The Strange Case of George Washington's Teeth

George Washington's Dentures

An unsmiling George Washington

Sometimes it is hard to think of George Washington as a man.  A marble statue…yes.  The guy on the dollar bill…yes.  But a man?  So let’s consider his aches and pains to bring him down to earth ... specifically his painful teeth.

Despite his best efforts to care for his teeth, Washington lost his first tooth at the age of twenty four.  Almost every year thereafter, Washington suffered from severe toothaches, followed by the painful extraction of the teeth.

Washington’s teeth continued to deteriorate, making it hard for him to chew without pain.  In 1773, at the age of 41, Washington wrote to a London merchant thanking him for his gift of two large stone jars of pickled tripe, which is soft and easy to eat.

By the age of 49, Washington was wearing false teeth wired to his remaining ones.  By the time he is 57, and sworn in for the first time as President of the United States, Washington has one remaining real tooth.  That year he receives the first of four full sets of dentures made by John Greenwood, fashioned from hippopotamus ivory and human teeth.

Washington owned eight sets of dentures during his lifetime.  None of these were made of wood, but all were uncomfortable, and painful to use.  The dentures distorted the look of Washington’s mouth and inhibited him from smiling.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

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The Death of a Confederate Washington

John Augustine Washington III

John Augustine Washington III (1821-1861), was the last private owner of the Mount Vernon Estate.  The estate passed to John Augustine in this way:  George Washington willed the estate to his nephew Bushrod Washington.  The childless Bushrod, in turn, willed the estate to his nephew John Augustine II, the father of John Augustine III.  John Augustine II died in 1832, when John Augustine III was eleven years old.  The widowed Jane Charlotte then took possession of the property.

John Augustine III graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, and proposed to manage Mount Vernon for his mother.  Jane Charlotte contracted his services for a period of seven years, at an annual salary of $500 (about $14,500 today).

In the forty some years since the death of George Washington, Mount Vernon had deteriorated sadly.  Soil degradation, bad weather, and poor harvests all contributed to the downward economic spiral.  John Augustine brought in money selling and renting out slaves, by land rents, by selling wood, and by running a fishing operation on the Potomac.  Farming still brought in some revenue.

By the 1850s, Mount Vernon had become a tourist Mecca.  Thousands of people descended on the Estate annually to gawk and ask questions.  John Augustine recognized the profit potential of historical tourism, and contracted with the steamboat Thomas Collyer to bring people to the estate.  Slaves sold bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. 

By the late-1850s, John Augustine, now the owner of Mount Vernon after the death of his mother, was ready to sell the property and manage other more lucrative family plantations.  He set about trying to find buyers, approaching both the state of Virginia and the federal government.  There was no relief to be found from either.  Finally, in 1858, John Augustine accepted the offer of a new organization, styling itself the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (MVLA), to buy two hundred acres of the Mount Vernon Estate, including the mansion, outbuildings and the family tomb for the sum of $200,000 (about $5.5 million today).

John Augustine and his family left Mount Vernon in February 1860, moving to Waveland plantation in Fauquier County, Virginia.  John Augustine’s wife, Eleanor, died in childbirth that same year.  With the outbreak of the Civil War, John Augustine joined the Confederate Army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.  He served as aide-de-camp to General Robert E. Lee during the early days of the war. 

During Lee’s campaign in the mountains of western Virginia, in September 1861, Lee ordered Col. Washington to make a reconnaissance near Cheat Mountain (in what is today West Virginia).  The zealous Washington advanced deep into enemy occupied territory with his detachment.  When the detachment made to return to friendly lines, enemy pickets opened fire.  Col. Washington fell from his horse, as the rest of the detachment scattered. 

The wounded Confederate officer was surrounded by Union troops.  Col. J.H. Morrow, of the third regiment of Ohio volunteers knelt next to the stricken man and “…raised him so as to enable him to recline against his breast, and directed one of his men, standing near, and who wore a felt hat, to run and fill it with water from the stream.”  Col. Morrow bathed the wounded man’s forehead and endeavored to press water between his lips from a saturated handkerchief; but he could not swallow as blood was flowing from his mouth and nose, and a few moments later he was dead.  The dead officer wore a valuable ring, a pin in his shirt bosom, and a gold watch and chain.  These Col. Morrow removed, and also took possession of his sword and pistols, and ordered a new ambulance, under his control, to be brought at once from camp, in which he had the body placed and taken to his headquarters, nearby.

