Here, George Washington Was Born: Memory, Material Culture, and the Public History of a National Monument

CHAPTER 1. The First Stone

24 CHAPTER 1 The First Stone The history of commemoration at Washington’s birthplace properly begins with a flamboyant character named George Washington Parke Custis . George and Martha adopted Custis after the boy’s father, John Parke Custis—Martha’s son by her first marriage—died in 1781. Custis was only six months old when he moved to Mount Vernon, where for nearly two decades he enjoyed George and Martha’s deep affections and even deeper pockets. Correspondence between the two Georges reveals the younger’s taste for aristocratic leisure during his school years at the College of New Jersey (Princeton University since 1896). Frequently admonished to devote more time to studies and less to women and horse racing, young George traded in his old ways upon the elder’s death in 1799 and undertook a new career as full-time guardian of Washington’s legacy. From the halls of his home at Arlington, Virginia—built between 1802 and 1818 on and with his inheritance—Custis, when not speculating in sheep farms, devoted his remaining fifty-eight years to celebrating the deeds and accomplishments of his famous benefactor. His marriage in 1804 to Mary Lee Fitzhugh and the marriage of their daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, to Robert E. Lee reflected the long-standing relationship between the Washington and Lee families, whose hereditary home The First Stone 25 places—Wakefield and Stratford Hall respectively—stood within only a few miles of each other in Westmoreland County. Historian Karal Ann Marling describes Custis as “a garrulous eccentric who . . . dabbled in historical drama”and “was even known to dress up in his grandpa’s Annapolis uniform once in a while.”He filled his home with Washington memorabilia, painted large murals of his famous grandfather in battle, wrote plays and essays about him, and hosted annual Fourth of July sheep shearing events that attracted thousands of visitors, for whom Custis solemnly erected Washington’s battle-worn camp tent. Custis encouraged the public to visit his property at Arlington so that they could celebrate George Washington in the presence of his objects. He went so far as to build a public wharf, dining hall, and other facilities to accommodate the crowds. Given to dramatic oratory—sometimes by request—Custis even occasionally donned his benefactor’s epaulets for added effect. Custis’s penchant for Washingtonia, historical tableau, and battle camp reenactments all suggest the sort of histrionics that today we most readily associate with Civil War reenactments or Renaissance fairs. Indeed, Custis ’s own account of his commemorative work at Washington’s birthplace confirms this impression. Sometime during June 1815 or 1816, Custis sailed for Popes Creek aboard his private topsail schooner, the Lady of the Lake. He brought two friends along. Although William Grymes was not related to Washington, his father had distinguished himself among Washington’s famous “life guard” unit. Samuel Lewis was Washington’s nephew. His father earned some notoriety through his affiliation with Colonel George Baylor’s Virginia cavalry. Even the Lady’s captain claimed ancestry to a soldier wounded at the battle of Guilford Courthouse. The four men set anchor in the Potomac River just north of the entrance to Popes Creek and hefted a freestone slab into the vessel’s tender. Custis had only a vague idea of where to find Washington’s birthplace but, as luck would have it, he and the landing party happened upon the Washington family’s plantation overseer,who was fishing just inside the mouth of Popes Creek. They followed the man a half-mile south and put ashore along the creek’s western bank.With slab in tow,Custis and friends pushed up a steep bank through high grass and emerged atop a gentle hill beyond which fruit trees and fig bushes grew amid the scattered bricks of an ancient chimney. The men solemnly fashioned a makeshift pedestal of the fallen brick and “desirous of making the ceremonial [sic] of depositing the stone as imposing as circumstances would permit, we enveloped it in the ‘star-spangled 26 Chapter 1 banner’ of our country, and it was borne to its resting-place in the arms of the descendants of four revolutionary patriots and soldiers.” Engraved in anticipation of this moment, the stone’s inscription read: Here The 11th of February, 1732, (Old Style,) george washington Was Born. Custis and his crew returned to the Lady of...