lego & salad–The chicken is coming.
Father of Our Country
I was introduced to George Washington when I was a child. So it seems I’ve had a lifetime of knowing him. Come to think of it, though, my knowledge of our first president has always been pretty shallow. A few weeks ago I had a chance to learn a little more about him.
My youngest daughter and her family live in a Washington, D.C. suburb, an area with so much to do that it’s hard to choose. On my recent trip we had high tea at the Strathmore historic mansion, watched a children’s play about Sinbad the Sailor, and ate at a Mexican restaurant that made guacamole fresh at our table. Yum!
But back to George.
We rode up the Potomac River on the Miss Christin to Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. Did you know that Washington surveyed the Potomac? It was a useful task since parts of the river are shallow and wide with a channel running somewhere down the middle. (You have to know where it is.) His surveying work was used to choose a location for Fort Washington (formerly Fort Warburton)where the channel was near the shore.
This is the back side of Mount Vernon. The house is on a hill with a beautiful view of the Potomac. I was surprised at how many sitting rooms and bedrooms there were for guests and also for their slaves.
The siding used in Mount Vernon was (and is) wood made to look like stone. They call it “rustication.” They bevel the wood at regular intervals to simulate stone blocks, and apply sand to the surface to imitate the rough texture of stone.
Mount Vernon garden
The gardens at Mount Vernon were beautiful. Washington was a serious farmer who experimented with new crops, fertilizers, crop rotation, tools, and livestock breeding.
garden at Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon also had a flour mill, a commercial fishing operation, and a distillery.
Mount Vernon garden
Nearly half of George and Martha’s 316 slaves were too young or too old to work. The rest worked in the fields, as house servants, and in such crafts as spinning, weaving, blacksmithing, cooking and bricklaying. Washington was the only slaveholder among the founding fathers to free his slaves. Although he thought the nation was too young and fragile at the time to have a fight about slavery, he wanted to set an example for the others.
construction cranes at MGM National Harbor
My daughter (the engineer) was snapping lots of photos when our boat sailed past the construction sight for this huge new casino resort.
Capital Wheel
We also sailed past this new ferris wheel. It’s big, but I don’t think it’s quite as big as the Big Wheel in Seattle.
For more on George Washington and Mount Vernon, see this site.
Next week: a brief trip to Annapolis, MD.
And now we all know a little more 🙂
Strange but clever making wood look like stone.
Thanks for stopping by, Johanna. These days we have so many artificial building materials, made to appear like the real thing. But I was surprised to see they were interested in a similar subterfuge in the 18th century.
Glad you enjoyed your trip up the Potomac to Mt. Vernon. It’s been years since I’ve visited there.
I love visiting DC and Mt. Vernon is one of my favorite stops. It is truly a history lesson each time I visit. There is so much to see and learn there.
I had the feeling, Michelle, that I’d need to go back several times to soak it all up. The tour boat schedule was just about right in terms of not getting too tired but not nearly long enough to see and read everything.
By freeing all his slaves at once, Washington was kinder than the master who freed slaves here and there. In Virginia, there was a nasty law that required any freed slave to leave the state. Special permission from the Virginia legislature was required for a manumitted slave to remain in Virginia. So even if a slave was free, he or she was effectively banished from his/her family.
For all his talk of equality, Jefferson only freed five slaves upon his death.
I guess you might say that the late 18th century in America was a time when owning slaves was part of the culture and economy, especially for plantation owners, who must have considered slaves necessary for running their farms. But it was also a time when consciences were beginning to stir. Since Washington had no children to inherit his slaves, he was more well situated to free them. It seems that Jefferson was so deeply in debt at his death that, although his daughter, Martha, inherited his slaves, she had to sell them to pay his debts.
Thank you for this…I’ve always wanted to check out Mount Vernon and have yet to do so. Stems back to when I won first place in a DAR writing competition in fifth grade in which I wrote about George Washington. There was a “Mount Vernon” hotel in Charlottesville which I’d mistakenly thought was his home…ha! They even included that in the newspaper article stating perhaps someday I could visit his real home. The adults got quite a kick out of my perception, however I was mortified at their humor of the situation. I still have the newspaper clipping and my winning medal!
A cute little joke at the expense of a ten-year-old girl. Shame on them.
Strangely enough, Suzicate, I won a DAR writing contest too. I was probably in 9th or 10th grade. A teacher or counselor asked me to enter. I remember thinking: I know what they want me to write, and it will be boring and predictable. But I was a diligent, obedient student, so I wrote what they expected, and they liked it.
That is so cool that you won one as well. I husband’s aunt is a DAR member and she judges those essays.
I didn’t know that much about George Washington either. Thanks for the insight. It’s nice to know that he wanted to set a good example!
Congrats on being a finalist for NIEA!
Thank you, L.Marie. I was really impressed by what a serious farmer Washington was, raising various animals and planting wheat and every kind of fruit and vegetable that would grow in Virginia. He was very scientific about it all, experimenting with various plants and fertilizers.