Washington “discovered to be of the Female Sex”

On 25 Jan 1783 both the London Daily Advertiser and the Whitehall Evening Post printed an item they said had come from the 11 November Pennsylvania Gazette by way of the Dublin Register. It told readers:

A Discovery has lately been made on this Continent that will astonish the whole World. Our great and excellent General Washington is actually discovered to be of the Female Sex. This important secret was revealed by the Lady who lived with the General as a Wife these 30 years, and died the 6th instant at the General’s seat in Virginia, to the Clergyman who attended her. What is extraordinary, the Lady knew the Circumstance previous to the Ceremony of Marriage, and both agreed to live together from Motives of the most refined Friendship.

Perhaps there are fewer Instances in Female Nature of such rigid Chastity than of manly Fortitude. The famous Hannah Snell served as a private Soldier in the British Army and was present at many Battles and Sieges in the late War. The Chevalier d’Eon was a Captain of Dragoons, Knight of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis, and Ambassador from tho Most Christian King to his Britannick Majesty, and made herself celebrated by her repeated Challenges to the Compte de Guerchy, her Successor in the Employ. In more antient Times France nearly recovered her Empire from the Hands of the British Regency by the astonishing Bravery of the Maid of Orleans; and now the Rights of America have been asserted and her Independence established through the amazing Fortitude of a Woman. Perhaps it is fortunate that this Circumstance was not known at a more early Period of the Contest.

In fact, there’s no record of an eighteenth-century Irish newspaper called the Dublin Register. The Pennsylvania Gazette didn’t publish on 11 Nov 1782. No article like this has been found in any American newspaper. And of course Martha Washington (shown above) hadn’t died.

The Whitehall Evening Post had probably copied the article from the Daily Advertiser, which may have originated the story or may have been duped. The far less reputable Rambler’s Magazine picked up the tidbit for its March issue, adding the cartoon of “Mrs. General Washington” that I shared here.

After that, the story faded, but the Chevalier d’Eon clipped a copy and kept it in a scrapbook along with other items mentioning him, favorably or unfavorably.

(Thanks to commenter John Johnson for the pointer.)

The Print Record of Pickled Olives in Early America

Yesterday I recounted an anecdote about Henry Knox’s first, unhappy encounter with pickled olives. And I wondered whether those were truly an exotic delicacy in North America.

I went to Readex’s Early American Newspapers database for more information on this question. Its search function confirms that pickled olives weren’t advertised or widely discussed in America until after the Revolution, and then appear to have been a special import.

The only mention of “pickled olives” in American newspapers before independence is a 2 Apr 1767 item in the New York Gazette, reprinting a article in the Quebec Gazette, which in turn quoted from Henry Baker’s Employment for the Microscope, published in London in 1753. That quotation described treating a woman after accidental arsenic poisoning with an emetic, and it compared her resulting excrement to pickled olives.

Moving on.

In the 18 July 1785 Connecticut Courant, a Hartford merchant named Daniel Smith announced that he’d just put on sale a very wide assortment of imported goods, including “pickled Olives and Capers.” The 22 Dec 1788 State Gazette of South Carolina had an advertisement from the mercantile firm of Crouch and Trezevant offering, among other things, “Pickled Olives and Girkins.”

Finally, in the New York Daily Advertiser starting on 31 July 1797 the Coster brothers ran an ad about a ship just arrived from Bourdeaux. Among its goods were “pickled olives, capers anchovies.” That was during the decade when Martha Washington reportedly served pickled olives to Knox, Secretary of War.

In that same year, Samuel Deane of Bowdoin College published a book titled The New-England Farmer, or Georgic Dictionary, in which he encouraged American farmers to plant olive trees. “The oil and pickled olives brought from thence [Europe], amount to more than a trifle, which ought to be saved if practicable.” By that point pickled olives were clearly known in America, but Deane still had to argue that their import from Europe amounted to “more than a trifle,” so they probably weren’t widely consumed.

What Henry Knox Would Not Eat

The Westbrook (Maine) Historical Society preserves this story about Henry Knox and Martha Washington, apparently first published in the Narragansett Sun newspaper of Portland on 12 Dec 1895 (P.D.F. download):

An anecdote that is vouched for as true by high authority is worth recording. At one of those elegant dinners given by Washington after he had come to the presidency, and which were presided over by his estimable wife, the pickled olives, now so common, but at that time almost unknown, were passed to Gen. Knox. The first trial of the new relish was quite enough for the valiant Secretary of War, who quickly taking the obnoxious fruit from his mouth, thus addressed himself to his hostess, “Please, Madam, may I put this d___ thing on the floor?”

I can easily fit this anecdote in with what lots of other sources describe as Knox’s easy friendship with the Washingtons. But is there any way to test its authenticity?

One question is whether pickled olives were still unfamiliar by the 1790s. A 1749 London edition of A Treatise on Foreign Vegetables, by Dr. Ralph Thicknesse (1719-1790), includes this entry:

Pickled Olives, being eaten before Meals, says Schroder, provoke an Appetite, raise and comfort a moist Stomach, and move the Belly.

Richard Bradley’s Treatise on Husbandry and Gardening, as published in 1723, discusses cherries treated “to imitate pickled olives,” suggesting that the latter had become popular somewhere.

But that was in Britain. Had pickled olives made their way to the colonies? In 1759, George Washington sent an invoice to his London merchant that included: “1 Case of Pickles to consist of Anchovies—Capers, Olives—Salid Oyl & 1 Bottle India Mangoes…” That’s the closest match to the phrase “pickled olive(s)” that I found in all of the Founders’ papers digitized at the National Archives and the Library of Congress. But Washington ordered “French olives” regularly in the 1750s. Was pickling taken for granted?

TOMORROW: Evidence from newspapers.

“The Women of Washington’s Headquarters” in Cambridge, 13 Mar.

