Dustin Baker
George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born, only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present and future of this place brick by brick. On this podcast series upon this Land History, mystery and monuments. The Washington family lived on the Maddox Neck for seven generations, and just like most families today, they had neighbors. Hi, my name is Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. It might be hard for visitors today to imagine that in the colonial era, the Maddox Neck was a community of different families and home sites. These families would have formed friendships, business arrangements. They would have married and had feuds. One family that had been neighbors here to the Washington since the colonial era are the Latanes. And just like other families, they would have seen their community transform into a federal monument to honor George Washington in the late 1800s. What you're about to hear is a recording from 1976. It's an interview with James Latane, who was born in 1888 on Christmas Day. Interviewing James, is park ranger Tom Danton. Now, much of this recording is inaudible. So unfortunately, we can't play the whole thing for you here on this podcast. But we are going to take snippets from the interview and discuss them in detail.
To do that, joining me is lead interpretive park ranger Jonathan Malriat.
Tom Danton
1888. So that makes you 87, 88, almost 88 years old. Okay, what do you, how far back can you remember about this land over here? Was it all just farmland at one time back around the turn of the century?
James Latane
My Grandfather worked it when he bought it in 1946 or a little before
Tom Danton
1946 or?
James Latane
I think it was, 1880 when he first sold the plot about the birthplace, 12 acres and 10 acres for the right way to the river.
Jonathan Malriat
So that can really be broken into two parts. The first part he's talking about his grandfather acquiring the land. Now, he says 1946. I think he's stumbling over himself because as we introduced here, James Latane is 87 years old when he's saying this. I think he's meaning 1800s, 1846. And then he's ignoring Tom Danton, the interviewer's, correction of meaning 1946, to then continue to the second part, which I think is really the most interesting part to me. So that's the selling, his grandfather selling the land in 1880. 12 acres at the birthplace and ten acres on the right of way. So this is, I think, some of the most interesting parts of his interview, even though it's not specific about times when he's alive, he's learning about this from his grandfather in his youth. But the reason it's so important to the park and our story here is because this is the start of federal memorialization here. So earlier in the 18 late 1870s, 1879, specifically, Congress started to want to preserve the stories of George Washington, and they were looking at trying to preserve the birthplace, which was mostly still aware of. So they sent Secretary Evarts and the US president down to explore it. We know this from several articles, including an article from the Northern News that talks about specifically in July 25th, 1879. And this is verbatim here. Congress, at its last session, after a century of forgetfulness and indifference, passed a bill appropriating the enormous sum of $3,000 to erect a monument to mark and perpetuate the spot where Washington was born. So that in itself is interesting that they're calling $3,000 an enormous sum of money. So that does give you a context for the power of the dollar at the time period. But it goes on to continue. That was announced in the Washington papers that President Hayes and his family and the Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts, would visit Wakefield on the eighth of this month to carry into effect the act of Congress. They were to come in the war steamer Tallopoosa, people who lived within six or 5 or 6 miles a week all their lives, and had never been there, manifested a great desire to see the place on the day the Tallopoosa would arrive. The Tallopoosa came, however, when she was not expected, and there his fraudulence, in keeping with his character, defrauded this people out of a sight of him, as he did the people of the United States, out of the presidency, the president and party landed and got a plowman to pilot them to the birthplace, and stayed only a half hour. It is rumored, however, that the Secretary of State's efforts and the president will come again and make several visits in the neighborhood. So this whole visit by the Secretary and by the president was to be able to come and scout out land to acquire, to create this monument that Congress had appropriated. It is interesting seeing how the Northern News is referring to the president, his fraudulence and defrauding the U.S. people out of a presidency. So for added context, this is talking about the I want to believe it's 1877 election that was contested. basically, it's similar to the Bush v Gore election of 2000. And it went to the courts to decide. And it came out that Hayes got the election with then the agreement that reconstruction in the South would end. So this snippet from Latane, from Mr. Latane’s interview where he's talking about selling the land, this is the direct results of that, that visit from Hayes, this visit from Evarts is all tying it with now creating a. So now the federal government has a total of 22 acres here, plus then land that'll be acquired in 1883 from the state of Virginia to create the monument that we have today. So we'll go back to the Latane interview. And here's some things else from Mr. James Latane.
