2022-02-27.md 7.2 KB
+++ title = "George Washington Slept Here" author = ["George M Jones"] publishDate = 2022-02-27T00:00:00-05:00 lastmod = 2023-12-06T05:45:57-05:00 tags = ["history", "100DaysToOffload"] categories = ["blog"] draft = false +++
Hiking yesterday in the Shenandoah Valley I discovered that I was on part of "Morgans Road", which is a road George Washington had built into the hills to allow his army to retreat from the British in case things got really bad. "George Washington Planned To Sleep Here If Things Got Really Bad". That was enough at the time of the bicentennial (1976) to put up another George Washington marker.
This includes a longish list of Washington sites I've run across, including a couple with family connections.
{{< figure src="/ox-hugo/Morgans2.jpg" caption="Figure 1: \"George Washington Planned To Sleep Here\" by George Jones is licenced under CC SA 4.0" width="400px" >}}
I've lived in northern Virgina for almost 20 years. 250 years later, there is still a mythos, and in some cases still oral tradition about George Washington everywhere you go from his home at Mount Vernon to Bunker Hill in Boston. Some of the most visible reminders (aside from Washington, DC and the Washington Monument) are all the "George Washington [did X] Here" signs.
The myth may be larger than life. The story about young George Washington saying "I can not tell a lie" when he cut down is father's cherry tree is probably a fabrication. But there was a core of truth, a real man behind the legends that inspired those who knew him and the generations that followed.
Living in northern Virginia, you can hardly step outside without running into some "George Washington [did X] Here" memorial. Here is a top-of-the-head list of things I've run into in the past few years:
Neavil's Ordinary : Neavil's Ordinary (inn) is a few miles from my
house. George Washington (and George Fairfax of Fairfax County
fame) spent a night there on they way to survey land in the
Shenandoah Valley.
Washington, VA : Washington himself surveyed and laid out the town
of [Washington "The First of them All" Virginia](https://washingtonva.gov/history2/), the county seat of
Rappahannock County.
A farm in New Jersey : Backpacking on the Appalachian Trail in New
Jersey I spent a night camped behind the barn of a family that has
owned the land since the revolution. They have an oral tradition
that Washington came through and spent a night in the old farm house.
Winchester, VA : There is a ["Washington's Headquarters" site in
Winchester, VA.](https://winchesterhistory.org/george-washingtons-office/)
Longfellow House, Cambridge, MA : Then there is the house in
Cambridge, MA (across the green from Harvard) that served as
[Washington's headquarters](https://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm) during the siege of Boston and later as
the [home of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow](https://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm). This one starts to
get personal, as I am a cousin of some sort to Longfellow. We both
go back to John Alden on the Mayflower. See Longfellow's "The
Courtship of Miles Standish".
Fort Enochs/Fort Capon : This one is very personal. Turns out
Washington commissioned my Great,Great,Great,Great,Great grandfather
[Lt. Colonel Henry Enochs](https://talesofafamily.blog/henry-enoch-1710-1784/) to build a fort on his land during the
French and Indian war. Of course, Washington did the land survey.
In the 20 years we's spent living in Virginia driving back to Ohio
regularly, we developed a route that goes through Bloomery, West
Virginia which winds up cutting right past the sight of the fort
(now unmarked on a bluff in a field). It is next to an old
one-lane bridge. We did this before we knew of the fort or the
family connection. I guess my ancestral lands were calling me home.
In reality, much of my family kept moving west to Ohio, where
Washington owned land. They were among [the first settlers of
Marietta, Ohio](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Pioneers/David-McCullough/9781501168703), the first town in the Northwest Territory and the
seat of ... Washingotn county.
Bacon Fort : Two weeks ago, on the way home from another hike I
came across a marker for "[Bacon Fort](https://readtheplaque.com/plaque/bacon-fort)", another "Ordinary" and former
frontier fort at which Washington stopped.
Mount Vernon : And then there is Washington's home of Mt. Vernon
where he and wife Martha are buried. It is a private foundation and
admission is free to people named "George" on his birthday.
There is a harpsichord in the house that at least one 12 year old
keyboard prodigy was allowed to play a few years back. This Mount
Vernon is not to be confused with the town of Mount Vernon, Ohio
which my high school played in football.
Culpepper, VA : A young Washington live in Culpeppr, VA a little
south of where I live and joined the Masonic lodge there. Nice men
from the Masons can be found at his grave from time to time honoring
their brother and (a few years back) handing out coins to children
with Washington's image.
The National Road/Braddock's Road : Then there was the time
Washington and Braddock went to what is now Pittsburgh to try to
dislodge the french at [Fort Duquesne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Duquesne). Braddock wound up dead,
[buried under the road](https://www.nps.gov/places/braddock-s-grave.htm) and Washington wound up hastily building [Fort
Necessity](https://www.nps.gov/fone/index.htm) and signing surrender documents in French that he did not
understand. And the French and Indian wars were off and running...
Other Washington sites : Over the years I've been to other sites associated
with Washington: Valley Forge, [The crossing of the Delaware](https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/crossing-of-the-delaware/),
Independence Hall (Philadelphia ) New York, Yorktown.
The man got around Colonial America (see The George Washington Day By Day project)
To be fair there is, of course, another side to the "Settlement" story some of which is told by John Ruth in his book This Very Ground, This Crooked Affair. After seven generations, Ruth's family can no longer afford to live on land they got directly from William Penn near Philadelphia. Penn, was "granted" all of Pennsylvania by the King of England despite the fact that there were already many people living there who had been there thousands of years...
But that said, man or myth, Washington was an inspiring character. He had flaws (don't we all?).
I can not tell a lie. I think the take-home for me is to figure out what praiseworthy qualities Washington (or his myth) embodied and to at least try to add those qualities to my own life.
#13 of #100DaysToOffload take 2, https://100daystooffload.com/