What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? (Shakespeare, The Tempest)

These details were confirmed to George Washington in a letter dated December 7, 1791 from Sir Isaac Heard, Garter Principal King of Arms of the College of Arms in London in which he also enclosed a copy of the heraldic coat of arms design. In his reply to Heard, Washington noted that "the arms are the same that are held here by the family. (mountvernon.org)

The coat of arms was even featured on the livery uniforms of Washington’s servants, a common practice amongst wealthy planters prior to the Revolution. (mountvernon.org)

But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’? (Luke 20:17)

Various churches and academic institutions such as Christ Church Episcopal in Alexandria, Virginia and George Washington University in the District feature versions of the coat of arms as does Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. The coat of arms also appears in military heraldry. (mountvernon.org)

Freemasonry was, and remains, open to all men of good reputation who profess a belief in Deity (referred to in lodge as The Supreme Architect of the Universe). By the 1750s a variety of Christian and non-Christians, European, and non-European men, and a few women, were members. (mountvernon.org)

In 1754 George Washington leased the Mount Vernon estate from Lawrence’s widow, Ann Fairfax Washington, who held a life title. (mountvernon.org)

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. (Shakespeare)

Washington’s surveying career provided him with the respectability that an ambitious Virginian needed to advance socially. (mountvernon.org)

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12:2)

For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:8)

Ten days after turning 21, on March 3, 1753, he was passed to the second degree of Fellowcraft. On August 4, 1753, he was raised to the third degree of Master Mason. The lodge’s surviving minute book records Washington attending only two more meetings: September 1, 1753, and January 4, 1755. (mountvernon.org)

Masonry claims that it does not offend a Christian’s belief about Jesus Christ. For example: “We do not say to Christians that Christ was a mere man, whose life’s story is only a revival of similar older [pagan] stories. To do any of these things would be irreverent. We utter no such words.”But Masonry does teach that Jesus Christ was merely a man. (jashow.org)

But none of the Masonic teachings about Christ agree with what Jesus taught about Himself and with what the Church has maintained for 2,000 years. If Masonry does not even respect the teachings of Jesus, how can it claim to be a tolerant religion? (jashow.org)

Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” (Matthew 8:18-22)

Henry VIII created the Church of England as a religious body unique from the Roman Catholic Church in order to achieve his goal of divorcing his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in an attempt to remarry and father sons to continue his dynasty. (study.com)

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Who-ever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:25-27)

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage. (Shakespeare)

Deism is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe. (Wikipedia)

In 1752 Washington made his first land purchase, 1,459 acres along Bullskin Creek in Frederick County, Virginia. This act inaugurated the second and more profitable phase of his cartographic career, in which he assumed the role of land speculator. Over the next half century Washington would continue to seek out, purchase, patent, and eventually settle numerous properties. (loc.gov)

O, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)

French retaliation for the attack on a small party across the Alleghenies provided Washington's first military defeat with the surrender of the hastily-constructed Fort Necessity in July 1754. (mountvernon.org)

Unfortunately for the men who fought under Washington in the Braddock and Forbes expeditions against the enemy at Fort Duquesne, they were not to see these bounty lands until more than twenty years had passed, during which time Washington led the struggle to secure their title. (loc.gov)

Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing. (Shakespeare)

It was becoming much more difficult for the gentry to display their status through their appearance, because it was becoming easier for the lower classes to make purchases that gave them an appearance of wealth. The gentry began to add on to their fathers’ estates, updating the furnishings to be the most fashionable and genteel, and importing the latest fashions from London and Paris, ensuring their appearance would set them apart from the more common Virginians. (Celina Morgan, As Worthless as an Eldest Son Could Be)

Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. (Philippians 3:19)

In 1758, during the French and Indian War, 27 year-old Washington had just become engaged to Martha Custis. On September 12th he had written a letter to Sally Fairfax, the daughter-in-law of the wealthy and influential Colonel William Fairfax, whom young Washington had looked up to as a mentor and benefactor. Good neighbors and friends, young Washington had spent much time with the Fairfaxes and Sally at their Belvoir plantation. In this letter, Washington calls himself a “votary” (or devotee) “to love” and acknowledges that “a Lady is in the Case.” He goes on to describe “the recollection of a thousand tender passages” he wishes he could forget, and speaks of a destiny that divides him from the object of his love. (mountvernon.org)