Tom Danton
Do you remember when they put the monument up? You would have just been a small boy then.
James Latane
Yeah about 7 years old, I think. Yeah, I remember.
Tom Danton
Remember how they brought it in?
James Latane
The whole neighborhood was there.
Tom Danton
Oh how did they do it? How did they bring the monument in?
Mrs. Latane
Oh, look out in the hall
James Latane
(unintelligible)
Mrs. Latane
right out there.
James Latane
(unintelligible)
Tom Danton
Okay. You're just showing me the series of photographs in your hall of the construction of the monument and transportation of it, and how it was done on railroad ties using tracks rather than a wagon. You say they built a long pier. Now, this was down at the end of the beach road, so they brought it straight on up the road on railroad tracks.
James Latane
Of course, when they got to the bottom coming by the ice pond. They had to build a trestle up on the level rather than going down and up.
Tom Danton
Oh yeah. That's about the only real dip in that road right in there.
Jonathan Malriat
So that snippet we started with James Latane talking about acquiring the land. So 1880, and then we now have the actual construction of the monument. Now this is quite a bit later. So he doesn't give an exact date on this. He says that the 1890s. So he's 7 or 8 years old. And that's because it is specifically 1896.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And just so our listeners understand, this is when they say that they're building the monument. It's not the monument as we understand it today. today, the entire 551 acres is the monument. But during this time, they're talking specifically about the granite obelisk that you now see at the entrance of the park. And so, logistically, this would have had to been transported, about two miles from where it landed on the shore of the Potomac to where it was placed, over at the time, being believed to be the spot where George Washington's birth homestead.
Jonathan Malriat
So it's really interesting that they're talking about building a railroad trestle, doing all the tracks to get out there, because that's a pretty already large amount of work to do this, because it's not just put the railroad tracks down and roll it across. It. That means they have to put the ties down. They have to secure the ties that secure each of the iron track pieces the whole way. And then when James Latane is asked later what happened to it, he doesn't remember. And there's no tracks that we're aware of any more under the road. So it disappeared fairly quickly afterwards. But it was a lot of intensive work just to get the granite, and that was the only purpose for it was to get the granite to where it is today.
Dustin Baker
And that's after it made it to shore. They had to build a wharf just to receive this thing, that stretched nearly 1000ft out into the Potomac.
Jonathan Malriat
So the next piece we're going to hear is from James Latane where he's going to actually, tell us what happened to that wharf. Because if you come visit us today, that wharf that thousand feet long does not exist anymore.
Tom Danton
What happened to the dock that was built down there, the wharf?
James Latane
Well, the ice finally took it away.
Tom Danton
It got demolished in the winter.
James Latane
It would freeze and the ice break up the pylons and finally it all broke up
Tom Danton
That was in the early nineteen hundreds?
James Latane
Yeah, give or take. We used it forever. I reckon it stayed there, part of it stayed there until 1830, only parts of it. It went a long, long, long, pier with a wide driveway or walkway with a big pier for boats at the end. It went about a quarter of a mile.
Tom Danton
Did many people use it as a way to visit the park? Coming by boat and walk on up?
James Latane
A few would come from Colonial Beach. And the farms used it. Later on we had to ship all our grain by sailing vessel. And they would drive the wagons out on that. And I don't know the (inaudible) the boat, but then it got too bad for that. We’d have to unload right in shallow water in a little boat, then tow it out to the big.
Tom Danton
I bet you were glad to see the road come in about that time.
James Latane
And practically everything was shipped, the lumber, grain, everything was shipped by sailing vessel. (inaudible) Baltimore or Washington you know.
Tom Danton
The river was still the main interstate highway at that time.
