After years of searching, archaeologists have identified and excavated the boyhood home of George Washington, site of such legendary — if apocryphal — events as chopping down the cherry tree and throwing a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River.
The find indicates that the Washington family lived in a spacious eight-room home, a sign the family was well-off for its day, and provides new information about his childhood — a period largely obscured in the mists of history.
The house is in Stafford County, Va., on a property now known as Ferry Farm. Researchers uncovered the remains of two chimney bases, two stone-lined cellars and two root cellars, along with thousands of artifacts that convinced them this was the Washington homestead.
“This is it. This is the site of the house where George Washington grew up,” archaeologist David Muraca of the George Washington Foundation said Wednesday.
The house was 53 feet long and 37 feet wide. The house apparently had eight rooms — five on the full first floor and three more under the roof in the attic. A kitchen and slave quarters were in detached buildings in the rear.
“This was a very elaborate house for this time and place,” said architectural historian Mark Wenger of the architectural firm Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker. “You get this only at the very top echelon of Virginia society.”
The team also found fragments of 18th-century pottery and other ceramics, wig curlers and bone toothbrush handles. Among the pieces of glass are the remains of “a very nice Wedgwood tea set.”
The team also found a “well-used pipe bowl” emblazoned with the Masonic crest. “While we can’t say that this was George Washington’s pipe, we can wonder about it,” Levy said.
The team found no evidence of an ax or the stump of a cherry tree.