I’ll miss Ray Raphael’s talk in Worcester on Thursday evening because at that time I’ll be speaking in Cambridge on “The Women of Washington’s Headquarters.”

This is the latest in a series of talks I’ve given at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site to commemorate Evacuation Day, when Gen. George Washington saw the siege of Boston brought to a successful end. This year’s topic, though we didn’t think about this when we planned, also fits with National Women’s History Month.

I’ll talk about some of the women who lived and worked at John Vassall’s confiscated mansion in 1775-76. In particular, I’ll discuss:

• Lydia Austin
• Elizabeth Chapman
• Martha Washington
• Margaret Thomas

One of them is, of course, a household name. The others have their own stories, faintly recorded, and they helped to keep the military headquarters functioning.

This talk will start at 6:30 P.M. It’s free, but space is limited, so the park service asks people to phone 617-876-4491 to reserve seats. If you’ve got time, ask about Ranger Garrett Cloer’s Revolutionary-themed tour of the House in the afternoon before the talk.

(Seasonal photograph above by Tom Stohlman.)

Toys for the Custis Children

As I described yesterday, a number of recent publications have included a list of toys that George Washington supposedly ordered for his new stepchildren, Jacky and Patsy, on his first Christmas with them in 1759. But no such list appears in The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, which can be searched at Founders Online.

However, I found that John C. Fitzpatrick used some of the phrases on that list in his 1933 biography, George Washington Himself. Fitzpatrick was then overseeing the edition of Washington’s papers put out by the federal government in the early twentieth century.

That encouraged me to revisit the Library of Congress’s American Memory digital database of Washington’s papers, which includes transcriptions of the notes that Fitzpatrick included in that edition. Those notes quote some documents not included in the current edition of the papers (which is in other ways more complete).

And indeed, Fitzpatrick noted a March 1760 invoice to Washington from Robert Cary & Co. that included:

from Unwin & Wrigglesworth—
A Tunbridge Tea Sett ... ¼
3 Neat Tunbridge Toys ... 1/
A Neat Book lash Tea Chest ... 4/6
A Bird on Bellows ... 5d.
A Cuckoo ... 10d.
A turnabout Parrot ... 1/3
A Grocers Shop ... 5/

and from Mount & Page—
6 Small Books for Children ... 3/.
A Box best Household Stuff ... 4/6
A Straw patch box wt. a Glass ... 2/
A Neat dressd Wax Baby ... 3/6
An Aviary ... 1/3
A Prussian Dragoon ... 1/3
A Man Smoakg. ... 1/

For his biography Fitzpatrick plucked out items from that list which were most likely children’s toys. The Mount Vernon Midden blog shows images from those invoices. The 1760 Universal Pocket Companion for Londoners listed Unwin & Wrigglesworth as “hardwaremen” doing business on Cheapside; they probably sold more than toys.

Olive Bailey included a similar list in Christmas with the Washingtons (1948). She also transcribed a list of toys that Unwin & Wrigglesworth had shipped earlier, billing Daniel Parke Custis, Martha’s first husband, who died in 1757:

A child’s fiddle
A coach and six in a box
A stable with six horses
A corner cupboard
A neat walnut bureau
A filigree watch
A neat enameled watch box
A toy whip
A child’s huzzif

So we’re on solid ground to say that Washington bought that list of items I quoted yesterday, and that most of those things were toys. But we can’t say that Washington ordered those toys specifically. The Mount Vernon Midden blog quotes him as vaguely ordering “‘10 [shillings] worth of Toys’ for Jacky and ‘A Fash[ionably] Dres[sed] Baby…& other Toys’” for Patsy in September 1759. The London merchants picked out what they thought those children would like.

We also can’t say those goods had anything to do with Washington’s first Christmas as a stepfather. They were apparently ordered in September 1759 but not shipped until March 1760. In fact, Washington’s papers say almost nothing about Christmas celebrations at Mount Vernon. (In 1769 he won some money on cards that evening while visiting Fielding Lewis.)

Instead, it appears that twentieth-century authors chose to view these goods through the lens of our own traditions. Most Americans give children lots of toys on Christmas, and our culture encourages us to give even more. Therefore, these toys appeared in Christmas with the Washingtons and Reader’s Digest Book of Christmas even though they had no link to the Washington-Custis family’s holiday. Jacky and Patsy were probably glad to get them whenever they arrived.

(The image above shows the remains of two small clay figurines found in an archeological dig at Mount Vernon. Were those some of Jacky and Patsy Custis’s toys? Or the toys of Jacky’s children?)

Christmas Shopping with George Washington?

This month HistoryTube shared a heart-warming glimpse of George Washington, the just-retired young colonel of the Virginia forces, as a new stepfather:

In 1759 George and Martha Washington spent their first Christmas together at Mount Vernon. They had been married less than a year. A list of presents George Washington intended to purchase for stepson John (Jacky), age 5, and stepdaughter Martha (Patsy), age 3, shows a heartfelt appreciation for the joys of childhood. His list reads:

A bird on Bellows
A Cuckoo
A turnabout Parrott
A Grocers Shop
An Aviary
A Prussian Dragoon
A Man Smoaking
A Tunbridge Tea Sett
3 Neat Tunbridge Toys
A Neat Book fash Teas Chest
A box best Household Stuff
A straw Patch box w. a Glass
A neat dressed Wax Baby

The items on the list would have likely been handmade and imported from Europe. Many mechanical and hand-carved toys of this period were produced in the cities and towns of northern Germany, such as Hamburg and Hannover. Although we can’t be sure what each one looked like, several were fairly common. The bird on bellows, cuckoo, turnabout parrot and “smoaking” man were probably mechanical toys made of metal. The bird and parrot would have contained whistles and may have had flapping wings. The grocer’s shop also likely was made in northern Germany, where elaborate miniature toy room settings were crafted and sold. The Prussian dragoon was probably a metal toy soldier, and the wax baby doll would have been made of poured, tinted and painted wax, a common method for doll construction in the 1700s.