Jonathan Malriat
So, James Latane there is talking about our thousand-foot-long wharf that was created to carry the obelisk. The second part actually shines even more of a light on it, because he talks about how not many visitors were using it. Visitors from Colonial Beach were using it, but it was actually mostly farmers like himself and his grandfather that were getting the primary benefit out of it because they were using it to sell and transport all the supplies that they needed, and sell and transport the goods that they had produced, which is really interesting for us talking about the site, because we almost always interpret everything from around that 1883 start of the Memorial.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And but it also just, you know, when you think of the sheer engineering feats that have occurred here to to memorialize George Washington, people would probably guess that the house and, you know, would that would be the biggest thing that's ever been built here to, to memorialize him. But that wharf, I mean, that was made really just to receive that obelisk and bring materials and supplies and people here to commemorate this site. So that, to me, seems like the biggest engineering feat on the property that is, you know, in the history of the site to memorialize George.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah. And in many ways that for a long time was almost a footnote.
Tom Danton
Did you, did you watch any of the moving of the monument from the one location to the..?
James Latane
Somewhat, because I was busy. I was in touch with it, the fact that they must (unintelligible) OG Taylor was the engineer in charge of getting the bricks made and building. He lived, he stayed here while he was working.
Tom Danton
He was responsible for building the Memorial house?
James Latane
Yeah. He did the engineering work. He was a fine fella too.
Tom Danton
Do you remember. How they moved the monument from the site of the house out to the entrance of the park?
James Latane
I can’t say that I know too much about it. I was there the day that they raised it, they raised the shaft. But they had already moved the base and had it ready.
Tom Danton
just for your information, others, you know.
Jonathan Malriat
Okay, so let's break down a little bit of that section. so he's talking about moving the monument. So as Dustin had said earlier, it was a lot of effort to go through to be able to build and create the monument when they've had to build the wharf and all that engineering and move it. And now we got to move it again. So they're moving it again in the 1930s, at the behest of the Wakefield National Memorial Association. But there are some other things that he talks about that's really interesting. OG Taylor is a Park service employee that comes in to assist with the program after it gets moved from Department of War, specifically Army Corps of Engineers, to the National Park Service. And it's interesting seeing this and how it's being talked about, because we the records we tend to have indicate that OG Taylor's primary job was as an engineer, but primarily doing initial archeology and then assisting with a lot of the building. But another really interesting part about OG Taylor is actually in our previous podcasts episodes with Phil Levy. Phil Levy talks a lot about Building X, this site that is a home site that he's done a lot of work on, trying to unlock more of the mysteries of it. OG Taylor is the first person to uncover that and identify that site, so we're now full story connecting the story of Building X thanks to James Latane's interview and having met OG Taylor. It is also interesting that he mentioned that he didn't get to see it being moved with because the moving process. We have a few photos some showing of that moving process in our visitor center and it's done using logs. So almost in many ways, technologically, it is less advanced than how they got the obelisk there in the first place, because they're just putting down log rollers and rolling it down the road.
Dustin Baker
And I believe it's being dragged by a flatbed truck.
Jonathan Malriat
So it's very interesting the difference in how methodologies of how they go about creating and moving the obelisks throughout the different eras. So kind of an interesting thing to see.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, it's just remarkable to me that the obelisk only stood in that spot for about 30 years. And despite being the Great Depression, the Wakefield National Memorial Association was so determined to build the Memorial House Museum in that spot that they petitioned the government to finance the moving again of a 30 plus ton obelisk.
Jonathan Malriat
It is really interesting that they still wanted to preserve it because they could have just destroyed it. And that could have been done fairly easily. But it was important enough that they wanted to keep it around and go through the engineering headache of moving it, rather than just. Nope, this served its purpose. We're getting rid of it. They still wanted to keep it and you can still even see it today. It's the same obelisk right in our center of our traffic circle. So the next section that we're going to hear from James Latane is talking about the time period in between when the monument was built in 1896 and when it was moved in 1930, and how he interacted with it because he wasn't just a neighbor of the monument in the obelisk. He actually was tasked with being in charge of it, because at the time period that this is going on, the Department of War very rarely had staff to fully manage the sites that they were in charge of. And even the National Park Service, which didn't exist until 1916, didn't have a huge amount of park rangers even in the parks that they managed. So a lot of sites, including this one, were left with caretakers that were local. And James Latane actually will serve as the caretaker to take care of the monument for several years. So we get to hear him talking about that.
