerry, you want to add anything there?
Kerry Gonzalez
So at some point, we were looking at square footage of building X and wanting to compare it to the size of the Memorial House Museum and our rough estimates of building X in its complete form to include the basement areas, first floor and then the like the loft upper areas is a little over 3000ft². In its initial form, when you're just looking at room A for any listeners out there that need more of a visual, if you look up the Rochester House in Westmoreland County, that is a really good example of what, you know, the the form and the shape of what room A would have looked like when that was initially constructed. It's a bit later than building X, which was in the 1720s, but it gives you a good idea of that. But in its fully constructed form, this was a this is a substantial home. It would have been lived in by people who are, were of means, of the upper middle class. They, this family obviously had a lot of land. They had the means to build a structure like this with all these rooms and, you know, the the heated closets. But remember, a closet isn’t a warm space, space to keep your clothes. It was more of like an office space. You know, just your, your everyday planter wouldn't have been able to afford such a structure.
Dustin Baker
So when you combine this new look at building X with, you know, the artifacts and information that came from the 1930s, can you kind of paint a picture of when this building was in use?
Maureen Meyers
Yeah, I think I think so. I think you can look at some previous analyzes of the artifacts by, by Phil Levy and, and students a couple of years ago. And we did and we incorporated that. And then we looked at some of the artifacts that we got out of the fill. So that gives you a general sense, of when the building's in use.
Kerry Gonzalez
It was my understanding that the most recent information from Phil was that the house was probably abandoned around the Revolutionary War period.
Maureen Meyers
Yeah, thank you!
Kerry Gonzalez
Yeah, they moved back. They like down the road inland some to Blenheim and that’s where the family lived. But one thing that I want to point out, and this isn't my own, this came from Phil's analysis as well. For those who don't know, Phil Levy is, knows all things Washington and has been a great researcher here at GEWA. But what Phil explains in his reanalysis of the the artifacts is, you as a archeologist or someone that's looking at an assemblage, you're, you have a tendency to say, okay, all these artifacts came from this cellar feature, essentially a big hole in the ground, and you want to say all of these came from within the house. It's just kind of how your mind would work. But what Phil realized is the artifacts that were found within building X look like, materials from a midden, like from yard trash, essentially. A lot of coarser earthen wares, stuff that would have been like utilitarian type stuff, not fine porcelains, tea sets, things like that. And what he is proposing is that when Building X, Building X was abandoned, they moved down the road and then the house was either since it wasn’t being lived in was disassembled, bricks were robbed, boards were taken, and a hole was left in the ground. Those holes need to be filled. And what you do is you take your trash from the yard and shove it into the hole. And so you can't take the artifacts strictly from what was found within building X and say the all these materials were used in the house. They were it was from a variety of tasks. We have a midden that's, between the standing kitchen and building X and it looks like a lot of yard activities, utilitarian stuff kind of took place in that area. So I just, I wanted to to point that out.
Dustin Baker
So this site or this archeological feature, has, you know, befuddled people for over a generation, there's been a lot of confusion over what this is, was there anything unique about this site that you all found?
Maureen Meyers
As a archeologist, I'm sort of trained to see broader patterns. I think, it's a pretty good, example of I, of the architecture at that time and that the way, the way a lot of families in Virginia, like, were like the Washingtons. I mean, I think they exemplify sort of what's going on in the larger colony at that time of people coming from elsewhere and trying to make a better life. And so they're doing that. And I mean, to me, it's a very American story, right, of people just coming here and making a different kind of life for themselves. And it often means increasing wealth. And so that's what we see there, I think. Yes, there are probably, very, unique architectural features there, but I can't exactly speak to those. That's really a great question for Willie Grahams. There I, I think what one of the things that I do see is that, like a lot of other sites in, in Virginia, a lot of plantation sites in Virginia, we tend to focus on, on the main house. And that's great. I think, and on the individual and I, I see a real potential for a lot more work at the site that shows us the entire household, a larger it's that would encompass more of the people that allowed this to happen as well. I think we know a lot about, you know, obviously George Washington and I know we think, you know, it'd be great to always learn more and, and, and his family of origin. But there's a part of me that's also interested, and again, I say this as a native of Virginia who grew up hearing all of the George Washington lore and worked at Mount Vernon, it was a real, you know, privilege to be able to work at the birthplace. But I want to know more about the, the the world around him, the household around him that that would have, added to his foundations. Right. To his ideas, his moral principles or his ideas of democracy. And in order to do that, I think we need to expand and see who else is living at this household. And in just in general, households like this.
