TO HELP commemorate its 75 years as a national monument, George Washington Birthplace in Westmoreland County will offer visitors insights into its own history Saturday.
In addition to the continuous showing of archival footage from the park's early days--it was created in January of 1930--College of William & Mary researcher Seth Bruggeman will share details from an administrative history he's now finishing for the park.
Included in the 2 p.m. talk, "Community, Memory and the Creation of George Washington Birthplace National Monument," will be details ranging from the simply fun to the truly monumental.
Take, for example, the chimneys of the Memorial House, built to resemble the house where George Washington spent the first three years of his young life.
When I joined Bruggeman earlier this week at the historic park on beautiful Pope's Creek, he said that one of the original park directors became concerned that helicopters from Dahlgren flying over the house might see that the chimneys weren't fully functional, with no holes visible on top.
"He actually climbed up and used black paint to put small squares up there, to make them look like real chimneys," said Bruggeman, a Fredericksburg resident who also teaches a history course at Germanna.
The chimney story is just one of several fun kernels of history he'll weave into the narrative, along with the fact that what's now used as a chicken coop was once the security house at the gate.
He'll also talk about the more serious side of history.
For instance the way the facility was at the vanguard of living history in the U.S., establishing a working farm where visitors could witness costumed interpreters bringing the Washington plantation to life.
And what Bruggeman considers perhaps the most fascinating chapter of the park's history: the way the National Park Service and the private Wakefield National Memorial Association disagreed on many aspects of the site, yet cooperated to create it.
Some of those early disagreements--including the spot where the Memorial House was built in the early '30s--garnered national attention and for years slowed development at the monument.
Decades passed before the National Park Service formally admitted that the Memorial House is not on the spot where the original Washington house probably stood. An outline of the foundation and a marker now note its location.
"Within the debate over the house and its placement, you can see real differences in the way the players in this effort to memorialize Washington wanted him remembered," said Bruggeman.
On one side, he said, were those who were most interested in giving the first president a fitting tribute: a grand, symmetrical brick home, facing the creek beyond in a stately fashion.
On the other side were those who put credence in the growing science of archeology, claiming a view that historians later validated.
They argued that the Washington house was probably much smaller than the Memorial House, built of wood and sitting sideways on the site.
Bruggeman, working on the history since the summer of 2003, thinks the years of discord and compromise teach something.
"In perhaps the most important ways, I think the history here is about how a community comes together for common ends," he said, "even when they disagree about basic issues like the Memorial House."
Bruggeman said researching the history through archives, source documents, live interviews and family histories has provided a glimpse of a history where park service and community efforts intertwined.
Take, for example, the fact that when the park was created it came with a man born a slave on the property, a man by the name of Johnson.
That former slave, who continued to work there, planted and worked tobacco and even cotton for a time on the site, and was on hand to answer visitors' questions about the slave days.
Or the fact that at different times in its history the park service tried to raise Morgan horses, ostensibly for use by park police.
Or even the fact that during World War II, the park was often on the receiving end of munitions and other experimental launchings from Dahlgren.
"One superintendent reported sitting in his office one afternoon and hearing a large thud nearby," said Bruggeman, who noted that the park staff quickly located the cannister and reported it to officials at Dahlgren.
"They said to leave it alone and they'd be out soon to get it," he said, noting that it was not actually a shell, but a test for a transistor-operated guidance system.
"They came and retrieved it the next day," said Bruggeman. "All through the war, the park staff thought it was interesting to witness first-hand developments being made for the war effort."
For more information, call 804/224-1732 or visit nps.gov/gewa.
To reach ROB HEDELT: 540/374-5415 rhedelt@freelancestar.com