Mrs. Latane
Weren't you supposed to look out for the monument?
James Latane
Yeah, I.
James Latane
For a great many years, I would go out there every day and look around and keep things cleaned up. See if everything was alright! (laugher)
Tom Danton
Did the government paid you for this?
James Latane
Paid me $25 a month (laughter)
Tom Danton
A dollar a day almost (laughter)
James Latane
Later raised it to $40 and after that I got out of it then.
Tom Danton
Was there anything except the monument, (mumble) were there some lawns that need to be mowed or?
James Latane
All the way to the river, and when the (unintelligible) the fences need rebuilding (unintelligible) and I would write and tell them what we needed and they would tell me to send them a list of the things that needed and hire help and go ahead and do it. Send the bill.
Tom Danton
How did people visit the monument back then?
Jonathan Malriat
So that's interesting hearing James talk about that. That one, he made $25 a month to help out the Department of War by keeping an eye on the monument, and if it was needing repairs and let them know and then do it himself and send them the bill.
Dustin Baker
And it'd be interesting to know what kind of problems they might have had, or that James would have encountered out there keeping an eye on it.
Jonathan Malriat
At other times he actually mentions and if you want to hear more of those, listen to the entire recording on our website. But at one point he mentions that some of the visitors coming from Colonial Beach would damage the cherry trees that apparently were lining a bunch of the areas. Rather than just take the cherries, they would take whole branches off. And he was concerned about it. But unfortunately, later on, the cherry trees developed a blight that he said took them all out. So in the end, it didn't really matter. But he was concerned about the damage that they were doing. And he has another anecdote from when he was mowing and cutting the grass around the monument, that he found a boy up in a tree, specifically the hackberry tree, which is a fairly famous tree, and it's supposed to be right outside where the obelisk was and supposedly is from right around the original home site area.
Dustin Baker
And the stump is still there.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah, unfortunately the tree passed away not terribly long ago, and but this kid is up in the tree and he's carving into the tree. So these definitely are a few events that James talks about during his time as caretaker that he had to deal with. So our next section we'll look at is talking about the land in the park and how, as I said, James Latane, he's a farmer and how he was connected to the site and continued to operate as a farmer in the park and around the park after it opened in the 1930s.
Tom Danton
All of the acreage inside the monument, though, was either cultivated or pasture land...
James Latane
Yeah, that’s right
Tom Danton
before the park came about?
James Latane
We cultivated even after we sold. We sold it in 1929, (unintelligible) and we bought it in 1919. And we really wanted to farm and we needed land. We just didn’t want to sell it. But Mrs. H.L. Rust Washington, she was the one who got the whole thing started…And she almost stayed down here until she got us to agree to sell it. Then we sold, 300, I think it was 360 acres. Sold all the home, the right side going to the river. (unintelligible) sold 39 acres by the birthplace. And we sold it with the agreement that we would go ahead and farm it. It worked for a little while. Then without our knowing anything, they got money from Rockefeller foundation. Then we had a deal with them, we worked it because we paid taxes on it. (Laughter) And that went on for two or three years, we didn’t know anything till they just, they turned it over to the Wakefield Memorial Service. Bout that time, we was when we had to get out, when they got set up. Philip Hough was the first superintendent. Made arrangements with him later on to still work the land. And then the government took the work. They made such a mess of it, that it go so they couldn’t do anything with it.
Tom Danton
How did they make a mess of it?