The three Tunbridge toys were probably made in Tunbridge, Kent, England. They may have been puzzle boxes, yo-yos or small decorative chests, made in the Tunbridge fashion, of many small pieces of wood glued together to create a mosaic effect. The tea set and tea chest may have been toys or could have been for a dowry for Patsy. The patch box contained small cloth patches to apply to the face as beauty marks. Were these for Patsy to play with, or meant as a present for Martha?

I’m always touched by watching Washington try so hard to do the right thing. Here he was achieving his social and economic aims by marrying wealthy widow Martha Custis, and he’s suddenly thrust into the role of patriarch responsible for providing for two young children as well.

Since I usually like to add a little something when I quote from other blogs, I went looking for more context for that list of toys. And I found that phrases like “Prussian Dragoon” and “turnabout Parrott” don’t appear in Founders Online, which includes the latest edition of Washington’s colonial papers.

Instead, my searches found this list appeared in a lot of recent books, in the 1973 Reader’s Digest Book of Christmas, and in a 1969 editor’s note at the start of an issue of the American Bar Association Journal. None of the publications I saw indicated a source. So I started to worry.

TOMORROW: It’s a Christmas miracle. (Sort of.)

A Presidential Ice Cream Order

According to this report, today as the third Sunday in July is National Ice Cream Day. Furthermore, in 1984 Ronald Reagan issued another order designating this whole month as National Ice Cream Month. And none of that should limit me: as a Bostonian, I consider every day to be Ice Cream Day. [Shout outs to Wally’s Wicked Good Ice Cream, Cabot’s, Lizzy’s, and J.P. Licks.]

Last week Lee Wright at The History List asked me about a statement that shows up in many feature articles this time of year that President George Washington spent a great deal on ice cream. Lee found statements of the current value of that purchase ranging from “over $5,000” to “about $100,000”—on ice cream in 1790. But what’s the historical basis of that claim?

I followed dribbles on the web back through Paul Dickson’s Great American Ice Cream Book (1973) to mid-century trade journals with titles like Confectionary and Ice Cream World and The Ice Cream Trade Journal. Several of those sources say the merchant who billed Washington for about $200 worth of ice cream was “Mr. Cove of Chatham Street.”

In fact, he was Joseph Corré, a native of France, reportedly a former cook for a British army officer who stayed in New York after the war. He ran nine notices in the New York Daily Advertiser in May-June 1790 thanking patrons for buying ice cream and ice from him. He sold out of his house at 55 Wall Street.

In May 1791 Corré opened a theater on State Street, presenting The Beaux’ Strategem and The Lying Valet. His Columbia Gardens and Mount Vernon Gardens businesses became notable values for plays and concerts in early New York, and he also appears in histories of the American circus.

According to this catalogue page, Mount Vernon owns Corré’s receipt for £51.6s.2d of ice cream and “mouls” (molds) delivered to Washington’s household from June to August 1790. I also saw mention in an antiques magazine of another Corré receipt for the President’s kitchen for earlier that spring, so he was a regular supplier. I don’t know when Corré’s ice cream receipt became public knowledge, but it looks like that happened about 150 years after he wrote it out.

Did George Washington eat that much ice cream? Not by himself. Rather, ice cream was part of how he and Martha entertained guests, officials, their wives, and members of the public at regular “levees,” or receptions. Abigail Adams described them in a letter to her older sister, Mary Cranch, on 27 July 1790:

mrs washington…has fix’d on every fryday 8 oclock. I attended upon the last, [with] mrs smith & charles. I found it quite a crowded Room. the form of Reception is this, the servants announce—& col [David] Humphries or mr [Tobias] Lear—receives every Lady at the door, & Hands her up to mrs washington to whom she makes a most Respectfull curtzey and then is seated without noticeing any of the rest of the company. the Pressident then comes up and speaks to the Lady, which he does with a grace dignity & ease, that leaves Royal George far behind him. the company are entertaind with Ice creems & Lemonade, and retire at their pleasure performing the same ceremony when they quit the Room.

Adams put a similar description, also including “Ice creams,” in her 6 Feb 1791 letter to Cotton Tufts.

(Those period quotations negate a statement in Benson J. Lossing’s Mary and Martha: “Ice-cream, the favorite delicacy of today, was then unknown.” But that book about the women in Washington’s life has long been recognized as hopeful myth. In fact, Mount Vernon has found records of the Washingtons buying ice cream equipment as early as 1784.)

The next question is how much £51.6s.2d. was worth in American dollars in 1790 and would be worth today? And that’s quite a complex question. In fact, examining how early American money worked is a very good way to realize that colonial life was by no means simple. There wasn’t enough specie (gold and silver coins) circulating in the economy, so most people paid off bills with paper notes whose values fluctuated depending on who had issued them, how far away the issuing institution or person was, and other factors. Most articles suggest the President’s ice cream purchase amounted to $200, which is probably a low approximation.

The next issue is how to calculate changes in currency between 1790 and today. The Measuring Worth website has been developed out of John J. McCusker’s monograph How Much Is That in Real Money? But there’s still a problem with equivalencies: because of technology, changing demands and supplies, the move away from coerced labor, and other factors, the real prices of different goods and services have changed at different rates. For example, unskilled labor is much more expensive these days while cloth is much cheaper. When I enter “£51” and “1790” into the Measuring Worth page for “Computing ‘Real Value’ Over Time With a Conversion Between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1774 to Present,” the result is:

When using the CPI/RPI, the (average) value in 2010 of £51 from 1790 is $6830.00. The range of values is from $0.00 to $9250.00. This answer is better if the subject is a consumer good or something else of interest to an individual.

