George Washington Wired

Mount Vernon is not known to have been a particularly feline-friendly place. The absence of any mention of pet cats chez Washington may not have had so much to do with an aversion to hairballs as it did the family’s plethora of pet dogs and birds. Fido and feathered friends were more of the General and his wife’s style: Terriers, lapdogs, hunting hounds, plus a cockatoo, peacock and green parrot were only a few of the nonhuman inhabitants who called the Mansion and its grounds home. There were no doubt barn cats that kept the rodent population down as well as cats who belonged to slaves, the feline bones of which have been found in the layers of earth that constituted the cellar of a slave cabin. While the General may have seemed to have had nine lives throughout his battle-prone life, he likely didn’t have any cats.

Information courtesy of Mount Vernon historian Mary Thompson.
Photo compilation by Becca Milfeld; Cat photo courtesy of Flickr creative commons/dustin.askins.

Slammin’ Joe was a ditcher. You know, a ditch-digging man, one of George Washington’s enslaved workers who dug holes wherever the General needed them around the estate. Doesn’t sound familiar? Then get to know Slammin’ Joe — a character based on one of the estate’s real-life, 18th-century enslaved persons — a little better via a Mount Vernon’s distance-learning program. In what can only be considered a miracle of the modern era, the 18th century is beamed into classrooms (libraries and assisted living homes too) via 21st-century technology. These 30-minute nuggets of drama and content allow Slammin’ Joe to share stories of his work and family life and then open the floor up for questions. Sound like something a classroom near you might like? See Mount Vernon’s distance learning page.

It wasn’t cold enough for snow to stick, but the all-afternoon flurry that descended upon Mount Vernon provided the heaviest snow that the estate has seen so far in what has turned out to be an extremely temperate winter.

The shortest days of the year are upon us, which also means it’s the season when George Washington was likely putting his set of Argand lamps to good use.

The General, ever the fan of new technology, was an ardent supporter of this new method of household illumination, which provided significantly more light than the candles that had previously lit Mount Vernon.

“These lamps, it is said, consume their own smoke — do no injury to furniture — give more light — and are cheaper than candles,” Washington wrote in 1790 to fellow statesman and founding father Gouverneur Morris.

Washington received his first Argand lamp as a gift while presiding over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. He responded to the woman who gave it to him that “the benefits which will flow from the general use of such Lamps, are too apparent for the light of them to be long hid from the American World.”

Although lamp oil (such as the whale oil or spermaceti that was commonly used) was more expensive than candles, the quality of the oil lamp’s light and burn time could offset its cost over time.

Washington was a convert. In his letter to Morris, who was in London, Washington asked him to pick up 26 such lamps for the presidential residence — 14 of the tabletop variety and 12 for hanging on the wall.

Morris complied, journaling on April 22 of the same year that he had sought out the lamps. He purchased them on May 3. Today one of the very same 14 table lamps is on view in the Bringing Them Home exhibition in the F.M. Kirby Gallery in the Reynolds Museum until the exhibit closes on January 8, 2012. Another is on permanent view in the General’s study, where it would have shed light on Washington’s secretary bookcase along the west wall.

Associate Curator Laura Simo contributed to this report.

Object Spotlight is a regular feature that highlights household belongings used by the Washingtons. Check out Mount Vernon’s eMuseum to explore more Washington belongings.

Gift of Katherine Merle-Smith Thomas, 2008 [W-2910]