James Latane
Well they didn’t have but one pair small horse, and the land was heavy and wide grass. The horse wasn’t able to pull the plow. The grass got so rank and tough they couldn’t plow it. Then they asked (unintelligible) (laughter) I bought a special plow for the time and we had a tractor. We got it back in good shape. And then took it again. (laughter)
Jonathan Malriat
So that three minute snippet from James Latane actually had a lot of parts to it. So let's break down some of the key parts. So he mentions that they sold the land about 300 acres to the Wakefield National Memorial Association. They had initially got the land just ten years before that 1919. Now he mentions that they were convinced to sell it to a Mrs. H. L Rust Washington. Now, that name initially doesn't really ring a lot of bells for us until we actually realized that H.L. Rust in this case, is Henry Lee Rust. It's his wife, Josephine Wheelwright Rust, who is the president of the Wakefield National Memorial Association, that group that is pushing to move the obelisk and rebuild or more accurately, build a new version of the Washington family farm that was here. So it's really interesting because one, he's using an older reference to a married woman. So referring to her by her husband's name, but then he's throwing in Washington, which is because Josephine Wheelwright Rust has always claimed to be a descendant of Washington. And yet Henry Lee Rust has, as far as I can tell in general readings I've done has never referred to himself as Henry Lee Rust Washington. He's just Henry Lee Rust. So it's interesting that he's using an older reference in which you would refer to a woman, married woman by her husband's name, but then adding in the Washington to it and not Josephine or Wheelwright. So but here we today, we normally referred to her as Josephine Wheelwright Rust. And you can actually see a cutout of her in our new exhibits in our Memorial House Museum that you can see during tours in the park. So then the second section is so he had an agreement with them when they got the land in 29 to continue to farm it. And then the Rockefeller Foundation came in and he does a separate agreement with them. And John D Rockefeller Jr came in and actually supported the Wakefield National Memorial Association financially. He donated over $100,000, I want to say it was $130,000 and they had to have a matching grant of it. And so they have another agreement with them. And then once it all gets turned over later to the National Park Service, he has an agreement with Phillip Hough, the first superintendent here. So it's really interesting. All of these big names are a lot of the foundation of the national monument from the 1930s. So for our next snippets, we're actually move and change a little bit to how things have changed here on the lands during James Latane's time here, not only his time when he was visiting his grandfather, but also when he's lived here himself, partly in how transportation was done, but then also moving into how the rivers themselves have changed.
James Latane
To Washington, what most of us used the Potomac river going to Washington. They had wharf in, two wharfs in Maddox Creek up there. Steamboats would spend the night there and leave, bout seven o’clock in the morning, (unintelligible), you would have to get up at two o’clock (laughter)
Tom Danton
The people who were traveling say from further south to north, would they, like, come up the Rappahannock to Leedstown and then come across the Northern Neck to Maddox.
James Latane
More likely go on to Fredericksburg
Tom Danton
and and then go by road from Fredericksburg
James Latane
the railroad
Tom Danton
to Alexandria.
James Latane
Yeah. We were Fredericksburg was the closest railroad road that and in the winter, if you had people that had to go, we would have to drive teams to Fredericksburg to get them on the railroad.
Tom Danton
How long did that take?
James Latane
Bout 7 hours
Tom Danton
Now it takes 45 minutes (laughter)
Mrs. Latane
Heavens!
James Latane
When my brothers, two brothers were going to college (unintelligible) I think I was about 10 years old. And the river froze and they couldn't get back to school. And so, I drove them to Fredericksburg, stayed there overnight, and came back the next day.
Jonathan Malriat
He's talking a couple different things in there. Again, he's talking about steamboats were the primary transportation in the Potomac River. So most of these are not the big like giant paddlewheel steamers we tend to think about like in the Mississippi River. There are still paddle wheelers, but they're much smaller, more and along the lines of like a larger tugboat size today. You could fit a couple dozen people, cargo and different things on to them, and they would transport up and down the river, stopping at multiple different wharfs on the way. But then he mentions that when the river froze, you had to get your team together and you had to drive. So that means it's a horse or two behind a carriage and you had to ride seven hours. One way to get to Fredericksburg to catch the train. And then he also mentions, and it's a little hard to decipher, that when he was ten years old, he was asked to do that, to pick up his brothers from college. And I'm just imagining ten year old me having to in the winter, when it's so cold that the river has frozen, having to drive two horses seven hours in the freezing cold. I mean, I'm sure a lot of us have heard our parents talk about going uphill both ways to school. And that old adage, yeah, I think James Latane actually has that. I think he earned that badge of courage right there.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. My back hurts just thinking about that.