Ice cream is of abiding interest to me, but I can’t say that fact makes narrowing a range between zero and $9,000 any easier. But I think we can eliminate the “about $100,000” figure cited above.

Because of modern refrigeration, ice cream is probably much cheaper relative to other foods than it was in Washington’s time. That means even if £51 in 1790 is on average about $6,800 today, I bet $6,800 today could buy even more ice cream than £51 bought for the Presidential mansion in 1790.

Tying Up the Twisted History of the Braddock Sash

As I said yesterday, Katherine Glass Greene’s 1926 local history Winchester, Virginia, and Its Beginnings, 1743-1814 contains a confused history of Gen. Edward Braddock’s sash. Greene credited that part of her book to Mary Spottiswoode Buchanan (1840-1925). Genealogy sites reveal that Bettie Taylor Dandridge, Zachary Taylor’s daughter and owner of the sash from 1850 to 1910, had married Buchanan’s uncle.

Buchanan’s history of the sash explains for the first time fully how it traveled from Gen. Braddock to Gen. George Washington to Gen. Edmund Gaines to Gen. Taylor. However, it doesn’t explain how Buchanan came by that knowledge. Had she consulted Wills De Hass’s 1851 history? Had she picked up some lore from her aunt—and if so, how had her aunt learned anything about the sash before it reached her father? Had Dandridge or Buchanan learned more about the sash through conversations with old families in Virginia? There’s no way to tell.

Buchanan’s narrative starts with the dying Braddock (illustrated above) giving his sash to Washington, a young volunteer aide, and saying that it had belonged to his father before him. To my knowledge, that detail hadn’t appeared in any previous printed source. And there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to confirm it.

Weaver Carol James reports that the date “1709” is woven into the sash and suggests that Braddock’s father graduated from military school in that year. In fact, the elder Braddock was already in the Coldstream Guards as a lieutenant colonel (with the brevet rank of major general, just to confuse things). Instead, 1709 was one year before the younger Braddock joined the Coldstream Guards himself as a fifteen-year-old ensign. Thus, the sash might have been a sort of graduation gift for young Edward as he was about to embark on his own military career.

Buchanan then wrote that Washington gave the sash to his nephew Fielding Lewis (1751-1803), whose daughter married a “Colonel Butler of Louisiana,” and Butler asked Gaines to send it out to Gen. Taylor after his early victories in the Mexican-American War. But that doesn’t match the genealogical details of Fielding Lewis’s family.

However, I found another family line that matches some of Buchanan’s details, suggesting she received information that was garbled but originally well founded. I suspect the sash went to Washington’s step-granddaughter Eleanor Parke Custis (1779-1852), who married his nephew Lawrence Lewis (1737-1839), brother of Fielding. They had a daughter named Frances Parke Lewis (1799-1895). She married Edward G. W. Butler (1800-1888). His middle initials stood for “George Washington,” of course. After his father’s death he had become a ward of Andrew Jackson, just in case this story didn’t have enough generals and Presidents already.

According to the finding aid for his family’s papers (P.D.F. file), Edward G. W. Butler served as an aide de camp to Gen. Gaines, settled in Louisiana, and retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. He thus matches all the clues to the man who sent the Braddock sash off to Gen. Zachary Taylor’s army:

• his wife was a direct descendant of Martha Washington, thus a plausible owner of a garment from Mount Vernon.
• his wife’s father was one of Gen. Washington’s Lewis nephews.
• he was “Colonel Butler of Louisiana,” as Buchanan said.
• he was “a gentleman at New Orleans,” as De Hass understood.
• he had a close connection to Gen. Gaines.

So I suspect the Butlers, pleased with the early American success against Mexico, decided to pass on a precious family relic to a new hero of the American army.

One mystery that the different sources raise is whether the Butlers wanted their relic to go to Taylor himself or to a soldier whom that general deemed particularly worthy. Some of the stories hint at the latter. But Taylor thought the gift was meant for him, and it might have been too awwwkward to tell him otherwise.

In any event, the sash is back at Mount Vernon now, having spent decades in the custody of Taylor’s daughter. And though some of the stories told about it seem poorly supported and others garbled, I think the evidence suggests it’s an authentic artifact owned by Edward Braddock from 1709 to 1755 and by George Washington from 1755 probably to his death.

“Washington’s Old Headquarters” in Richmond

This detail from a postcard in Virginia Commonwealth University’s library collection shows a gentleman outside “Washington’s Old Headquarters” in Richmond, Virginia. That’s a stone house built in 1754. Here’s the same house in a photo from the Library of Congress.

As the latest issue of Colonial Williamsburg magazine explains in its “Then and Now” series, Gen. George Washington never actually used Richmond’s oldest standing house as his headquarters. He never seems to have been there in any capacity. And other myths surrounding the house are equally bogus. (Also check out the series entry on “Martha Washington’s Kitchen.”)

In our more enlightened time, the old stone building is now Richmond’s Museum of Edgar Allan Poe. Of course, Poe never lived or worked in the house, either. But as a fifteen-year-old military school cadet, Poe once stood near the house in an honor guard for Lafayette.

Gen. Washington Arrives at Last

In chapter three of my study for the National Park Service, Gen. George Washington’s Headquarters and Home—Cambridge, Massachusetts, the title character finally comes on the scene.

This character is Washington at age forty-three—about my age when I started the work, and two decades away from the revered elder statesman on our dollar bills. (One decade away from the Houdon bust shown here.) He had commanded the Virginia troops during the French and Indian War. He was a major planter in northern Virginia, thanks to his wife’s inheritances. He had been a usually quiet stalwart in the Virginia House of Burgesses. And he was tall.

My analysis of the general’s early career owes a lot of Paul K. Longmore’s The Invention of George Washington and John Ferling’s The Ascent of George Washington. As a young man he had a galloping ambition which often got him into trouble, but he usually had the energy and luck to get out. (For example.)

