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Don't build on a cherry-tree myth--again
George Washington's home
Date published: 7/25/2008
PHILADELPHIA --Earlier this month The Free Lance-Star joined media outlets across the country in reporting on the discovery of George Washington's boyhood home by archaeologists working at Ferry Farm. This is the iconic home made famous by Parson Weems' ubiquitous cherry-tree mythology.The George Washington Foundation, which owns the site, has additionally announced its intent to construct a replica of the boyhood home as it would have appeared during the 1740s. This is not, of course, the only Washington boyhood home. In fact, nearly 80 years ago, The New York Times printed a similar story by then-director of the National Park Service Horace Albright. "Washington's Boyhood Homes" (March 29, 1931) reminds us that Washington's youth spanned three homes: Wakefield, Ferry Farm, and Mount Vernon. Albright wrote specifically to announce the Park Service's plans to erect a replica of Washington's birth house atop its original foundations on the family's old Wakefield plantation in Virginia's Northern Neck peninsula, about 30 miles east of Ferry Farm--the same plan, incidentally, announced by Ferry Farm's owners. Dr. Phil Levy's recent assertion that "what we see at this site [Ferry Farm] is the best available window into the setting that nurtured the father of our country" ("Ferry Farm Yields Secrets," The Free Lance-Star, July 3, 2008) could have just as well been said of Wakefield by Albright eight decades earlier. And yet, although we all know the cherry-tree story and most of us know something about Mount Vernon, why isn't Wakefield a household name? A little more digging begins to explain why Washington's first boyhood home has long since fallen into obscurity. Only months after heralding the Park Service's work at Wakefield, Albright found himself taking the defensive in "Wakefield Washington Shrine Was Begun After Long Study" (The New York Times, July 19, 1931). Rumors had begun to circulate concerning the location and appearance of the replica birth house. Was it built in the right place? Did it really look like the house Washington was born in? Was it actually a replica?
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 7/25/2008
funny
(posted by
suzuki4wheeler
, July 25, 2008 4:47 pm)
Most people beleive that if he did chop down the tree it was done at mount vernon. LOL Shows how little we know or taught about him. He was a man at mount vernon right? Remember president.
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