Not long after, Gen. William L. Loring, bearing a flag, and accompanied by a two-horse wagon, arrived from Gen. Lee’s camp in order to obtain possession of and remove the body.  It was then that Col. Morrow learned the name of the officer who had fallen….

General Loring desired to transfer the body from the ambulance to the wagon, but Col. Morrow kindly insisted upon his taking the ambulance.  General Loring’s driver sprang upon the box, taking the reins, with Col. Morrow sitting beside him, and in this manner, the body was taken to General Lee’s headquarters.

The watch and chain, with ring and pin, were turned over to Gen. Loring, and later the sword and pistols were turned over to Gen. J. J. Reynolds…who at that time was serving in the command of Union General George B. McClellan.

From an account written by Thornton Washington for the Washington Examiner, printed in the Spirit of Jefferson (Charles Town, West Virginia) on March 5, 1889.

John Augustine Washington died on September 13, 1861.  He is buried at Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charlestown, West Virginia.

A distant relative to John Augustine, through the Lees, and a childhood friend, Gen. Lee was hit hard by one of the first personal losses he would experience in the War.  Lee penned the following letter to the eldest of John Augustine’s children, Louisa, aged seven.

Camp on Valley River

Sept. 16, 1861

My dear Miss Louisa,

With a heart filled with grief, I have to communicate the saddest tidings you have ever heard.

May ‘Our Father, Who is in Heaven’ enable you to hear it, for in his Inscrutable Providence, abounding in mercy and omnipotent in person, he has made you fatherless on earth.

Your dear father, in reconnoitering the enemy’s position yesterday, came within range of the fire of his pickets and was instantly killed. He fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and in which his noble heart was enlisted. My intimate association with him for some months had more fully disclosed to me his great worth than double as many years of ordinary intercourse would have been sufficient to reveal. We had shared the same tent in morning and evening as his earnest devotion to Almighty God elicited my grateful admiration. He is now happy in Heaven. I trust with her he so loved on earth. We ought not to wish them back.

May God, in His mercy, my dear child, sustain you, your sisters and brothers under this heavy affliction. My own grief is so great I will not afflict you further with it.

Faithfully your friend

R. E. Lee

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and the impact of the war on social customs.

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Threadbare Brides of the Civil War

Weddings were welcomed social events during the Civil War and even threadbare brides were radiant. Economy usually replaced the glorious wedding gowns of the past and a nice day dress was considered proper attire, but flowers especially orange blossoms were still seen. Northerner Ellen Wright wrote that she was going to renovate her old clothes for her own wedding because she had no interest in, "shining forth in new apparel in these hard times."

Late in the war, after the fall of Columbia, South Carolina. Louisa McCord was preparing to be married.  Old gloves and slippers were re-dyed with ink.  Family and friends had scrapped together a trousseau which was a "monument to needlework ingenuity." A white wedding gown could not be found however, until Louisa’s mother found white muslin clothe available from a Yankee sutler, priced at an exorbitant $10 in greenbacks. The determined mother sold her carpet and some chairs and finally was forced to drive around town selling lard and butter to come up with all of the money needed to buy the clothe.

 
A wedding ring also became a challenge for Louisa's fiancé. He announced that he would have to travel to another part of the state to borrow a ring from a cousin or aunt, but the McCord family came through again. Louisa's sister offered her 16th birthday ring. Louisa wanted to be married in church, but the family had no transportation. The buggy had been confiscated and the horses eaten. Guests who came couldn't stay long "because their supply of horse feed gave out." 

The Civil War Wedding

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George Pullman's Worker's Paradise

The model town of Pullman, located on the far south side of Chicago, was built in the 1880s on land controlled by the Pullman Palace Car Company (think railroads and the luxurious Pullman cars).  The town was the brainchild of George W. Pullman, who thought he could avoid strikes, attract the most skilled labor, and achieve greater productivity by providing workers with a superior living environment. 