The couple first met Washington in 1748. They taught him the best manners for moving in Virginia's highest circles. Sally and her husband, opened a new world of history, philosophy, and literature to Washington. Washington was quite taken with the young couple, and emulated their societal practices to the best of his abilities. (mountvernon.org)

After arranging to marry the richest widow in Virginia, Martha Dandridge Custis, he wrote a series of passionate love letters to the wife of one of his best friends. (historynet.com)

This map covers an 846-acre portion between Little Hunting Creek and the smaller Poquoson Creek. Both items are among the earliest extant maps of individual farms at Mount Vernon. (loc.gov)

The enslaved people and all of their children were considered part of the dower share, and though they lived on Washington’s estate and served him, they were technically held in trust for Martha’s children. When they married, Martha brought 84 slaves along with her. (history.com)

He whipped, beat, and separated people from their families as punishment. Washington also relentlessly pursued escaped slaves and circumvented laws that would allow his enslaved workers freedom if they did manage to escape to neighboring states. (history.com)

and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)

Washington was passionately devoted to Mount Vernon, eagerly extending its borders during the next three decades with numerous purchases of surrounding lands and striving constantly to improve its buildings, fields, and furnishings. (loc.gov)

I give also to my said Brother Thomas Colvill for and during the term of his natural life my now dwelling plantation called Cleesh on Great Hunting Creek in said County containing one thousand acres together with the mill and appurtenances thereto near adjoining, and all the houses, utensils, Negroes and Stock that shall be on or belong to the said Plantation at the time of my decease ordering however, and it is my will and intent that the said Negroes be kept to work on the said Plantation by my said Brother or Executors, and that the profits of which an account shall be kept arising from their labour in Crops of any kind or otherwise shall be subject for the term of three years or three Crops to be applyed by my Executors hereafter named towards the payment of my just debts, but at the decease of my said Brother, then my will is, and I do hereby give and Bequeath the said plantation called Cleesh Mill, houses, utensils, Negroes and Stock unto the right Honorable, the present Earl of Tankervile and his heirs forever. And I do hereby appoint him, the said Earl of Tankervile, and my Brother Thomas Colvill, Executors of this my last will and testament. (archive.org/stream/washingtoncolvil00blum)

I leave the use of my negro man George unto my wife during her life or widowhood, and after that Term is expired, I give the said negro George unto John West Jr., and his heirs forever. (Thomas Colvill)

Lawless are they that make their wills their law. (Shakespeare)

Watch out he's winding the watch of his wit, by and by it will strike. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)

Neither a borrower nor a lender be. (Shakespeare)

Desire of having is the sin of covetousness. (Shakespeare)

I can never look upon the Proclamation in any other light (but this I say between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians. It must fall, of course, in a few years, especially when those Indians consent to our occupying those lands. Any person who neglects hunting out good lands, and in some measure marking and distinguishing them for his own, in order to keep others from settling them will never regain it. If you will be at the trouble of seeking out the lands, I will take upon me the part of securing them, as soon as there is a possibility of doing it and will, moreover, be at all the cost and charges surveying and patenting the same . . . . By this time it be easy for you to discover that my plan is to secure a good deal of land. You will consequently come in for a handsome quantity. (loc.gov)

He concluded by offering Crawford an alibi should his behavior be called into question. "All of this can be carried on by silent management and can be carried out by you under the guise of hunting game, which you may, I presume, effectually do, at the same time you are in pursuit of land. When this is fully discovered advise me of it, and if there appears a possibility of succeeding, I will have the land surveyed to keep others off and leave the rest to time and my own assiduity." In fact, the letter marked the beginning of a very profitable fifteen-year partnership. Less than two weeks after he had received it, Crawford informed Washington about several tracts in the vicinity of Fort Pitt, and the two men continued to collaborate until Crawford's death in 1782. (loc.gov)

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments. (Luke 23:34)

Nonetheless, he wasn’t satisfied. He approached several of his fellow veterans and offered to buy up their claims. In these discussions, he spread the false notion that there was a strong “chance of our never getting the land at all.” He convinced his comrades-in-arms to part with their claims for next to nothing, and eventually latched onto an additional 5,000 acres. (historynet.com)

