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Season 1, Episode 9: How the Washington Story Began Here
Transcript
Dustin Baker
Welcome back to Upon This Land: History, Mystery and Monuments. My name is Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. George Washington was born in 1732. But the Washington story began here in the 1640s, when the Pope family moved across the Potomac and settled in Virginia. Nathaniel Pope, in the early settlers of today's Westmoreland County, set the stage for the arrival of John Washington, the first Washington to immigrate to Virginia and who had become the great grandfather of George. To help us learn more about the society John arrived in and the society he helped to build, we're joined again by Doctor Phillip Levy.
Phil Levy
So he's a guy whose life was defined by the crises, the English crisis of the 1640s. That is the pivotal central event in his life. that sets him on a trajec...on a trajectory. You know, people have liked the fact that Nathaniel Pope got balled up in, the rebellions against Maryland, because you can read people wanting to sort of project a kind of genetic revolutionary quality. You know, here’s like George Washington's great, great, great, great and he was a rebel. So, you know, ergo, people want to do this kind of projection, you know, and it's fantasy, but it's, you know, it has a certain charm, certain, literary symmetry, even though they're not parallel cases, they don't mean the same thing. It doesn't really mean much. And it ignores a lot of English history, a lot of American history in order to do that. But, but John Washington, senior, the one we're talking about, absolutely his trajectory is defined by these events. That's because his father, Lawrence. And once again, these guys have this habit of just the Washington's use the name John and Lawrence over and over and over again. But, but his father, Lawrence, was a cleric. Was a... was a minister, cleric and was very well positioned, very well connected. And he got caught up in the, the, conflicts of the 1640s and ended up with the position, with a position at Oxford, where he was sort of there to keep Puritans out. That was kind of his job. So he's the real loyalist to the Crown and to the Anglican Church, and he's there to sort of swat back Puritans and make sure that they don't end up in the faculty. They don't end up getting ministerial certifications, because this is very much a conflict, about how the church is going to be run. So he's in that position. And when the parliamentarians, you know, when, when the Crown sort of fails and you get new parliament authority, they start enacting revenge. And one of the people who gets caught up in the revenge of the parliamentarians is Lawrence Washington, who loses his position at Oxford and is given sort of a little crap parish. Right. And sort of is not a wealthy man and sort of marginal and that sort of, you know, shakes his world. And John and his brother Lawrence, are caught up in this. So these are these are young men who had had there not been the English Civil War, they would have gone to Oxford. They he would have been presumably would have picked up exactly where his father was. And become, you know, a man of letters been, you know, a cleric and, you know, and, maybe if he had held the same position, who knows, who knows who he would have been. Right. But, but that doesn't happen. Instead, his father loses his position and ends up in a poor parish, and both of the sons are forced to kind of go find a way to make a living, particularly after their father passed away. They now have to figure out what they're going to do, and both of them go to London and apprentice themselves. So a completely different trajectory and in John's case, he apprenticed himself into the world of merchant houses. So he learns to become a merchant. Now we need to clarify that, because I think we we don't, it's too easy to misunderstand the 17th century. Being able to write clearly in a good, clear hand, being able to compose a letter well, that, you know, that's comprehensible and literary, being able to do sums, being able to handle basic bookkeeping and understanding, the basics of commerce, those are specialized skills. That's not something that people just learned in elementary school. Wealthy elites will learn things like writing, but most people none wealthy, you know, non-elite people, you have to learn that. And those are the skills of being a merchant. And that's what you learn when when you learn the business, being a merchant, the workings. You also learn these details of how to write, how to write a good letter, how to balance books, specialized skills. And John Washington had those. So he attached himself to a firm, run by a man named Prescott and and Prescott's brother in law, I think, is Prescott's brother in law. And, we don't know the details because we don't have a lot of records. Everything we know comes from one court case and it's all third hand. So, you know, we don't we don't get a lot. Nobody outlines this. But, John attached himself to this firm. And the first thing he did for that firm was go to Poland and then to Denmark on a tobacco mission. So he's working in the world of tobacco merchants. What's happening is Virginia tobacco is is being packed up. It's grown and packed in Virginia and shipped to European markets. Just the English markets. But not everybody's going to the English market there. Also, people are selling in the continental markets and the sort of remnants of the Hanseatic League, the old trade along the Baltic that sort of links these different ports together. There's a long established world of trade there, and the English and the Dutch, in the 16th and 17th centuries are breaking into that. So it's kind of a growing market for English and Dutch merchants. And there's all sorts of woolens and furs and, you know, all sorts of stuff that moves along those markets. And tobacco is a commodity. So there's there's a market for tobacco in Poland and Denmark and anywhere along the Baltic. So Prescott seems to be operating in that market. And so Washington went first to Poland and then to then to Denmark. And