Kerry Gonzalez
I'm I'm glad you brought that up, Maureen, because it gives me a good segue into telling our listeners that we are working towards that very effort now, to really understand this landscape and we're doing that in a couple of ways here. We're taking all of the archeological data that we have from past excavations and getting that into one map, digitally, we are putting them into GIS so we can take a step back and look at this landscape and see where we have, outbuildings, kitchens. Yeah, we know we have the dairy. Where, where were the the enslaved living on this landscape. We know where one was. We know about how many enslaved people work on this property. There are definitely more, and in addition to taking that mapping and looking at where things are, we’ll develop a, archeological management plan to see what we want to look at next. But we do in the coming months, have an excavation planned. There is a building in the memorial area that we're going to re-explore. It was looked at in the 1930s. For some reason they lost interest in it. It does have a brick foundation. We have named it building Y, for obvious reasons. And we're hoping that that's going to help answer some more questions that we have about the birthplace. You know, namely, the big question was building was George Washington born in building X? We know we still can't answer that. But, we are working working towards all of that.
Dustin Baker
So if you're familiar with the history of the birthplace and Wakefield, you probably are very familiar with a longstanding oral tradition that the home site burned down on Christmas Day, 1779. So what have we seen in building X to either validate that story or counter it?
Kerry Gonzalez
Well, it's, what we haven't seen. We we don't have the archeological assemblage that reflects a house that burned down that, that that is a, a clear signature when you're excavating a site that has been burned, even if the house, let's say that the house was abandoned when it burned, which the stories talk about them rescuing furniture out of it. So it presumably it wasn't empty for long periods of time, but you get what you get is a lot of melted glass. You get burned ceramics, the nails show evidence of being burned because when you find them, they're not rusted. You know, archeologically, a lot of times when you find nails that have been in the ground for years, we call them, Rusty Cheetos, because that's what they look like. They look like brown Cheetos. So you would have a lot of nails that aren't rusted. They're called annealed nails. You would have melted glass a lot. If the fire's really hot, it's just literally you have blobs of it. The the brick in the basement would have shown evidence of being burned. And while we have some melted glass in the assemblage, we don't have that concentration that would be indicative of a house being burned. And Maureen, from you know, you were here during the excavation, I was not. Do you have anything to add to that? From what you saw and what, you know, maybe Willie was talking as he was doing his analysis?
Maureen Meyers
Right, yeah. No, I completely agree, not a whole lot to add other than when a house burns, if that's a pre-contact house or a historic house, you know it, right. As an archeologist, you can tell, because there are stains in the ground. The artifacts, as Kerry, you know, elucidated, is, are are clearly damaged and clearly showed signs of burning. And we just didn't see that in these remains, at all. I mean, there's no sign on the brick itself that there's any kind of burning happening there. There's no sign in any, of the, you know, the soil, the intact soil under the fill that there would be burning. Whereas, you know, I have excavated soils that have been completely burned, and they're, they’re, as you would expect. They're all shades of of red and maroon and black, with, hard chunks and, and and often preserved wood. But we didn't see anything like that at all.
