MUCH TRAVELED GEORGE
George Washington never slept here.
I can make that distinction with some degree of assurance that it is correct because the community from which I am writing simply did not exist until after George Washington's time.
He moved about quite a bit as a young man. He did some surveying work for Lord Fairfax in western Virginia and is said to have stopped repeatedly at a site just a few miles north of here. One-time Royal Governor of Virginia Alexander Spotswood led a strange mixture of Virginian gentlemen to be known as ”The Knights of the Golden Horseshoe” across the hen forbidding Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. They crossed at a point not far form today's west-slope town of Elkton. It was a good -time jaunt, rather than a serious discovery expedition. They came across th mountains, partied a while in the Valley are and went back to Eastern Virginia and to its relative comforts. The Royal Governor had a medals struck marking the occasion which was a small golden horseshoe presented to each participant.
Actually exactly where young Washington may have stayed during his early visit as to the Valley is uncertain. There is large brick home at the Crossroads itself, but George is said to have stayed at a smaller place east of there on the Spotswood Trail. He is also reported to have stayed at the estate still called “Smithland” north of Harrisonburg on the Valley Pike Tradition holds he made several such stays in his surveying work for Lord Fairfax.
The only time in his travel when George ever left the Colonies was when he accompanied his brother Lawrence on a sunny vacation stay in the Barbados. George was nineteen at the time. Such a warm, dry climate was thought to be helpful for Lawrence as a tuberculosis patient, so they wintered there in 1751-2752. Lawrence was not cured of his malady and died shortly after returning. In time George, as President of the United States, made it a political point to visit each and every one of the original thirteen colonies which became states. He had, as Commander in Chief of our armed forces, seen a good many of the areas before. For that time the number of locations claiming “Washington Slept Here” multiplied rapidly.
Another thing about George. He did not go around throwing silver dollars across rivers in spite of that kind of story. The truth behind that tale seems to have come from the memoirs of a grandson of Martha Washington, who , speaking of either the Delaware or the Potomac Rivers, said that George threw a piece of slate “about the size of a silver dollar” all the way across the river. Or, others say, it might even have been the Rappahannock River at the site of the Washington's birthplace which is about two hundred fifty yards across.
It is natural that we have collected all manner of trivia concerning the boyhood years ands time of growth to Manhood of our nation's founder and First President . He never live in the city named after him, nor did he get to reside in the White House – the only president not to live there.
A L.M. June 22, 2003 [c568wds]