In a 1794 letter to Presley Neville, Washington said that these lands were "the cream of the Country in which they are; that they were the first choice of it; and that the whole is on the margin of the Rivers and bounded thereby for 58 miles. (loc.gov)

And then there was his insatiable craving for land, which led him to cheat some of the men he had commanded in the French and Indian War out of acreage they had been offered as an incentive to join the fight. As biographer Ron Chernow put it, Washington “exhibited a naked, sometimes clumsy ambition.” (historynet.com)

All told, Washington— who, as an officer, was originally entitled to no land at all—ended up with more than 27,000 acres. (historynet.com)

All in all, the colonel’s behavior had been amoral at best. He had defrauded the very men who risked their lives to fight for him. At the time, Washington was in his early 40s, an age when most men’s moral characters are set for life. But he was about to morph, radically and for the better. (historynet.com)

Crawford was soon reporting that the officers were “a good deal shagereend [chagrined]” that Washington had snapped up much of the best riverfront property. The commander of the regiment had received, as even he acknowledged, “the cream of the lands.” (historynet.com)

The wheel is come full circle. (Shakespeare)

The attempt and not the deed confounds us. (Shakespeare)

The Stamp Act had led Americans to ask fundamental questions about the relationship between their local, colonial, legislatures, which were elected bodies, and the British Parliament, in which Americans had no elected representation. (loc.gov)

Overall, American revolutionaries viewed English actions from 1767-1772 with suspicion. They read in British policy a systematic conspiracy against their liberties. As the colonists saw it, tax revenues fed corrupt British officials who used monies they coerced from the colonies to line their pockets, hire additional tax collectors, and pay mercenaries to come to America and complete the process of "enslaving" colonists. (loc.gov)

In drafting his first inaugural address, he wrote, “the Divine Providence hath not seen fit, that my blood should be transmitted or my name perpetuated by the endearing, though sometimes seducing channel of immediate offspring. (historynet.com)

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. (2 Corinthians 4:3)

Had you known George Washington in 1774, you might have admired his skill as an Indian fighter, but you would not have predicted he would one day become his country’s paragon of virtue. No, virtue is not the first word that would have come to mind. Try greedy, perhaps, or cunning. The young Washington was a man on the make. He wanted to get rich. He bought, sold and traded slaves, raffling off some in a lottery and permanently dividing families. (historynet.com)

Over the next year of conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries, they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed more and more colonists to favor independence. (loc.gov)

As the ones creating these laws, the gentry were able to address and fix their own situations by passing laws that got them out of trouble, saved or made them money, and ensured their position on the top of society. (Celina Morgan, As Worthless as an Eldest Son Could Be)

I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man. (Shakespeare)

The second generation of gentry patriarchs had established a successful system that did not fail them. The young gentry inheriting this lifestyle believed they were coming into all the power and prestige in Virginia, blind to the reality that their class was not invincible. They inherited political authority, slaves, thousands of acres in the best areas of Virginia. They had all the power and money of which they could have dreamt. However, by the 1790s, the gentry had lost their standing in Virginian society in both the economic and political realms. (Celina Morgan, As Worthless as an Eldest Son Could Be)

The young men believed they could prosper as planters despite the picture of economic distress among them. They wanted to live, as they believed as their parents had, entertaining lavishly and importing foreign goods. And as the gentry found themselves in more and more trouble, the further they romanticized the past. (Celina Morgan, As Worthless as an Eldest Son Could Be)

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. (Shakespeare)

General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force. (loc.gov)

Minutemen were selected from militia muster rolls by their commanding officers. Typically 25 years of age or younger, they were chosen for their enthusiasm, reliability, and physical strength. Usually about one quarter of the militia served as Minutemen, performing additional duties as such. The Minutemen were the first armed militia to arrive or await a battle. (ushistory.org)

Americans longed for a national hero, and Washington, tall, handsome and brave, fit the bill. He was quickly dubbed “father of his country.“ (historynet.com)

In the summer of 1778, Washington could claim that the war effort was going well. The army’s decision to occupy Valley Forge and maintain strong offensive pressure on the enemy was a wise one. After they abandoned Philadelphia, the British had little to show for all of their past year’s efforts. (nps.gov)

