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

CHAPTER 2. Costumed Ladies and Federal Agents

51 CHAPTER 2 Costumed Ladies and Federal Agents Despite all efforts by the National Park Service to perpetuate the myth of a “place untouched by time,” the most distinguishing feature of Washington ’s birthplace today is its unwitting preservation of decade upon decade of commemorative recalibration—and each layer invokes the ideological exigencies of its time. Custis’s marker, the first and most important layer, did not last very long. Local farmers more interested in cultivating crops than memories reportedly moved the marker from time to time. And as the years passed, relic seekers carried away pieces of Custis’s stone, further testifying to the longstanding allure of historical objects. Various accounts indicate that Custis’s marker had been broken into pieces by 1857 and had entirely disappeared by 1870. No matter what importance we might grant Custis’s marker today,the nineteenth-century residents of Virginia’s Northern Neck—people who honored Washington through their own claims to the land that birthed him—did not feel compelled to protect or embellish the first stone. They had, however, begun to think publicly about the significance of Washington’s birthplace. In 1858 William Lewis Washington deeded land surrounding the Birthplace to the Commonwealth of Virginia in trade for 52 Chapter 2 a promise to protect and appropriately mark it. Virginia Governor Henry Wise visited the site in April 1858 to accept the gift and inspect the property . His visit encouraged a joint resolution of the Virginia Assembly to appropriate five thousand dollars to protect the site. Adjacent landowner and Washington family representative John E. Wilson donated additional land to expand the home site and provided rights-of-way in 1859.The Civil War stymied Virginia’s plans for the Birthplace, however, and by 1865 the commonwealth had neither the money nor the resources to make good on its agreement with Washington. The Birthplace languished through Reconstruction until 1879 when Congress, eager to facilitate sectional reunion, appropriated $3,000 to survey the site. That summer, Secretary of State William M. Evarts traveled down the Potomac River to discover a scene not unlike what Custis had stumbled upon sixty-four years earlier.Although the marker was gone,remnants of the old chimney still remained.Evarts met with local residents and concluded that, since Custis placed his marker near the chimney, then the chimney itself likely marked the approximate site of Washington’s birth. He returned to Washington and petitioned Congress for $30,000 to erect a suitable memorial atop the chimney site. Congress complied in February 1881 and Governor William E. Jameson happily unburdened Virginia of its commemorative promise by deeding at no cost the old William Lewis Washington parcel and the Washington family burial ground—about a mile northwest of the birth site—to the United States in April 1882. Evarts needed more than money, however, to build a memorial at Popes Creek. Surrounded by water on two sides and without roads, the site lacked a practical access point for delivery of supplies and laborers. Evarts delayed further development pending appropriations to construct a wharf at the site. Although the delay eclipsed Evarts’s own term in office, his replacement, Secretary of State James G. Blaine, took up where Evarts left off and approved a commemorative plan drafted by Boston architects Home & Dodd in April 1881. The plan proposed to relocate the Washington family burial vault to a spot adjacent to the old chimney. Both the vault and the chimney were to be enclosed within a single granite sarcophagus with bronze doors and a grille for visitors to look through. The plan occasioned considerable opposition.Boston landscape architect Charles Eliot, considered the father of American landscape preservation, described the birthplace as “sadly neglected” and “in an unattractive condition .” Building a monument there, he contended, would only emphasize the poor condition of the landscape. Eliot suggested that the public would Costumed Ladies and Federal Agents 53 be far better served by an investment in decorative plantings chosen by an expert like Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. Local landowner John E.Wilson— who inherited portions of the old Popes Creek Plantation in 1867 by marrying the granddaughter of George Washington’s nephew—chafed at the idea of disinterring several generations of the Washington family. Blaine tabled the project,and a decade passed without further deliberation.Finally, in 1893, Congress approved less ambitious plans to erect a simple fifty-foot granite obelisk...