As a young Virginia officer, Washington did many things he disliked seeing in the Continental Army officer corps during 1775-76: complaining about rank, going over his superiors’ heads, threatening to resign, actually resigning, looking after his own interests while on duty. What calmed him down? It looks to me like his marriage to Martha Custis at the start of 1759 reassured him that he had arrived in the top ranks of Virginia society, that he didn’t have to keep pushing so hard.

This chapter takes issue with a couple of myths about how Washington became the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. First is the question of whether he wanted the job. Following eighteenth-century genteel standards, Washington didn’t overtly campaign to be made generalissimo—but there was no doubt that he was ready to accept the post. He never suggested another candidate. As Peter Henriques wrote in Realistic Visionary:

When you are over six feet tall, of imposing martial bearing and wearing a brand-new uniform, and you know there is virtual unanimity among the delegates that an army is to be formed, it can’t come as a total shock to discover that you are being seriously considered for a leadership position.

Furthermore, Washington did more than dress the part. He prepared for it. He spent the winter of 1774-75 organizing an independent militia company in his county and accepted the command of similar units elsewhere in Virginia. He bought military books and supplies. He met with both Col. Charles Lee and Maj. Horatio Gates, retired British army officers with more professional military experience than any other Whigs in America. Leaving for Philadelphia on 4 May, he let Martha know he wasn’t sure when he’d be home.

At the First Continental Congress in autumn 1774, Washington had served on no committees and apparently made no speeches. At the Second Continental Congress, he chaired four committees on military preparation, one after the other. On 15 June 1775, the Congress unanimously voted to accept Washington’s unspoken offer to lead their army.

TOMORROW: John Adams’s account of how Washington was chosen—can we believe it?

The George Washington’s Headquarters Download

As I announced on Tuesday, the National Park Service has published my book-length historic resource study George Washington’s Headquarters and Home—Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, has called this study “an amazing piece of work that will be an invaluable resource for years to come.”

The Park Service printed a limited number for institutional use, but anyone can obtain a digital copy in P.D.F. form by clicking here. Be warned—the file is 5.61 megabytes!

Reformatting my finished pages resulted in some errors that might cause confusion. We’re looking into whether the digital version can be changed, but here’s the erratum list as it stands now.

Figures 3 and 4 appear between pages 197 and 199, not on page 173.

The full text of the caption on page 232 is:

Figure 5. Martha Washington’s New England itinerary, as preserved in the expense account that aide de camp George Baylor submitted in January 1776. The first column shows the dates of Baylor’s travel away from headquarters, from 27 November to 11 December 1775. The second column names the towns (or in one line the tavern) where Baylor and his party stopped, presumably for a midday dinner or overnight accommodations. The third column shows the cash he laid out. Image from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress.

Many commas after dates have gone missing, but the only one I spotted producing an error of fact rather than punctuation is on page 526. The first sentence in section 16.12 should read: “On 10 December, Rhode Island governor Nicholas Cooke reported, two Frenchmen arrived in Providence from Haiti aboard a ship ‘despatched some time since from this place for powder.’” Those men arrived from Martinique on 10 December; Cooke wrote of their arrival the next day.

Those Frenchmen, Pierre Penet and Emmanuel de Pliarne, went to Cambridge to meet with Gen. Washington, arriving about the same time as Martha Washington. [See how the last two paragraphs tie together?] On their way home, they asked the general to pass on to “Madam Your Lady” a selection of oranges and other tropical fruit, wines, and sugar. The next day, I was pleased to find, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper recorded visiting headquarters to meet the general’s wife and being “Treated with Oranges and a Glass of Wine.”

And that in turn lets me repeat that tonight at 6:00 P.M. Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters will host a slide talk by archeologist Alicia Paresi on the many shards of wine bottles recently found encased in mortar in the mansion’s basement. Did any of those bottles come from Penet and De Pliarne?

House Tours at Washington’s Headquarters, 22 Feb.

On Wednesday, 22 February, Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters in Cambridge is offering free tours focusing on the house’s Revolutionary history every half-hour from 11:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. Tours usually take about an hour, and there’s a limit to how many people can be in each group.

George Washington moved into this mansion, left behind by Loyalist John Vassall and family, in the middle of July 1775. Martha Washington joined him in December. The couple was living there during the general’s birthday in 1776, when he turned forty-four. At the time, he was probably more engrossed in deciding whether to move onto the Dorchester peninsula than in celebrating.

This year’s Washington’s Birthday open house marks a changing of the guard at the site. Nancy Jones, Supervisory Park Ranger for several years, is retiring from the National Park Service at the end of the month. Meanwhile, Garrett Cloer has arrived as a new ranger, bringing experience from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. Both will be leading tours on Wednesday. Stop in and say hi!

Capt. William Palfrey: “What think you of my turning parson?”

On 2 Jan 1776, Capt. William Palfrey, an aide-de-camp to Gen. Charles Lee, wrote to his wife about an unusual ceremony:

What think you of my turning parson? I yesterday, at the request of Mrs. [Martha] Washington [shown here], performed divine service at the church at Cambridge. There was present the General and lady, Mrs. [Elizabeth] Gates, Mrs. [Eleanor] Custis, and a number of others, and they were pleased to compliment me on my performance. I made a form of prayer, instead of the prayer for the King, which was much approved. I gave it to Mrs. Washington, at her desire, and did not keep a copy, but will get one and send it you.

The reference to the “church at Cambridge” instead of a meetinghouse, and to a proscribed prayer for the king mean that Palfrey had presided over a service in Christ Church. As an Anglican, Martha Washington probably felt more at home in that house of worship than in Cambridge’s Congregationalist meeting.