Nor did he entirely reconsider his love of wealth. He spent much of the 1780s battling what he called the “willful and obstinate sinners” who squatted on his ill-gotten western lands without paying him rent Well into the 1790s, he continued to sell slaves he regarded as insufficiently respectful. Some of them never saw their families again. (historynet.com)

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Romans 1:18)

The people of Britain, for the most part, had lived with arguments and disputes between the crown and the American colonies from 1763 on. The war that broke out in 1775 dragged on for year after year without any conclusive victories for their nation. By 1783 they were heartily sick of the whole business and the burden of paying for a failed war. The Americans were off to make their own fate and the average Briton spent little time fretting about them. (Wes Frank)

In 1794, the lodge commissioned William Williams to paint Washington dressed in Masonic regalia. After Washington’s death the lodge changed its name to Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22. (mountvernon.org)

An overflow of good converts to bad. (Shakespeare)

Being persuaded that a just application of the principles, on which the Masonic Fraternity is founded, must be promotive of private virtue and public prosperity, I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the Society, and to be considered by them as a deserving brother. (George Washington, 1790)

Men’s vows are women’s traitors! (Shakespeare)

Democratic-Republican criticisms that Washington had become the head of a party instead of the nation boiled over in reaction to the treaty that John Jay had signed with the British and the Senate ratified in 1795. In the face of growing newspaper attacks against him, which he tended to take personally, Washington handed the reins of government over to his successor, John Adams, in the spring of 1797. (mountvernon.org)

In April 1789, at least ten white or free black paid servants that worked and may have boarded in the home; and several enslaved individuals. (whitehousehistory.org)

Descendants of the slave West Ford have long claimed that George Washington was his father, but a compelling argument can be made that Ford’s father was the general’s nephew Bushrod Washington. (encyclopediavirginia.org)

The enslaved people in the President’s House were also separated from their families back at Mount Vernon. By the time of his presidency, Washington had determined not to break up families through sales, but he had no objection to separating them physically. Christopher Sheels and other enslaved people who acted as messengers may have been able to pass notes and verbal messages, but those visits were infrequent. (whitehousehistory.org)

When Judge learned that Martha Washington intended, upon her death, to make a wedding present of her to the Washington granddaughter Elizabeth Park Custis Law, she took matters into her own hands. On the evening of May 21, 1796, she waited until the Washingtons sat down to dinner, then walked out of the President’s House in Philadelphia. She was gone. (loc.gov)

Although Washington tried to maintain absolute authority over the enslaved people in his home, he couldn’t always exercise complete control. Austin arrived at Mount Vernon when he was just a baby in the arms of his mother, Betty, who belonged to Martha Washington. Austin never knew his father, but he was probably white, as Austin was considered fair-skinned. (whitehousehistory.org)

George Washington, America’s first and most revered president, had his feet in both slavery and his highly acclaimed fight for freedom and justice for all. A bag of contradictions? Or shame? No wonder the world media has chosen to ignore the story. But welcome to George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate in Virginia. (newsmagazine.com)

Washington’s will decreed that all 123 of his enslaved people be freed upon the death of his wife. This action was made possible by a Virginia law passed in 1782 that allowed enslavers to manumit their enslaved people at will, without government approval. Washington conspicuously noted that it was not “in my power” to manumit the enslaved people owned by the Custis heirs, perhaps hoping to urge the Custis family to follow his example and manumit them themselves. (encyclopediavirginia.org)

By the flame which you have kindled, every oppressed nation will be enabled to perceive its fetters… But it is not to the commander in chief of the American forces, nor to the president of the United States, that I have ought to address. My business is with George Washington of Mount Vernon in Virginia, a man who notwithstanding his hatred of oppression and his ardent love of liberty, holds at this moment hundreds of his fellow beings in a state of abject bondage. (Edward Rushton, from Liverpool, England, July 1796)

No, I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing. (Shakespeare)

After the Revolution he wrote his mother, who had suggested that she might wish to move to Mount Vernon, that "in truth it may be compared to a well resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers who are going from north to south, or from south to north, do not spend a day or two at it. . . . What with the sitting up of Company; the noise and bustle of servants, and many other things you would not be able to enjoy that calmness and serenity of mind, which... you ought now to prefer" (15 Feb. 1787, George Washington Papers, Library of Congress).