The residents weren’t as enthusiastic, and complained that rents, and prices in the company owned stores, were too high.  With the Depression of 1892, wages dropped, but rents and food prices stayed the same.  The bloody nationwide Pullman strike of 1894 resulted.  During the course of the strike, 30 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded before the strike was broken.

In 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the company’s charter did not include the right to run a town.  Pullman became just another residential neighborhood until the area was granted landmark status, and the Historic Pullman Foundation set to work restoring it in the 1970s.

The Pullman Arcade Building, seen here in 1894 during the strike,  is being guarded by the Illinois National Guard.  The Arcade Building contained a 500-seat theatre, a post office, library, the Pullman Trust and Savings Bank, the town management offices as well as office and storefront spaces that were rented to private businesses.  

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The Strange Case of Henry Washington

Mount Vernon

Henry (Harry) Washington

Born on the Gambia River around 1740, Henry Washington (real name unknown) was captured and sold into slavery sometime before 1763.  He subsequently became the property of George Washington and was a groom in the stables at Mount Vernon.  In November 1775, the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation offering freedom to any slave who would help put down the American rebels.   That December, George Washington, commanding the Continental Army in Massachusetts, received a report from his cousin Lund that Lord Dunmore’s proclamation had stirred the passions of Washington’s own slaves. “There is not a man of them but would leave us if they believed they could make their escape. Liberty is sweet.”  In August 1776, a month after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Henry Washington made his escape from Mount Vernon, making his way to the British lines and joining Lord Dunmore’s all black “Ethiopian Regiment ”.  With several hundred men under arms, the Ethiopian Regiment fought for the Crown and the freedom of all blacks in slavery, under the regimental motto, “Liberty to Slaves”.  Lord Dunmore’s forces were overwhelmed in Virginia and the Ethiopian Regiment disbanded.  Henry Washington went on to serve in another Loyalist regiment, The Black Pioneers under the command of Sir Henry Clinton as they moved from New York to Philadelphia to Charleston, and, after the fall of Charleston, back to New York. 

Henry Washington was not alone in joining the British.  The so called “Black Loyalists” in the Revolutionary War are estimated to have numbered between eighty and one hundred thousand runaways who sought freedom within the lines of the British army.  By freeing the slaves the British forced slave masters to guard slaves, one of their chief economic assets, instead of fighting British troops. The British were willing to emancipate slaves if by so doing they could first cripple and then crush the rebellion.  Much as in the later American Civil War, military necessity rather than morality acted as the catalyst of history. The use of slaves by the British for military purposes soon prompted the American rebels to begin recruiting blacks.  George Washington gave his approval to Rhode Island's plan to raise an entire regiment of black slaves (the state bought and emancipated slaves willing to become soldiers). Similarly, Massachusetts raised an all-black unit, the Bucks of America under Samuel Middleton, the only black commissioned officer in the Continental Army. In October 1780, even Maryland accepted “any able-bodied slave between 16 and 40 years of age, who voluntarily enters into service . . . with the consent and agreement of his master.” New York began recruiting slaves in March 1781.  By June 1781 some 1,500 of the 6,000 troops under George Washington’s direct command were black.

In 1782, a provisional treaty granting the American colonies their independence was signed by Great Britain. As the British prepared for their final evacuation, the Americans demanded the return of runaway slaves, under the terms of the peace treaty. The British refused to abandon black Loyalists who had fought for the Crown to their fate. Some four thousand blacks who had served the Crown during the war, together with their families, were listed in “The Book of Negroes” (George Washington insisted that such a list be made so that masters could be compensated for their lost property).  Those lucky enough to make the list sailed to freedom in Canada and England.  Among them was Henry Washington.

Henry Washington embarked on the ship L’Abondance in July 1783, with 405 other black loyalists, including women and children, bound for Nova Scotia.  He was forty three years old.  His wife, Jenny was twenty four.  Most of the black loyalists on board L’Abondance were followers of a blind preacher called “Daddy Moses” who settled as a community in a place they named Birchtown.