Jonathan Malriat
Like today, if you were to try getting to Fredericksburg, you'd just take route three and go down 205, route 3, and it takes 45 minutes. And most people today, if you're trying to get to Alexandria or DC, you wouldn't catch the train in Fredericksburg. You just continue on to 95 and take 95 all the way up. And that even ties in with how people come to visit us. Very few people come by boat anymore to come visit the park. We might see a few crab boats out in the in Pope's Creek, and maybe a few people in kayaks.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, they're not really visiting us.
Jonathan Malriat
So it's very different seeing that change in that. So it is really cool seeing that. Now there are other changes that have occurred and it's and a lot of it is in the rivers themselves, the Potomac and even Pope's Creek itself. How it's changed and erosion has occurred throughout the time. And James actually spends quite a bit of time talking about that. So I'm going to pull out some of the, I’ll say, key snippets of that and let you listen into it.
Tom Danton
I don’t know if you were aware of, of how much land right here, just north of here along the Potomac has eroded in your lifetime has disappeared into the Potomac River from the cliffs. Haywood is just washed completely out into the river.
James Latane
I reckon in the, on the (unintelligible) that we called it down on the low part. I reckon from close to 100 yards in my lifetime.
Tom Danton
100 yards have disappeared in your lifetime, you know, the, that little, pond at the end of the beach road?
James Latane
Yeah.
Tom Danton
That thing is practically right on the river now and a couple more years and its going to break open into the river.
James Latane
See, whenever you get a beach that slopes and the waves can roll up. (unintelligible) its where the banks are, they keep cutting under.
Tom Danton
And that beach has remained pretty much the same thing, it’s not really eroding much, but it's the cliffs that are.
James Latane
Yeah. And right. The water peaked cutting on them. Then when you have big freeze all that falls off.
Tom Danton
A lot of people are saying that, Pope's Creek out here in the big open area is down to about only two feet in depth, at you know, moderate tide. Do you ever remember that being much deeper, or just did you ever pay much attention to
James Latane
Put in at the sandbar. In the early days the mouth opened up enough for a steamboat to come in there and land, not in my day.
Jonathan Malriat
So we have two things that are being talked about. Erosion on the Potomac River and then siltation that's been occurring here at Pope's Creek. And it's interesting because one of the homes of the Washington family, specifically William Augustine's Haywood, is completely vanished into the Potomac River and over 100 yards in just James's lifetime. That's a pretty massive amount of land just to fall, keep falling off in sheer cliffs, and you can still today see cliff faces that even today we're concerned about eroding into the Potomac. And even at Pope's Creek. But it is kind of interesting to think about a steamboat coming in to Pope's Creek today. If you were to look out at that body of water, it does not look like it'd be able to handle that large of a boat. But they were designed to go into shallow waters. And I guess at one point it could handle it.
Dustin Baker
And then as far as the cliffs go, not only are they, you know, pretty dangerous to, to visit, but, in terms of archeological sites, we don't even know what we've lost. The cliffs are eroding so rapidly that, you know, by the time people started to become aware that there was archeological sites on the shores of Pope's Creek in the Potomac River in this area, that, many of them had already been lost.
Jonathan Malriat
So this next clip of James Latane's interview is going to be discussing some of what he has heard passed down through the generations, through the different families, about the different properties that the Washington family owned and what happened with them and some of their stories.
James Latane
And I think. Augustine Washington added on to the acreage. Birthplace (unintelligible) they got Blenheim which is a right big tract. And I think you had Haywood. Yeah. I believe he built the house at Haywood which is all gone now. And William Augustine, his son, came along and he added acreage all the way to Maddox Creek, all that land. I think around 12,000 acres.
