I'm standing on the site of Ferry Farm, George Washington's boyhood home on the banks of the Rappahannock River in Virginia, near the spot where legend has it that the nation's first president flung a silver dollar across the rolling waters.
I take a rock and throw. It lands -- plunk -- perhaps a third of the way across.
Did the Father of Our Country really throw a silver dollar across the river? One can find the answer -- sort of -- at three of Washington's Virginia homes.
George Washington Birthplace National Monument sits near the region's other famed river, the Potomac, about 40 miles east of Fredericksburg. Ferry Farm, where young George came of age, is on the outskirts of Fredericksburg. And the home where he lived as an adult, Mount Vernon, is about 16 miles from the nation's capital.
The early days
Welcome to baby George's world, where people pinned sachets of orange spiked with cloves inside their clothes in the days before deodorant, slaves slept on corn-husk beds in a detached kitchen, and the youngest child emptied the family chamber pots every morning. This was life on the mid-sized tobacco plantation of a gentleman farmer in 1732, when George Washington came into the world on Feb. 22. Today, a reproduced 18th-century plantation marks the site.
In the detached kitchen at the George Washington Birthplace National Monument, park ranger Jennifer Kays explains, "Baths were taken only five or six times a year to preserve natural oils thought at the time to protect people from illnesses." Hence, oranges and cloves instead of soap and water.
Kays demonstrated 18th-century kitchen appliances that a comfortable planter like George's father, Augustine Washington, would have owned, such as a roasting spit, a kick toaster operated by foot and a new invention called a waffle iron.
Dinners were heavy on venison, fish and a variety of breads. Such feasts added pounds, but that was the idea. Big bellies were the fashion, and false pads to make stomachs appear large were as popular as diet drinks are today. If meat had spoiled in the heat of the summer, one might have added basil or red peppers to cover up the stale flavor. Peppermint tea was served to settle indigestion.