he goes, we know that he's he was in Copenhagen and he went up to, Elsinore up at the top. That's where Hamlet takes place. And he went so he's going up the, up the peninsula on an errand. So he's he's fairly low in the in the hierarchy. He's, his job, it's what was called at the time a “supercargo”, meaning that he's it's kind of what it sounds like. He's the superintendent of the cargo. So he's not a sailor. Sailors are a thing unto themselves. That's a, that's a whole other training, that you have. And you can't fake that. You either. You either know how to do this stuff or you don't. You either know how to tie complicated knots with one hand, and know how to climb the rigging. And your hands will reflect that you know how to do that, because they're going to be callused and blackened from tar. You can't pretend to be a sailor. And if you did not come up in the world of ships and go through an apprenticeship on a ship, you're not a sailor. So he's not a sailor. He's a merchant. But he's not a he's not a financial backer. He's not an investor. He's he's an employee. And the job is the super cargo. He's the guy who sort of is in charge of making sure that everything's handled well with the cargo. So as he's going up Denmark, he's he's on a merchant, merchants errant. He's he's either selling, he's either he's either making arrangements for delivery of tobacco or he's picking up payments for tobacco. It's hard to tell what he's doing. He ends up, though from there on another vessel called the Seahorse that went to Virginia with Prescott. And, they go into the Chesapeake and up to the Potomac. So Prescott knows where he's going. He's got this all worked out. Longstanding trade networks, long standing alliances. And he ends up it's hard to tell exactly where they are, but they're probably at the head of Maddo... sorry, at the at the mouth of Maddox Creek. And again, it's hard to know what's happening. But one thing we do know, the standard practices, the the tobacco loading season when the shipping goes out is the winter. Takes all year to do this. And the shipments go out in the winter. So the tobacco fleet, the boats that are going to come in and get the tobacco barrels and then bring them back to Europe, that's all happening in the winter. So they're there in the winter and something went wrong. There are a few things that go wrong, but, Washington. The first thing to go wrong is that, well, it's not the first thing, but the most important, their ship sinks. So fully loaded, and, it sinks, and it's, they probably hit a shoals that the river shoals are always changing. The the Potomac is a little turbulent, but it's also really cold. And so when they try to haul the cargo out, there's ice on, there’s ice on the ropes. They lose the boats that they try to rescue with. Its, just a, it's really a mess. It's a really bad thing. And then when they're able to bring the barrels up, to salvage the barrels of tobacco, they're all ruined. So they just have to get rid of it. So the whole cargoes lost, everything, all the investments gone, all wasted. It's a big deal. Not not a happy occasion. If you think about Washington sort of beginning this voyage and London going to Poland and then to Denmark, and that now he’s in Virginia. And then he's like trying to haul tobacco barrels out of the water, like, this is this isn't good. This isn't a good experience. So there's several different ways that people market tobacco at the time, conduct this trade. And one of the ways you do it is you have a long term relationship with, with the tobacco planter or several, enough to fill your hold. So, you know, you're going to be going back to a particular set of planters next because you've got a business relationship with them. Another way that people do this is they put someone in Virginia to act as their agent on the ground, and it might be that that's what John was going to be. That he was going to be Prescott's agent in Virginia, because he gets there and he decides to stay. Now, why does he decide to stay? Did he, was that always the plan? That he was going to be an on site agent who was going to sort of, you know, handle the business on the on the English, sorry, on the Virginia side. It's also possible that he found that he really hated, hated being at sea. I mean, that's a long experience. And, you know, you just might decide he's done with this. There may have been conflicts or personal conflicts between him and Prescott that we just don't see. We know that they went to court. So, you know, that doesn't have to be read as animus, but it's not good. Romantics have wanted to invent that, he fell in love with, Nathaniel Pope's daughter. So you have this romantic edge. I that's probably the least credible of all of these explanations. But, you know, that there's there's business opportunity. But, Nathaniel Pope becomes very important here because he sees in John Washington an opportunity. And it's significant that Pope had the money to set himself up in Maryland, was called Mister. So he's a gentleman by title, but he doesn't seem to know how to sign his name. So he might not have been fully literate. But here comes John Washington, trained as a merchant who can write letters, who can do sums, and more than that can teach Pope's children to do that. So he can act as a tutor who can teach Nathaniel Jr and Thomas how to do these things also, who both are still minors, he can teach them. He's, it's a very valuable skill set. And very quickly, Pope and Washington formed an alliance. And the alliance crystallizes in John Washington marrying Anne Pope. So Washington kind of walked into this world or floated into this world and immediately married the daughter of the wealthiest man, most influential man in that little corner of, in that corner of the colony and immediately sort of steps right into that role. What's interesting is that, the whole thing comes to a loss. The whole issue with him and Prescott comes to a lawsuit, which is how we know the details. And that had to just be great because prominent men step forward. I mean, this is a guy who's just a merchant, but he's got prominent men backing him. Washington