George Washington Birthplace National Monument

About this property

The George Washington Birthplace National Monument is a national monument in Westmoreland County, Virginia, at the confluence of Popes Creek and the Potomac River. It commemorates the birthplace location of George Washington, a Founding Father and the first President of the United States, who was born there on February 22, 1732. Washington lived at the residence until age three and later returned to live there as a teenager. John Washington, George Washington's great-grandfather, settled this plantation in 1657 at the original property on Bridges Creek. The family acquired expanded land to the south toward nearby Popes Creek. Prior to 1718, the first section of the house was built. His father enlarged it between 1722–1726. He added on to it by the mid-1770s, making a ten-room house known as "Wakefield". This house, which George Washington in 1792 would describe as "the ancient mansion seat," was destroyed by fire and flood on Christmas Day 1779, and never rebuilt. George Washington was born in the house on February 22, 1732. Thirty-two graves of Washington family members have been found at the Bridges Creek cemetery plot, including George's half-brother, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Washington's father owned enslaved people and had them cultivate tobacco on his several plantations, as his ancestors had done. In 1858, the Commonwealth of Virginia acquired the property to preserve the homesite and cemetery. In 1882, however, Virginia donated the land to the federal government following the Civil War. The Wakefield National Memorial Association was formed in 1923 to restore the property. In 1930, the grounds were authorized by Congress as a U.S. National Monument. In 1931, the Wakefield Association received a grant from John D. Rockefeller Jr., to acquire and transfer a total of 394 acres (1.59 km2) of land to the Federal government. Since the exact appearance of the original Washington family home is not known, a Memorial House was designed by Edward Donn Jr., representing similar buildings of the era; it was constructed on the approximate site in 1931. The actual location of Washington's boyhood home is adjacent to the memorial house and its foundation is outlined in the ground by crushed oyster shells. The Memorial House represents a typical tobacco plantation of the period of the original's construction. The Memorial House is constructed of bricks handmade from local clay. It has a central hallway and four rooms on each floor, furnished in the 1730–1750 period style by the Wakefield National Memorial Association. Furnishings include an 18th-century tea table believed to have been in the original house. Most of the other furnishings are more than 200 years old. At the entrance to the grounds, now maintained and operated by the National Park Service, is a Memorial Shaft obelisk of Vermont marble; it is a one-tenth scale replica of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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