The Two Tombs of George Washington (and His Teeth) | History Traveler Episode 123

[Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so in the past few videos uh we've been here at the home of george washington in mount vernon we've been going through the mansion and exploring the grounds here looking at the story of the enslaved people who lived at mount vernon but now we're headed to the museum that is on site where they have a lot of artifacts related to george washington and the washington family and we're also going to be visiting the final resting place of our very first president [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so we just got into the museum here at mount vernon and this exhibit kind of takes you through the life of george washington i don't know what to expect so we're going to kind of go through here and see what we can learn so there's something that i wanted to show real quick that is simply amazing really everything that we see here at mount vernon is courtesy of the mount vernon ladies association so if you look they have some pictures here of what mount vernon used to look like like those are ship masts that are holding the structure together and then if you go over here here's another picture of what mount vernon looked like at one point so we almost lost this historic structure but thanks to the mount vernon ladies association um restoration work was done and and continues even to this day here's something else that's kind of cool that i didn't know uh thomas edison designed and installed mount vernon's first electrical system in 1916. so that's kind of cool just learning all kinds of neat things here today [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so they start off talking about george washington's career as a surveyor and um they have you know some of these wax figures which by the way were done by the same people who did the madame tussauds wax figures i was here showing george washington as a younger man and working his surveying equipment and if you look over here well these are george washington's surveying chains and also tripod so this was all of the the gear that belonged to george washington moving on they have a display talking about george washington and his role in the french and indian war and they asked the question uh who started the french and indian war well the answer uh yeah is pretty much george washington another key moment during the french and indian war that involved george washington was the battle at fort necessity and here they have a cross beam that was said to be a part of fort necessity very interesting one thing that's really cool about this museum is they have a lot of original artifacts that belong to george washington including the 1753 silver hilted small sword that belonged to washington uh would have got this whenever he was 21 years old and uh is believed that he carried it during the french and indian war wow so george washington belonged to a secret society known as the freemasons and these are just some objects that are associated with the masons so you have like this hourglass that was used during lodge meetings um punch bowl yeah interesting i like this painting this kind of jumped out at me whenever i came around the corner this shows mount vernon in process so so we know mount vernon you know the finished product uh this is what it may have looked like as it was being built well as we are moving through we are getting into the part of washington's life that he is very well known for and that is the leadership that he provided during the american revolution so they have i like how they have a bunch of interactive pieces in this museum that make you think it's not just reading but here you know they're asking you know would you want to be commander-in-chief of the continental army uh and it helps people to kind of get into the mind of george washington and realize the challenges that he was up against here's another wax figure of george washington at age 45 which is how he would have looked during the american revolution and it would be very easy just to kind of pass by this and look but once you know the story behind how they made this really gives you a greater appreciation for it they actually went and got the waistcoat and breeches of washington from the smithsonian took measurements that way they could get like the proper height they also took samples of hair from that time to get the hair color right yeah pretty pretty fascinating there's a famous story towards the end of the war where george washington is giving a speech and he pauses and he pulls out a pair of spectacles and says gentlemen you must pardon me for i have not only grown gray but almost blind in service to my country and uh the kind of the the idea of the shared sacrifices made the soldiers weep openly now we don't know for sure if these are the eyeglasses that he used but they are a pair of eyeglasses that belong to george washington so these could have been it but we don't know for sure okay i just learned something if you want to hear more about those spectacles there's a podcast called curator's choice where one of the staff members from here at mount vernon talked about that exact museum piece so definitely something to check out now after the revolutionary war washington went back to the lifestyle that he probably identified with the most and that was the lifestyle of a farmer so so this exhibit and again you can come to mount vernon and see more of this stuff in depth and and really kind of immerse yourself in the history but it's talking about you know washington's farming operations at mount vernon and here's something that i did not know is that washington started a whiskey distillery and became the largest distiller in america yeah always learning something again i like how they're telling the the full story of george washington and mount vernon and this is talking about washington's role as a slave holder uh something that as he got older he became increasingly more uncomfortable with and and his attitudes on slavery kind of evolved so you can see here a quote where he says there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than i do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it and here are a collection of tools that came from mount vernon that the enslaved people of washington would have used you can go around here to the other side and see a little bit more so this thing right here get this that's a that's an 18th century waffle iron pretty cool i love looking at these old tools and just learning how how people lived you know centuries ago and then this is really interesting to me these are the food rations for a day for the enslaved people so that's how much cornmeal they would be allotted and how much fish they would be allotted and then each year george washington