asked for his pay from Prescott, which, of course, makes perfect sense. You know, people have misread this. And again, there's this projection that the same romantic mind that thought that he saw Anne Washington, you know, standing in front of the house and said, you know, that is my future wife. Like, none of that happened. but that the same romantic mind has wanted John to have been a partner in the firm. And the language of the court case leads to that confusion. But he's not the partner, and what he's asking for is the settling of the account, meaning he wants his pay. The role, like I say, is super cargo, we know this role. But the crucial thing is that, well, the way we know that he's not a partner is when they bring the barrels up, the barrels are marked with, the, with Prescott's name, but they're not Washington's name. So the barrels will always be marked with the partnership name. The sailors, if there were seven barrels, one of those barrels belongs to the sailors. And they will get the value of that barrel as their pay. So they have an investment in this. The rest will belong to the partners. The partners will get the wealth, and then they will pay their employee, the super cargo. So John Washington doesn't have anything with his name on that vessel. He's owed money and right as he sees, yeah, he sees his, employers basically having lost the entire cargo, he's like, alright, that's your problem. You still owe me money for the services I rendered. Right, so, so he takes it to the court to try to get that money, and, and Nathaniel Pope’s right there with him, like, backing him up. He's got some other people, too, who are who are like prominent men who are stepping forward to support John Washington. So he's very appealing. There’s something, there's something they see in him. I think it's his skill that he brings to things. He brings that merchant skill, he knows how to write, he knows how to, you know, knows how to, you know, cipher. He knows how to do the books. He also brings London connections because he's connected to the world of London merchants. He’s it, you know, he's very alluring. So you create an advantageous marriage, you're linking him to your family. And, and off you go. And so that's where we are by like 1660. Then Nathaniel Pope passes away with both of the sons are still minors. John is left as the, as the guardian of these two minor sons. He's got his wife, and the acreage, so he suddenly becomes Nathaniel Pope. You know, Nathaniel Pope did all the craft work and then obligingly passed away and John Washington sort of steps right in. And is like, I'll take it from here father-in-law and, continues to, continues to grow,
Dustin Baker
Hey, everyone, this is Dustin cutting in. We're about to hear about some of the many different roles John Washington had in his community. And I want to warn our listeners that this segment includes some graphic material, including the topic of suicide.
Phil Levy
John Washington was a justice of the peace, meaning he sat on the county court because he was, you know, the literate person who could, you know, write, write, in a legible hand, you know, and knew how to spell words, knew how to do these things that are special skills. He would be asked to do a variety of different jobs. That's normal. Right. That's. And you want to be asked to do these jobs. That's part of being a gentryman. And one of the jobs that he gets that's wildly misunderstood. I just, there are two positions to get misunderstood when people look back at the colonial records, one of them is attorney. And being an attorney in our world does not mean what it meant to these guys. There certainly are people who get like a little bit of legal training, and there are people in Virginia who had legal training, so they're there. But somebody is your attorney when you ask them to act as your agent in a court case, and the only reason you might ask them to do that is because they either are better connected than you are, or they know the law better than you do, you do, or they write better than you do. So you get a lot of these guys who act as an attorney for a neighbor, right? Meaning they they represent them in court. But like genealogies and ancestors will say “And he was an attorney!” Like, no, no, he wasn't an attorney. He's a farmer. He's a farmer who went to court and represented his friend. So this this word attorney gets given this like weight that it really sort of doesn't deserve in most cases. Well, there's another one that's even stranger. And that's the job of coroner or a coroner is a member of the county court who's commissioned to do an investigation of a suspicious death. It's not it's not, you know, it's not a full time position. They're not medical doctors. They have no medical training whatsoever. They're farmers who are on the county court who are given a position of responsibility in this case being a coroner. Well, there's an instance or two instances where John Washington is asked to be a coroner and you can find people in the romantic days who are trying to, you know, because what they wanted to do was, you know, manifest George Washington's greatness somehow in his ancestors. So they just puff up any achievement of these guys, you know, so, you know, John Washington went to war and he was a coroner. Like he wasn't a coroner. He had the role of coroner in two cases. He doesn't know anything about the physical body. So but he's, he's a trusted source who can look at a case and make an evaluation. So there's a guy named William Freake, with an E at the end, and he's a small landholder, landowner, one of the early patent holders from the 1650s over on Mattox Creek. Over, it's off GEWA land, but, but he's there, before John Washington, and he's there during John Washington. And at some point, I don’t remember the date. It's the 60s, sometime in the 60s. He has a servant, William Freake does, who waded out into Mattox Creek and drowned himself. So it's a suicide. Now, there's any number of reasons this would have happened, and nobody's really that concerned about the reason it happened, in the 1650s, the 60s. So that's not really what they're going to sleep