Dustin Baker
Can you explain to our listeners why this feature was filled back in? A lot of visitors have come here and they've, you know, asked about like why it isn't permanently open for them to see,
Kerry Gonzalez
It's, it's expensive. The the brick has been in the ground for a long time, and that type of brick gets really friable. You would have to have a climate controlled environment. You couldn't just leave it out to the elements. It would start to crumble and fall apart and the National Park Service is in the business of preserving and protecting. Lining it with, the geotech cloth that New South did and then re burying it will preserve it for future generations. If there's some technological advance in 50 years and they want to re-excavate part of it to reexamine the brick, it will allow that. Leaving it open to the elements would just destroy it. Now, if we wanted to do something like they did in Michigan and and, Fort Michilimackinac or I think at Saint Mary's where they have like a plexiglass over it and encase it, that is an expensive endeavor, again climate controlled. So it comes down to preservation or, or money. It would have been really cool to leave it open. But, because of the fly through that New South did we've got these technological advances that will, soon allow visitors to have a more immersive experience.
Dustin Baker
October is archeology month in Virginia, and, building X made it on to the poster for this year's archeology month. And so, you know, this poster is really highlighting some of the most important archeological projects, sites, features in the state. So what makes you think that building X rose to that level and was included on that poster?
Maureen Meyers
Yeah, well, I think a couple of things. One is, as I noted at the start of the podcast, you know, this site is important to the history of archeology in Virginia and in the US. It's it's really one of the I think it's been overlooked and by archeologists as one of the important sites where, the first use of things like, you know, stratigraphy and a grid system were used. I think it gets overlooked in that we focus on Colonial Williamsburg as a place of archeology, but I think this was an important site here, too. In that in the history of archeology and then on its own, because I think it is important to look at where our founders came from. Because by doing that, you can get a better sense of how they became the persons that they became. And and you know, I can get lofty and say, you know, how did they together, how did all of them together come up with these ideals of democracy that we're we're still practicing over 200 years later? Right. And so in order to do that, as an archeologist, I think you need to look at what's there. And I think that this is an important site. And so if you want to understand, you know, who George Washington is, you need to understand the family from which he came. And then the the larger community and culture out of which that family came. And so that's where I think building X is really important.
Kerry Gonzalez
That was beautifully put.
Maureen Meyers
Thanks. Thank you.
Jonathan Malriat
Are there any other events occurring during Virginia's Archeology Month? Or any other events that you would like us to showcase to our audience?
Maureen Meyers
Right. Well, there is on November 16th in, at Colonial Williamsburg, there is a celebration of 50 years of Virginia archeology. There'll be, I think, over 40 tables, different organizations across the state, talking about archeology for the public. It's going to be great for the kids and New South will have a table there. Kerry and I will both be there, and we're going to have opportunities for people to see pictures of building X to learn more about it, and hopefully for kids to maybe draw what they think building X may have looked like at the time that the Washington family was living there. That’s Saturday, November 16th from 10 to 3:00. So please come out.
Jonathan Malriat
So if you've enjoyed this podcast and listening to Maureen and Kerry talk about this site and the features of it, come on out and listen to them and talk to them in person and ask them your own questions.
Dustin Baker
Well, we want to thank both of you sincerely for joining us on this podcast and for all the work and effort you've put into helping us understand the site here.
Kerry Gonzalez
It's been a pleasure. And we've got we've got a lot more to do, a lot more research projects and excited to be a part of it.
Maureen Meyers
Yeah. And, you know, I just want to say for me personally, this was this was a real highlight of my 30 plus archeological career. I've dug it lots of really great places. This was really amazing for me, who started as an 18 year old with a lot of questions at Mount Vernon and then later, you know, was able to work there. Then it felt more full circle to be like, oh, this is really this is neat. And this, this really, allowed me to just, you know, and it's I felt like it, in a sense I was able to kind of give back to a lot of the folks that helped me get to where I am. And so I'm just really happy too. We were so thrilled, all of New South was thrilled to be on this project. And, and to be able to do that this and to contribute in the in the way that we did. So thanks to to all of you and thanks for having us on the podcast.
Dustin Baker
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land: History, Mystery and Monuments. The park has some major milestones in its future, including its centennial anniversary in 2030 and the tricentennial birthday of George Washington in 2032. Will the mysteries surrounding building X be truly unlocked by then?