A mid-1800s minister and chronicler of Christ Church, the Rev. Nicholas Hoppin, examined this document and concluded:

The letter is dated Tuesday evening, 11 o’clock, 2d January, which would make the service to have been held the day before, i.e. Monday, New Year’s Day; but it bears some marks of having been written or sketched on Monday, and copied on Tuesday. The word “Last” stands erased before the portion quoted above: so that the service was probably on Sunday, the last day of the year 1775.

Palfrey’s new “form of prayer” offered a transition from the Book of Common Prayer’s standard plea for the king’s welfare to one that asked God to “Open his eyes and enlighten his understanding, that he may pursue the true interest of the people over whom thou, in thy providence, hast placed him.”

Palfrey also added a prayer “to bless the Continental Congress,” and to

Be with thy servant, the Commander-in-chief of the American forces. Afford him thy presence in all his undertakings; strengthen him, that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies; and grant that we may, in thy due time, be restored to the enjoyment of those inestimable blessings we have been deprived of by the devices of cruel and bloodthirsty men, for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

This prayer reflected how American feelings of allegiance to the British king were waning, while still stopping short of a total break from royal authority.

TOMORROW: Was there music at that ceremony?

Christ Church in Cambridge Turns 250

In August, one of the stops on my walking tour of Cambridge as a seat of civil war was Christ Church, the city’s oldest surviving house of worship. At the time, however, the building looked decidedly modern because it was sheathed in scaffolding and dust walls.

As the photo at the left shows, that construction concluded this fall in time for the church’s anniversary. This Associated Press dispatch in the Boston Globe explains:

The building, designed by famed Colonial architect Peter Harrison, opened Oct. 15, 1761, two years after Anglicans in Cambridge founded the congregation so they could attend a church closer than King’s Chapel in Boston. The original members wanted to it look like a typical limestone church found in southern England. But, lacking the stone, it was painted tan and the boards were molded to look like masonry to resemble it as best it could.

Members decided the same look would be “quite of a leap of faith” today, Allen said. The new coat of platinum gray paint matches the traditional New England Colonial style, though few colonists welcomed the church when it first opened.

And as the Revolution approached, suspicions deepened about the wealthy Tory congregation and its loyalty to the British crown. The congregants were eventually forced to flee, and the building became a barracks across from Cambridge Common, where the Minutemen assembled before the Battle of Bunker Hull and during the Siege of Boston.

The church did hold a few notable services during the war years. In 1775, Martha Washington, an Anglican, arranged for a New Year’s Eve service, which was also attended by her husband, George Washington, who would become president 14 years later. Then, in 1778, it opened for a funeral for a British prisoner of war who’d been accidentally killed. But this became an occasion for the church to be trashed by townspeople in a wave of anti-British sentiment.

The pulpit, pews and a communion table were destroyed, the windows were shattered and shots were fired — a bullet hole that remains inside is thought to have been left by the outburst.

On 15 October, the Christ Church congregation will celebrate the 250th anniversary of their building. This week I’ll share some sources about its history.

TOMORROW: Martha Washington’s service.

“The fine old Vassall mansion was in gala dress”

Yesterday I quoted the brief passage from Washington Irving’s biography of George Washington stating that his wife Martha overcame his objections and celebrated their wedding anniversary on 6 Jan 1776, while they were living at his military headquarters in Cambridge.

What sort of celebration? Irving’s passage is vague: he wrote of “due style,” and “duly celebrated”? Probably he had no information about what took place, and avoided giving details.

Other writers filled in the blanks. Among them was Mary Williams Greeley, who created the fictional “Diary of Dorothy Dudley” for a book published in Cambridge to celebrate the Centennial. Her fictional diarist says:

Madame Washington has enlivened the monotony of her winter among us by a reception, on the seventeenth anniversary of her wedding day. The fine old Vassall mansion was in gala dress, and the coming and going of guests brightened the sober aspect of the General’s head-quarters. The General and his wife stood in the drawing-room at the left of the front entrance, and there received the company. General Washington’s study is the room opposite, and opening out of this, the one set apart for his military family. These of course were all thrown open for the accommodation of the guests. There was much chatting and walking to and fro, and easy and social manners were the rule. The General does not talk much, but is gracious and courteous to all. His lady is very unceremonious and easy like other Virginia ladies, though there, is no lack of dignity in her manner. Of course simplicity of dress was noticeable,—no jewels or costly ornaments,—though tasteful gowns, daintly trimmed by their owner’s fingers, were numerous. The occasion was a most enjoyable one.

Within a few years, people were treating the “Dudley diary” as an authentic source.

Between Irving and “Dudley,” the picture of the Washingtons hosting a reception—eventually “a grand party”—on their anniversary became a standard part of Cambridge history. It also appears in biographies of Martha by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton (1897) and Helen Bryan (2002), and in biographies of George by Wayne Whipple (1911) and Ron Chernow (2010).

But that whole tradition appears to rest on the unsupported statement of Irving’s source, an unnamed “descendant of one who was an occasional inmate” at headquarters. We don’t know who that informant was, and thus can’t assay the value of his or her information. All we know is that it doesn’t appear to have any support.

(The photo above of Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters in winter comes from Tom Stohlman, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)

Did the Washingtons Celebrate Their Anniversary?

George and Martha Washington married on 6 Jan 1759. At left are the slippers Martha reportedly wore on that occasion, or a careful modern reproduction, courtesy of Mount Vernon.

The Washingtons’ wedding anniversary always fell on Twelfth Night. On that day in 1776, they were in Cambridge, at the home still nominally owned by departed Loyalist John Vassall.

In his 1855 biography of the first President, Washington Irving wrote of Martha in Cambridge:

She presided at head-quarters with mingled dignity and affability. We have an anecdote or two of the internal affairs of headquarters, furnished by the descendant of one who was an occasional inmate there. . . .