And put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. (Proverbs 23:2)

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

My throat is dry like a broken vessel; my tongue is fixed to the roof of my mouth, and the dust of death is on my lips. (Psalms 22:15)

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. (Leviticus 17:11)

There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. (Matthew 27:34)

Instead, they gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (Psalm 69:21)

The most plausible explanation to emerge was that Washington died of acute epiglottitis -- a swelling of the lid of the windpipe that restricts airflow. (military.com)

In 1910 the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Association was formed. Then in 1932 the Association dedicated its great Masonic Memorial to Washington in Alexandria, Virginia. Today Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22 displays many of its valuable Washington artifacts and continues to meet there. (mountvernon.org)

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.
Their throat is pan open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.
The venom of asps is under their lips.
Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes. (Romans 3)

In the words of historian Henry Wiencek, his contradictory attitudes towards slavery are “one of the mysteries of his life.” Those contradictions made it into his will, too. Though the will contained the unheard-of order to free his enslaved workers, it stipulated that they remain with Martha for the rest of her life. (history.com)

By the 1790s, the gentry found their affluent lifestyle to be disappearing. How could this prestige melt away in such a short time? Had their fathers and grandfathers failed them? (Celina Morgan, As Worthless as an Eldest Son Could Be)

Overall, the young gentry men were unwilling and stubborn to change. They were determined to be successful tobacco planters and live the lives of their fathers and grandfathers. As they faced increased debt they failed to live a more modest lifestyle and drastically cut back on their spending. And as the Revolution changed the identity of the colonies, it also changed the gentry’s world and presented them with new insurmountable challenges. (Celina Morgan, As Worthless as an Eldest Son Could Be)

The parents of a young jazz singer who jumped to her death off the George Washington Bridge last year brought a $100 million lawsuit against the Port Authority for not installing enough protective barriers on the “suicide magnet” structure. (courthousenews.com)

Tragically, Ralph Ober died on August 30, 1931, at Virginia Mason Hospital the age of 60 of a "brain hemorrhage." "Death came," reported the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "as the greatest monument to his engineering genius, the high bridge over Lake Union, is rapidly nearing completion." (historylink.org)

Quincy hints at a possible cause for George Washington’s ghost to be lingering at Mount Vernon, explaining that the “velvet cover of the coffin was hanging in tatters, it having been brought to this condition by the assaults of relic-hunters.” Quincy concluded by quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aphorism, “‘Care not to strip the dead of his sad ornament,’” because “of all fetiches [sic], with which the imagination contrives to associate the august spirits of the great,” Quincy claimed, “such miserable shreds and patches are the most vulgar.” (mountvernon.org)

When he saw that he had her attention, he shouted, “What the hell is going on here?”—a reference to the noise a school group or groups were making. The interpreter told him that she was trying to quiet them down and then the man disappeared. She later saw a portrait of the gentleman in question, Colonel Harrison Howell Dodge, Mount Vernon’s director for about 50 years until his death in the late 1930s. (mountvernon.org)

It was well known that General Washington carried a heavy set of keys and that they could be heard as he walked through the house. Tobias Lear, the General’s secretary, is known to have taken the keys from the General’s pocket upon his death in order to hand them over to his enslaved manservant Christopher Sheels. (mountvernon.org)

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. (Shakespeare)

As the little birdie just said, you have to pay Peter so he can pay the piper so he can rob Paul.

According to some historians, Baum and W.W. Denslow, the book’s illustrator, drew from popular political cartoons of the time, in which tin-clad men were prominent symbols for the dehumanizing aspects of industrialization. And this isn’t even the wildest socioeconomic read of the book; my partner remembers an econ professor telling her class that the yellow brick road represented the gold standard. (jackcheng.com)

Baum is said to have been inspired to create the Tin Man character after seeing a window display featuring a mannequin dressed as a tin woodsman at a store in New York. He was also inspired by the folktale of The Emperor's New Clothes, in which a vain ruler is convinced to wear a suit of clothes that he is told are invisible to those who are unworthy of their positions. In the story, the Tin Man represents the character who is honest and true, despite lacking in certain qualities. (study.com)

It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. (Romans 14:21)

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4)