about. They just want to understand what happened, not why. And John Washington's the coroner in that case. He conducts an investigation and it ends up in the county records. And his investigation is that this was, what they called at the times self murder, which is a crime. It's still a crime. It's a complicated crime. The crime resonates more for them than it does for us. They are very worried that, a sort of melancholia would spread over the servile labor force. They don't want their servants killing themselves. They have an investment in them. They don't want this to happen. So they have an interest in stopping this. It also has a spiritual dimension that scares them. Its very much a part of their understanding of the world. And so when John Washington concluded that, that this was a self murder, the servant is then buried at a crossroad near Maddox, near Maddox Bridge, with a spike driven in him. So, you know, those, those classic vampire burials. The person who has committed self murder is buried outside of sacred ground with a spike driven through them. And so that person, whoever they were, we don't know their name is never recorded, was buried, is still out there, presumably. You know, the roads haven't changed all that much, but that person was buried up there, and John Washington oversaw that, oversaw that investigation and that burial. And that speaks to place in a really interesting way, because it shows in an awareness, of, there's the the places people are supposed to be buried, when they die in good status, if that's how we want to phrase it, versus people who are problematic and everybody in the area would have known about this, they all would have known. They all would be. It was a place that people pass regularly, pass over regularly. They would know this. So, John Washington becomes very active in the church. Um, the parish is named after him. Like in his lifetime it get's named Washington Parrish, which is really quite a thing. And then, ah, if you had an doubt about his, um, convictions, his will is a masterpiece. It's, you know, his, George Washington's will begins, I believe, “in the name of God, father, God amen.” Right then, right. That kind of thing. Augustine Washington, George's father, same kind of thing. John Washington's will is like, this long Anglican preamble. I mean, it's it's like it's like a it's like an exercise in Anglican theology. It's phenomenal. It's great. But he's like, lays out the path for salvation and how salvation works through the church. And it's he really cares about this stuff like this serious business. And, and of course, you'd imagine that he would. I mean, his father, you know, suffered literally for the benefit of the Anglican Church, right? So he does not take this lightly. This is serious business to him. And so he's on the vestry of establishing this church. And when he passed away, he left in his will that there would be money for a sermon, which is a common thing to do, in his memory. And money for two objects that he would leave in the church. And one of them is the Ten Commandments, and the other is the royal crest. So like there it is, like it's he wants you to be in that church looking at the royal crest, because he is completely in on the Anglican church. That's who John Washington is. So, you know, at that level that's who he is. He's obviously involved in a whole bunch of colonial affairs, very prominent in the, in the lead up to the, to the Indian wars in the 1670s. He, arguably is instrumental in bringing on that conflict. When they went up to the Susquehannock fort, immediately opposite Mount Vernon, and besieged it for a month or more. And then the whole thing, sort of, the whole enterprise, kind of fell apart. So his one and only military enterprise, it doesn't go very well. It's paralleled in, in George Washington's early military escapades also being failures. People have seen a parallel there. John's a land acquirer. So he acquired the land of Mount Vernon. I mean, he's sort of opposite it and says, well, I'll patent that too and get about 2000 acres of land there. That stays in the family all the way through. He acquired lots of land near, near where he was living on Maddox Creek. He acquired the old Nanzatico land. He's given, he was given the rights to take the Nanzatico Indians land once they weren't there anymore, which, of course, only creates an incentive to make sure they're not there anymore, which is what happened. He ends up claiming the Nanzatico’s land. And then during, Bacon's Rebellion, true to form, he stays loyal. He's a loyalist to, to Governor Berkeley, which is, again an echo of the Anglican establishment. He as things got bad, he either went to Maryland or to the, Eastern Shore. We're not sure exactly where, but we know he left because people talk about him. They back of the boat and he goes, so. Yeah, so he's, he is, I don't think we can understand him without understanding what got Nathaniel Pope to be who he is, because he steps in and takes that hand off and then builds on it and creates, what begins to be the basis for the Washington family fortune that's going to lead, that lead to an extremely wealthy family with an enormous amount of local prominence.
Dustin Baker
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and monuments. October is archeology month in Virginia, and our next episode is one you won't want to miss. In 2022, Building X a significant archeological feature in the Memorial Area of the park was reopened for modern analysis. What did we learn about it? Find out on our next episode.
Description
George Washington was born here in 1732 but the Washington story in the Northern Neck began long before then in the 1640s, when the Pope family moved across the Potomac and settled in Virginia. In our last episode, we explored the story of Nathaniel Pope and the other early settlers of today's Westmoreland County including the Native people. Today, we will explore the arrival of John Washington in the 1650s, the first Washington to immigrate to Virginia and who had become the Great Grandfather of George.
Date Created
09/28/2024
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