Not long after her arrival in camp, Mrs. Washington claimed to keep twelfth-night in due style as the anniversary of her wedding. “The general,” says the same informant, “was somewhat thoughtful, and said he was afraid he must refuse it.” His objections were overcome, and twelfth-night and the wedding anniversary were duly celebrated.

I’ve found no contemporaneous evidence of this celebration—no mention of it by the Washingtons or others, no indication of a special dinner or ball in the household accounts.

Furthermore, scholars who have examined George Washington’s diaries found no sign that the couple celebrated their wedding anniversary in other years, either. In one year that date coincided with a large number of guests at Mount Vernon, but that was only one year, and it could easily have been happenstance.

Gen. Washington noted the anniversary of Gen. Edward Braddock’s defeat in a letter to a fellow veteran in 1776, but he never mentioned the anniversary of his wedding in his surviving papers. Of course, Martha Washington burned almost all the correspondence between her and her husband.

John and Abigail Adams, who saved almost everything, noted their wedding anniversary in letters in 1777 and 1782—well, Abigail did. But her point was that she regretted how they were apart. The family made a big deal of John and Abigail’s fiftieth anniversary in 1814, a “day of jubilee.” But I’m not seeing mentions of receptions or parties on earlier marriage dates when they were together. Such celebrations don’t appear to have been a common custom.

TOMORROW: Filling in the gaps.

Martha Washington: “perfectly agreeable”

Yesterday we left the merchant Christopher Marshall (shown here, courtesy of the New York Public Library) at a “large and respectable” meeting of Philadelphia Patriots on 24 Nov 1775 demanding that there should be no balls “while these troublesome times [i.e., the war] continued.”

This meant that someone had to tell Martha Washington and Dolly Hancock, in whose honor a ball (or “meeting”) had been proposed, that there wasn’t going to be a party after all. Marshall wrote:

a Committee was appointed, immediately to go to inform the directors of this meeting, not to proceed any further in this affair, and also to wait upon Lady Washington, expressing this Committee’s great regard and affection to her, requesting her to accept of their grateful acknowledgment and respect, due to her on account of her near connection with our worthy and brave General, now exposed in the field of battle in defence of our rights and liberties, and request and desire her not to grace that company, to which, we are informed, she has an invitation this evening, &c., &c.

Came home near six. After I drank coffee, I went down to Samuel Adams’s lodgings, where was Col. [Eliphlaet] Dyer. Spent some time pleasantly, until Col. [Benjamin] Harrison [of Virginia] came to rebuke Samuel Adams for using his influence for the stopping of this entertainment, which he declared was legal, just and laudable. Many arguments were used by all present to convince him of the impropriety at this time, but all to no effect; so, as he came out of humor, he so returned, to appearance.

25. At half past eleven, went to the Committee Room at the Coffee House; came away near two. At this time, Major [John] Bayard, one of the four gentlemen appointed to wait on Lady Washington, reported that they had acted agreeably to directions, that the lady received them with great politeness, thanked the Committee for their kind care and regard in giving such timely notice, requesting her best compliments to be returned to them for their care and regard, and to assure them that their sentiments on this occasion, were perfectly agreeable unto her own.

This was probably the first political dilemma of Martha Washington’s life; we don’t have many of her personal letters, but she appears to have left such public dealings to her husbands. Several hundred miles from her home and from the general, she was nonetheless able to finesse this potentially difficult situation and come away with the locals’ admiration and affection.

Two days later, Marshall described her departure:

27. About ten, Lady Washington, attended by the troop of horse, two companies of light infantry, &c., &c., left this City, on her journey to the camp, at Cambridge.

At the end of the year, Washington described her time in Philadelphia for a Virginia friend this way:

I did not reach Philad till the tuesday after I left home, we were so attended and the gentlemen so kind, that I am lade under obligations to them that I shall not for get soon. I dont doubt but you have see the Figuer our arrival made in the Philadelphia paper—and I left it in as great pomp as if I had been a very great somebody

Though it took many more years before Martha Washington became an American icon, she had certainly preserved her husband’s popularity in Philadelphia in 1775.

TOMORROW: The Washingtons’ wedding anniversary.

A Ball for Lady Washington?

Today I’m speaking at another teacher workshop, this one sponsored by Boston National Historic Park at a number of historic sites in central Boston, Charlestown, and Cambridge. I’ll lead a short version of my “Ladies of Tory Row” walking tour, and then discuss “The Women of Washington’s Headquarters.”

The most prominent of those women is, of course, Martha Washington. She’s always listed first, and has the most stories told about her time there—some of which are even documented!

In that spirit, I’m quoting from the Philadelphia merchant Christopher Marshall’s diary about an episode in Washington’s journey northward in the fall of 1775, when she became the unwitting focus of a political dispute in Philadelphia:

21 [November 1775]. In company with Sampson Levy, Thomas Combs, and my son Benjamin, we viewed the inside of the new prison; thence into Chestnut Street, to view the arrival of Lady Washington, who was on her journey to Cambridge, to her husband. She was escorted into the City from Schuylkill Ferry, by the Colonel and other officers, and light infantry of the Second Battalion, and the company of Light Horse, &c.

Some Continental Congress delegates, probably Virginians and other southern planters, started to plan a ball in honor of the generalissimo’s wife. Like the term “Lady Washington,” which eventually stuck, not everyone thought highly of that idea. It smacked of luxury in wartime, as well as threatening to turn a military leader into an icon.

The month before, the Congress had even passed this resolve:

VIII. That we will in our several stations encourage frugality, economy, and industry; and promote agriculture, arts, and the manufactures of this country, especially that of wool; and will discountenance and discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, and all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shews, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments.

Some people clearly saw a ball as a type of “extravagance and dissipation,” or at least an expensive entertainment. On the other hand, folks who were friends with Martha Washington back home in Virginia knew that she liked balls, and she was supposed to be an honored guest.