Tom Danton
That’s quite a hunk and.
Jonathan Malriat
So let's break down that section because there's a couple things in there. And even just listening to it, it is a little confusing to start with. So he's talking about Augustine Washington and that how they acquired land around the birthplace to start with. Then later on, they're acquiring a tract of land that was referred to as Blenheim, which is another home that actually does survive through to today. And then the final tract they're talking about is the track at Haywood and then the manor that they build at Haywood. Now, the house at Haywood, we know has since vanished. It is gone. It's believed to have dropped into the Potomac. Their origin, which we've talked about at other points. Now we start to get into a bit of confusion when we actually look at the details of what he's talking about, because we have a couple things that can get confusing. First is Augustine as just a name, because there's a bare minimum of two Augustine's that are interconnected with both. The property here at Pope's Creek, as well as even Blenheim and Haywood. You have Augustine Jr, which is who we believe he's referring to because specifically in there he mentions William Augustine, his son, which tells us that he's referring to Augustine Jr. But Augustine Senior is Augustine Junior's father. The reason I bring this up is because the oral history that James Latane is providing has discrepancies between our most recent historic resource study that our historian, Phil Levy, who was with us for previous episodes, has done research into surviving documents and surviving archeology to tell us and unlock more of the story. And there are discrepancies. Now, does that mean that the oral histories are completely wrong? No, because in a lot of cases, these discrepancies occur where we have incomplete records, and very rarely do we have 100% of the records written out that tell us everything when we're dealing with trying to unlock the mysteries, especially around here at the birthplace. It's kind of like trying to put together a puzzle when we don't know if we have all the pieces, we don't have the cover nearby to refer to, and we're just trying to make all the pieces fit, and there's going to be gaps. And so to fill those gaps, we look at other things that come back up and help fill those in. Oral histories are one of those, but we can't always take them as tried. In fact, 100% true because well, one when James Latane's talking about this this is around 1976 and he's talking about an event that has occurred just about 200 years before then. And even from when he's born, it's 100 years before he's born. So this had to have come to him from his grandfather. And so it's not a straight chain of connections. So it does lead to there being potentials for discrepancies. But there is a lot in here because it does tell us, one, that the Washington family is aware of all these tracks and their connections with it. Now our record, our historical records indicate that was probably William Augustine that built the home, not Augustine Jr.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And I mean, I think it's, maybe enlightening for listeners to hear that there's some confusion within The Descendants and their families themselves. and in the 1930s, when this park was being established, they were not so much concerned with archeology and physical remnants of buildings. They were trying to hunt down records and deeds of property to kind of piece together who was where and when.
Jonathan Malriat
And even speaking about the 1930s, it actually shines a light on the 1930s, because frequently we talk about the Wakefield National Memorial Association and their plans to rebuild or build the memorial area we have today. And one of the big ones get brought out there is that the house that they build is not based on anything archeologically in the ground, and its location is where it is, because that was an oral tradition, that it was there. Yet we have conflicting oral traditions that say it was in a different spot. So it helps shine a light on the challenge that the Wakefield National Memorial Association had in deciding which of the old stories do they believe when they can't go or they're not willing to go off of it in the archeological? So it does shine additional light on that, that yeah, there is confusion and it makes it so it's a lot harder just to say, oh no, the Wakefield National Memorial Association had it fully wrong. They just had their own ideas. They had a lot of conflicting information coming in too. And then how do you weigh that? And even today, when we take oral traditions and oral stories into our programing, we have to balance that along with the archival.
Dustin Baker
Right. And, you know, we have descriptions of this property in the first decade of the 1800s where people were just describing seeing depressions in the ground where buildings once stood. So, in a paradoxical way, the reason we have a park at all is because of these oral traditions that were held here amongst community members and descendants.
Dustin Baker
I mean, one could argue that that's the reason there's a national monument here at all. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments. And thank you to James Latane, who took the time to make this recording all those years ago, and for your work to take care of this park before it was even a national monument and after. Join us on our next episode.