Life in Nova Scotia was hard.  The Crown was slow in allocating land, the weather was harsh, and the soil rocky and poor.  After several unhappy years in Nova Scotia, Henry Washington together with his wife and three children and 1,192 other black colonists joined an enterprise sponsored by the Sierra Leone Company, and financed by the British government, which allowed black loyalist refugees to join the free black community established in Sierra Leone in West Africa.  In 1791, Henry Washington and his family settled in Sierra Leone. New settlers were promised twenty acres for every man, ten for every woman and five for every child. They were also given assurances that in Sierra Leone there would be no discrimination between white and black settlers.

The Company was long on promises and short on delivery.  Relations between the Company and the colonists deteriorated to the point that the Company sought a royal charter from the British parliament which would give the company formal jurisdiction over Sierra Leone.  The Company wanted full judicial authority to suppress dissent.  The Company explained, “…the unwarranted pretensions of the disaffected settlers, their narrow misguided views; their excessive jealousy of Europeans; the crude notions they had formed of their own rights; and the impetuosity of their tempers…” would soon produce a “ruinous effect.”

The settlers, who regarded themselves as loyal British subjects, petitioned the King, explaining how the black settlers had been given land by the British government as a consequence of “our good behavior in the last war.” The King hearing of their unhappiness about living a cold country offered to “remove us to Sierra Leone where we may be comfortable.” Things had not turned out in accordance with the terms of His Majesty’s offer, and the settlers sought redress. The Company insured that the settler’s petition never reached the King.

By 1799, Sierra Leone’s settlers had grown so discontented, so revolutionary in their rejection of the Company’s rule over the colony, that some in London likened them to the revolutionaries in France.   The Company noted with alarm, “meetings of a most seditious and dangerous nature.”  The governor sent armed marshals to arrest several men on charges of treason.  Within a week thirty one men were in custody.  A military tribunal was set up to try the prisoners for “open and unprovoked rebellion.”  Henry Washington and twenty three others were banished to the colony’s desolate northern shore.

The exiles elected Henry Washington their leader in 1800, only months after George Washington’s death at Mount Vernon.  In the love of liberty, Henry Washington was not excelled by the better known George Washington.

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George Washington’s “Riding Chair”

As a young man, George Washington acquired a riding chair similar to the one you see above (which is at the Mount Vernon Estate).  Popular in America and England, riding chairs could travel country lanes and backroads more easily than bulkier four wheeled coaches.  Riding chair were relatively inexpensive compared with other vehicles, and were used by all social classes.

Riding chairs were popular in the 1700s, typically had two wheels, and seated one or two people.  Riding chairs were more comfortable than riding on a horse, and was easier on the horse, which didn't have the weight of a human on its back.

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The Strange Case of Geronimo's Picture

In 1873, General George Crook fought the Apaches before being posted north to fight the Sioux (including participation in the 1876 campaign in which George Armstrong Custer was massacred at the Little Big Horn). In 1882, Crook returned to Arizona to lead a column in pursuit of Geronimo, Chato and other Apache warriors raiding Arizona and New Mexico, whom he eventually subdued.

Geronimo

I remember looking at the iconic picture of Geronimo, the fierce and gruesome Apache leader, and thinking that some intrepid newspaper photographer had journeyed into Geronimo’s lair to take a true action shot of the great warrior.  This old time photo certainly looks like it was taken in the desert wastelands.  Unfortunately, the photo is a fake.  It was taken by A.F. Randall who did photographic studies of Apache Indians in the comfort of his studio.  Individuals, including the great warriors Geronimo and Chato were posed against a neutral backdrop, surrounded by desert plants.

Geronimo in the studio

Chato in the studio

The real action photographer was Camillus "Buck" Sydney Fly of Tombstone Arizona, who accompanied General Crook’s expedition, and got this picture of Geronimo in his camp during surrender negotiations with General Crook. 

Geronimo in camp

C.S. Fly captured the only known images of Native Americans while still at war with the United States. 

Geronimo with his warriors

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Legends of the Superstition Mountains


Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious, forbidding, and dangerous.  The Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.  What were these people looking for?  Is it possible that these mountains hide a vast treasure?  Is it possible that UFOs land here?  Is it possible that in these mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard Men?  Join us as we explore the history of the:  Legends of the Superstition Mountains.

Western Art!