Mount Vernon

After serving as Martha Washington's ladies' maid for most of her life, Ona Judge escaped from slavery in 1796. While with the family in Philadelphia, she boarded a ship headed north to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For years she would evade efforts by President Washington to return her to bondage at Mount Vernon.

Mount Vernon is a priceless national treasure and symbol of America's foremost founding father. But were it not for a tiny staff guarding it through the 1860s, it might not have survived the Civil War. At the head of this skeleton crew was a soft-spoken, unassuming New York secretary who politely put her foot down and said: This is George Washington's ground, and your war will stop here.

From July 4, 1798 to his death in 1799, George Washington served as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army. Tensions with France were on the rise during the Quasi-War, so President John Adams appointed Washington to lead the nation’s armed forces.

On June 8, 1939, a royal train rolled into Track 20 at Union Station. The station had been cleaned and shined, the columns lining the track had a fresh coat of green and white paint, and a blue carpet was rolled out from the platform to the newly redecorated station reception room. The visitors arriving in Washington that day were King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who made unprecedented history by becoming the first reigning British monarchs to ever set foot on American soil. Of the various activities that the King took part in during his stay, the irony of his visit to Mount Vernon was, quite possibly, the most intriguing.

The USS Princeton was a new naval ship designed to show the power of young America's navy. All of Washington's high society was on board one February day to witness this marvel of modern engineering. Instead, a tragic disaster left six people dead, including two cabinet secretaries, and may have altered the course of American history. 

December 14th marks the anniversary of George Washington's death from an unknown illness, which came on quickly. Centuries later, historians still debate what killed the first President and doctors are weighing in. So, how exactly do you diagnose an illness of a patient who died over 200 years ago? Very carefully.

George Washington, the father of our country, was a deadbeat book borrower? Apparently so. In April of 2010, the New York Society Library was going through the process of restoring and digitizing their holdings when an employee stumbled across the long lost fourteen-volume collection, Common Debates, a collection of transcripts from the English House of Commons. But, the collection was missing a volume. A check of the old circulation ledger proved that volume #12 had last been checked out by library patron George Washington October 5, 1789, along with a book by Emer de Vattel, entitled Law of Nations.

The books were due back on November 2, but according to the records, neither was ever returned.