would provide his slaves with well like one jacket two pairs of pants two shirts one pair of stockings one pair of shoes that's what they would get for the year definitely a a different time and washington was was right there um i guess you could kind of say in in a period of evolution and human thought regarding slavery [Music] and here's one thing about washington that i really didn't know is just all of the business dealings that he was involved in so here's a depiction of a grist mill that he owned and of course mount vernon is right on the potomac so he also was in the fishing business they would have big old nets about 450 feet wide and 8 to 10 feet deep that would catch shad and herring coming up the potomac and look at their 1.5 million herring caught in seven weeks that is a lot of fish now not everything that washington touched turned to gold as a matter of fact he had a lot of failures in his life including in business one of which was the building of a canal along the potomac river to fuel westward expansion yeah and apparently you can still see the remains of this canal today i'll have to check that out okay now i go to a lot of museums and see a lot of historical artifacts there are a few that i have seen that surpass what they have right here in the museum look at that these are the actual dentures of george washington now george washington did brush his teeth regularly but um by the time he was 57 taking off as president he was wearing a full set of dentures now they're not made of wood contrary to popular belief but rather out of cow teeth and human teeth and elephant ivory which is kind of crazy but man that is so cool here are another one of these wax figures that are just so well done this one showing washington taking the oath of office and here you see a quote from george washington that i think still applies today says that the government though not absolutely perfect as one of the best in the world i have little doubt [Music] now as you're moving into the section on washington's presidency we're not going to go through every single thing but they talk about some of the key pieces of legislation and key policies that that washington had including you know one with westward expansion so here they have an artifact uh showing one of the first peace medals that were issued to the native american tribes basically trying to curry the favor of the native americans who had previously worked with the british but uh yeah you can you can learn a lot about washington's presidency here in this exhibit george washington is the only president to have not resided in the white house because there wasn't a white house yet but he did oversee the planning of washington dc with chief architect pierre lafont so they created this plan for washington city or the what we now know as washington dc uh in in 1793 for a permanent capital the center point which is right there at the capitol building and kind of rounding out george washington's story we get to his final hours and death so here they they talk about what led to the death of george washington so in short he was 67 years old at the time and on december 12th had gone out in uh kind of a wintry mix of snow and sleet and cold winds and um kind of caught cold wasn't feeling well and over the next few days things did not go well for george washington and you can see some artifacts that they have in here um there's like a watch that was owned by one of the doctors who attended to washington on his deathbed uh they also have you can see there in the middle it's a little bit dark uh a thumb lancet that was used for bloodletting so they were puncturing his veins and letting blood out which was a common medical practice at the time that they thought worked to try and get him healed up and get him back into shape well on december 14th of 1799 uh george washington passes away and that physicians today speculate that it was a bacterial infection called epiglottitis that that just slowly suffocated him and then here is a replica of the casket that would have held the remains of george washington [Music] [Laughter] after the death of george washington he was laid to rest here at mount vernon in the family tomb and he left instructions for a new tomb to be built because he said the old tomb was improperly situated it was too close to the banks of the potomac and he was afraid that erosion would cause it to collapse at some point so anyway we're heading to the grave of george washington but first i wanted to show the old tomb and here is the original vault that held the remains of george washington so you can look out and see how it overlooks the the potomac river here the remains of george washington were here until 1831 whenever they were moved to the new tomb which is just a short walk away [Music] now there's this interesting little tidbit about washington that some people may be unaware of after his death there was this movement amongst a bunch of politicians to have his body interred in a vault right beneath the capitol which is situated at the exact center of washington dc well washington had wanted to be buried here at mount vernon so martha was very resistant to that and wouldn't allow it to happen uh but anyway we're approaching the the final resting place of washington right now well here we are looking at the final resting place of george washington and up here on the stone our etch the words uh within this enclosure rest the remains of general george washington so of course we have the american flag on the left and then the commander in chief flag on the right and if we approach well in the sarcophagus here on the right is george washington and then over here on the left is martha washington [Music] huh [Music] all right so that was the final resting place of george washington i've made it known on here that one of my goals is to to visit the the graves of every president and uh that that is one that i've wanted to to visit and pay my respects to for a long time but uh anyway uh we have thoroughly enjoyed our time here at mount vernon if you ever decide to visit i'm going to go ahead and give some advice take an entire day and as i've mentioned on previous videos there's so much to see and so much to learn here you can also go to the youtube channel for mount vernon and also go to their website they have a ton of great resources but as for now we are heading off to the next place [Music] so [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 302,575

Keywords: history, history travel, travel, history traveler, history underground, george washington, mount vernon, mt vernon, slavery, black history, president, presidential home, plantation, virginia, leadership, famous graves, grave of washington, washington's tomb, washington's teeth

Id: 73gcZOXqwSU

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 18 2021