Marshall’s next journal entry reported the depth of the controversy, and his own efforts to resolve it:

24. After dinner, as I had heard some threats thrown out, that if the ball assembled this night, as it was proposed, they presumed that the New Tavern would cut but a poor figure to morrow morning, these fears of some commotion’s being made that would be very disagreeable at this melancholy time, in disturbing the peace of the City, I concluded, if possible, to prevent, in order to which, I went to Col. [John] Hancock’s lodgings, and finding he was not come from Congress, and the time grew short, being three o’clock, I walked up to the State House, in expectation of meeting him.

That failing, I requested the door-keeper to call Samuel Adams, which he accordingly did, and he came. I then informed him of the account received of a ball, that was to be held this evening, and where, and that Mrs. Washington and Col. Hancock’s wife were to be present, and as such meetings appeared to be contrary to the Eighth Resolve of Congress, I therefore requested he would give my respects to Col. Hancock, desire him to wait on Lady Washington to request her not to attend or go this evening. This he promised.

Thence I went and met the Committee at the Philosophical Hall, which was large and respectable, being called together for this purpose only to consider the propriety of this meeting or ball’s being held this evening in this city, at the New Tavern, where, after due and mature consideration, it was then concluded, there being but one dissenting voice (Sharp Delany), that there should be no such meeting held, not only this evening, but in future, while these troublesome times continued…

TOMORROW: Telling Lady Washington.

Washington Documents on Display for One Day Only

A loyal Boston 1775 reader alerted me to this event in Philadelphia.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania will host a display of documents related to George Washington on one day only this week: Wednesday, 3 August, from 12:30 to 7:30 P.M. The display will include:

• one of Washington’s pocket diaries.
• Martha Washington’s cookbook and household journal while she was in Philadelphia.
• the diary of Washington’s private secretary, Tobias Lear (shown here, courtesy of USHistory.org), who chronicled the President’s last days and death (quoted back here)
• a lock of Washington’s hair
• portraits of Washington by Charles Willson Peale and Gilbert Stuart.

The H.S.P. event is free to all, and comes in conjunction with the exhibit “Discover the Real George Washington” at the National Constitution Center.

For those of us not able to visit Philadelphia on short notice, the society will make digital images of the documents and artifacts and create an online display by the end of the summer.

Observing Washington’s Birthday

When George Washington was born, the calendar read 11 Feb 1731. At least, it did so within the British Empire (and the Russian, but that didn’t matter so much).

Most of Europe had adopted the Gregorian calendar in place of the Julian. That new system did a better job of managing leap years to match the calendar to the astronomical year and keep the solstices and equinoxes from shifting. Another difference of the Gregorian calendar was when people reckoned the start of a new year—at the beginning of January, rather than in March.

The British disliked the new system’s popish origin, but even they had to acknowledge it was more accurate. Already many referred to their dates at “Old Style” or “O.S.,” and gravestones sometimes showed both ways of counting the year for dates in the early months: e.g., “1720/1.”

Great Britain finally adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. The next year, Washington turned twenty-one, so his exact birthday was legally significant. The Gregorian date for his birth was 22 Feb 1732, so his date of majority was reckoned as 22 Feb 1753. That therefore became Washington’s legal birthday.

There might have been a private celebration for the general at Valley Forge in 1778. At least, some regimental musicians got extra pay for some event that 22 February. But the public ceremonies didn’t take off until 1782, after the siege of Yorktown confirmed that Washington was worth celebrating. Rochambeau, the French commander, hosted a big dinner for the general that year.

Some Americans thought that celebrating Washington’s birthday was too reminiscent of the king’s birthday holiday under the monarchy. But the date grew in popularity, even as people weren’t sure when to celebrate. On 14 Feb 1790, Washington’s secretary Tobias Lear told Clement Biddle:

In reply to your wish to know the Presidents birthday it will be sufficient to observe that it is on the 11th of February Old Style; but the almanack makers have generally set it down opposite to the 11th day of February of the present Style; how far that may go towards establishing it on that day I dont know; but I could never consider it any otherways than as stealing so many days from his valuable life as is the difference between the old and the new Style.

Apparently Lear’s hints about the proper date got through, and in 1796 Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser reported that the 22nd was:

ushered in here by the firing of cannon, ringing of bells, and other demonstrations of joy. In the course of the day, the members of both houses of Congress, the Senate and representatives of this state, the heads of departments, foreign ministers, the clergy of every denomination, the Cincinnati, civil and military officers of the United States, several other public bodies, and many respectable citizens and foreigners, waited upon the President according to annual custom to congratulate him on the occasion. Detachments of artillery and infantry paraded in honor of the day, and in the evening there was perhaps one of the most splendid balls at Rickett’s amphitheatre ever given in America.

Isaac Weld wrote in his Travels through the States of North America:

every person of consequence in it [Philadelphia], Quakers alone excepted, made it a point to visit the General on this day. As early as eleven o’clock in the morning he was prepared to receive them, and the audience lasted till three in the afternoon. The society of the Cincinnati, the clergy, the officers of the militia, and several others, who formed a distinct body of citizens, came by themselves separately. The foreign ministers attended in their richest dresses and most splendid equipages. Two large parlours were open for the reception of gentlemen, the windows of one of which towards the street were crowded with spectators on the outside. The sideboard was furnished with cake and wines, whereof the visitors partook. I never observed so much cheerfulness before in the countenance of General Washington; but it was impossible for him to remain insensible to the attention and compliments paid to him on this occasion.

The ladies of the city, equally attentive paid their respects to Mrs. Washington, who received them in the drawing-room up stairs. After having visited the General, most of the gentlemen also waited upon her.

However, in 1798 the Washingtons’ neighbors in Alexandria invited them to a birthday celebration on 11 February, the original date. Perhaps they thought the former President might be occupied with public events on the 22nd.

(Washington’s Birthday postcard above courtesy of Dave, via Flickr.)