Now That's a Scrapbook

A previously unknown letter from George Washington has been discovered in a little girl's scrapbook.

It was written in May 1787 and addressed to Jacob Morris, grandfather of Julia Kean, the precocious 10-year-old who started the brown leather scrapbook in 1826 and put the letter under a portrait of the nation’s first president.

The letter paper was too long to fit, especially under the large portrait, so Julia cut a strip off the top and plastered it vertically on the page, next to the letter’s envelope.

Julia also saved a letter from Thomas Jefferson to her step-grandfather, a Polish count who was traveling back to Poland to help Napoleon in a military campaign. [Link]

She Must Have Been a Handsome Woman

Lee Hardin Woody has discovered that she is a second cousin, nine times removed of George Washington. Her father isn't surprised.

He said, "Some people think the picture we have of my mother" -- Mary Gray Riley -- "kind of looks like Washington." [Link]

Her Work Is Sometimes in Tents

Textile expert Loreen Finkelstein has matched up a 2-foot-by-2 1/2-foot fabric panel found at Mount Vernon with a gaping hole in the tent George Washington used as his headquarters at Valley Forge. The missing fragment will eventually be sewed back in place.

The tent was taken down for conservation in October 2003 and brought to Finkelstein's laboratory in Williamsburg, Va. During that process, Finkelstein was also called upon to evaluate some of Washington's clothing at his Mount Vernon estate.

It was while doing that work that Finkelstein became aware of tent fragments at Mount Vernon. One remnant in particular looked like it could be the missing piece, Finkelstein said Wednesday.

She went back to Williamsburg and made a template of the hole, which she brought back to Mount Vernon in April 2005 for comparison. It matched almost perfectly, she said, noting that further confirmation came from analysis of the thread count and stitching technique. [Link]

I Thought He Just Sold Furniture

Picking up on a familiar theme, William Hogeland argues that today's illegal immigrants are in good historical company. George Washington himself snatched land west of the Appalachians the King had declared off-limits.

And Washington was a model of decorum compared with Ethan Allen, a rowdy from Connecticut who settled with his brothers in a part of the Green Mountains known as the Hampshire Grants (later known as "Vermont"). The province of New York held title to the land, but Allen asserted his own kind of claim: He threw New Yorkers out, Tony Soprano style, then offered to sell their lots to what he hoped would be a flood of fellow illegals from Connecticut. [Link]

Washington Leaves Man in Coma

Oxford University student John Washington was arrested in New York for assaulting fellow American Colin Hall five years ago.

It is alleged that Mr Hall, who lives in Chelsea, was talking to Miss Clegg when Washington - reportedly related to the first US president George Washington - struck him with an empty bottle.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Mr Hall said: "He has shown complete dishonour and cowardice, both by hitting me from behind and sneaking out of the country while I was in a coma.

"How ironic that a direct descendent of George Washington should be eating his Christmas turkey in jail. [Link]

It would indeed be ironic—had George Washington fathered any children. Perhaps Mr. Hall accepts the conclusions of this book.

Should We Learn to Love Lawn Jockeys?

The lawn jockeys I see these days are generally of fair complexion, but the statues had a darker past. Before tonight, I wasn't aware of an effort to rehabilitate these supposed symbols of servility.

Museum curator Charles L. Blockson, the great-grandson of a slave who escaped to Canada on the Underground Railroad, has been trying for two decades to rewrite the history of the lawn jockey on the basis of two stories so good they're just begging to be refuted.

[I]n 1983, while retracing his ancestor's journey on the underground railroad, Blockson made a startling discovery: A lawn jockey had shepherded slaves to freedom.

In a 1984 National Geographic cover story on the underground railroad, Blockson told how the wife of U.S. District Judge Benjamin Piatt had tied a flag to a lawn jockey as a signal to fleeing slaves that it was safe to stop there.

Blockson also came across the Revolutionary War legend of Jocko. The story goes that a 9-year-old New Jersey farm boy named Jocko sneaked out of his house to find his father, a freed slave who had enlisted with George Washington's army.

The boy wound up in an encampment on Christmas Eve, before Washington's crossing of the Delaware. Waiting for his father's return, the boy volunteered to care for the general's horse during a blizzard. The next morning, Washington discovered that the boy had frozen to death, his hands still clinging to the horse's reins. [Link]

Washington was so moved by Jocko's sacrifice that he commissioned a tacky lawn ornament handsome statue of the faithful, frozen groomsman for his estate at Mount Vernon.

Of course, all the web references to the Underground Railroad story trace back to Blockson and no further. And a spokesman for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati has said that "there is no truth to the idea that lawn jockeys were used as part of the Underground Railroad." And the folks at Mount Vernon call the Jocko story "apocryphal." But I will withhold judgment until I've read Blockson's 1984 NG article, "Escape From Slavery: The Underground Railroad." Only then will I decide that I don't believe him.

[Photo source: Lawn Jockey Love (license)]

President's Relative Linked to Cow-Tipping Scandal

A genealogy feature in Sunday's Washington Post reveals how one woman has come to terms with having bovine-budging, wooden-toothed relatives.

Jill Groce always knew that her father's family had a long history in America, but it wasn't until she started researching her genealogy that she discovered exactly how far those roots stretched. Groce, a 62-year-old copy editor from Montgomery Village, traced her family tree back nearly four centuries; a 17th-century court transcript details one cousin's appearance before a Maryland magistrate on charges that Groce says sounds suspiciously like cow tipping. (For the record, Groce also learned that she is the "fourth cousin, seven times removed" of George Washington.) [Link]

Washington's Hair Out of Place

From the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader:

Heir to hair wants $750,000 for Washington locks

BOONEVILLE WOMAN HOPES EBAY HELPS HER SELL AMERICANA

By Amy Wilson

HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

BOONEVILLE - Christa Allen has a hank of George Washington's hair. Well, not exactly a hank. Two hairs secured under glass in a pocket watch. Two more hairs are in an envelope.

She has always known they were from Washington's head because her father, William Allen, said so. The former Philadelphia lawyer also said he had the proof. Only he was a pack rat who didn't much believe in safety deposit boxes. So he hid things in his old suburban Philadelphia house. Then he forgot where they were.

[snip]

It all started sometime in late 2000, when her father, in failing health, handed her the watch with the hair (along with a Revolutionary War map and an antique land deed) and told her to search the house for what he knows are two pieces of proper documentation to establish the hair's pedigree.

For the first, he advised, look in the "far left-hand corner of the house attic in a small cardboard box with various other papers." The second document, he assured her, "is located somewhere inside the house."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Four days left to bid at eBay!