Speaker 1: So George Washington would have turned two hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: three years old this weekend on February twenty second, if
Speaker 1: he hadn't been killed by some over zealous primitive doctors
Speaker 1: and also was immortal. But a few decades after his passing,
Speaker 1: he almost had his head stolen. I'm Patty Steele. What
Speaker 1: would anybody want to do with George's head? That's next
Speaker 1: on the backstory. The backstory is back. Even though President's
Speaker 1: weekend was last weekend, George Washington's birthday takes place this weekend,
Speaker 1: February twenty second. He was born two hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: three years ago, seventeen thirty two. We know that his
Speaker 1: death at the age of sixty seven was likely caused
Speaker 1: by over zealous doctors who thought that blood letting was
Speaker 1: the best way to treat a patient. Pretty common at
Speaker 1: the time, but it turns out that he had developed
Speaker 1: a nasty throat infection and was having trouble breathing. All
Speaker 1: but one of his doctors believed that by raining a
Speaker 1: lot of the blood out of his body, they would
Speaker 1: somehow make him well at the end of the night,
Speaker 1: likely by cutting into his veins. They had drained over
Speaker 1: forty percent of his blood. That weakened him and made
Speaker 1: him less likely to be able to fight off the infection.
Speaker 1: So the next morning George Washington died. It was December fourteenth,
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety nine. Now George was frightened of being buried
Speaker 1: alive and aware that his hours were numbered, he specifically
Speaker 1: asked that he not be buried until he had been
Speaker 1: dead for three days. While he wanted to be buried
Speaker 1: in a crypt at home at Mount Vernon, folks in
Speaker 1: Washington wanted their hero to be interred in a special
Speaker 1: glass exposed vault in the floor of the rotunda of
Speaker 1: the Capitol building. The plan was to have a permanent
Speaker 1: ten foot hole covered in glass, which would look down
Speaker 1: on a statue of George Washington standing above his own tomb.
Speaker 1: Wow fancy, right. Martha Washington gave that idea a mild
Speaker 1: thumbs up. The Capital wasn't even finished being built yet,
Speaker 1: so for the time being, they put George's remain in
Speaker 1: a separate crypt at Mount Vernon, and that was that.
Speaker 1: Over the next thirty years, the family crypt fell into
Speaker 1: total disrepair. The public traveled to Washington's grave to snag artifacts,
Speaker 1: including plants, trees and flowers that surrounded it. Everything was
Speaker 1: stripped bare. In fact, even the Russian ambassador to the
Speaker 1: United States had an entire branch taken from a tree
Speaker 1: next to the tomb, which he later presented to Alexander
Speaker 1: the First. In eighteen thirty, GW's grand nephew, John Augustine
Speaker 1: Washington the Second, owned Mount Vernon. The story goes that
Speaker 1: he decided to fire one of his gardeners. Well, the
Speaker 1: guy was furious. He wanted revenge, so he breaks into
Speaker 1: the family crypt with the idea that he'd steal George
Speaker 1: Washington's head. People in those days didn't love their relics.
Speaker 1: The thought was he'd sell it in Europe, where George
Speaker 1: was really admired, or perhaps even have it go out
Speaker 1: on tour in a traveling display. But here's where the
Speaker 1: gardener ran into a problem. John Augustine Washington had close
Speaker 1: to ten kids and a boatload of in laws, many
Speaker 1: of whom were buried in the crypt in a pretty
Speaker 1: haphazard way. Turns out, time as well as wild animals
Speaker 1: plus folks looking for souvenirs had all taken a real
Speaker 1: toll in the crypt. Coffins had rotted. There were bodies
Speaker 1: scattered all over the floor. There were at least twenty
Speaker 1: people buried in the crypt. The gardener grabbed a couple
Speaker 1: of heads, which later were identified as a man and
Speaker 1: a little girl. The bodies of George and Martha Washington,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, had been encased in lead before
Speaker 1: their burial, so were spared this indignity, as they put it. Meantime,
Speaker 1: the gardener was nabbed the next day in Alexandria, Virginia,
Speaker 1: and the skull was returned to the crypt anyway. As
Speaker 1: a result of the attempted theft, Congress decided once again
Speaker 1: it wanted to take Washington's body and in tumbe him
Speaker 1: in the Capitol as part of the celebration of his
Speaker 1: one hundredth birthday on February twenty second, eighteen thirty two.
Speaker 1: But John Washington refused, saying he had just built a
Speaker 1: new and improved family crypt and he could not disturb
Speaker 1: President Washington's perfect tranquility, as he put it. The bodies
Speaker 1: of George and Martha Washington were moved to the side
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty one, and a security guard was hired
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on the tomb. In eighteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: after a new and more fancy sarcophagus was built out
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania marble, the original lead interior coffins of George
Speaker 1: and Martha were moved. That's when the coffin was unsealed
Speaker 1: for the first and last time, so John Washington could
Speaker 1: take a look at his uncle's body, maybe to ensure
Speaker 1: no one else had tried to steal GW's head, or
Speaker 1: maybe it was just morbid curiosity. Anyway, Harper's New Monthly
Speaker 1: magazine said the corpse appeared to have suffered little from
Speaker 1: the effects of time and was notable for its large dimensions.
Speaker 1: In life, George Washington was more than six feet tall,
Speaker 1: unusually large for the eighteenth century. The article said he
Speaker 1: had a massive head, with tremendously large hands and size
Speaker 1: thirteen feet. There have also been claims that locks of
Speaker 1: hair were removed from George's head at that point when
Speaker 1: they had the coffin open, because people love getting their
Speaker 1: hands on that stuff, but nobody's for sure whether that happened.
Speaker 1: But full on body snatching was a big problem throughout
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, and Washington wasn't the only president targeted.
Speaker 1: Abe Lincoln's remains were nearly snatched in an election day
Speaker 1: plot in eighteen seventy six, but those guys were foiled.
Speaker 1: The body of Thomas Paine, the Revolutionary War influencer who
Speaker 1: wrote Common Sense, was dug up in eighteen nineteen and
Speaker 1: shipped to England, who was never returned, and over the
Speaker 1: years his bones were split up. Where it is the
Speaker 1: skull is somewhere in Australia, and a leg bone is
Speaker 1: said to be in the wall of an English tavern.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. George Washington was a monumentally towering figure
Speaker 1: for a brand new country just getting its footing. Everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to celebrate him, be like him, have their kids
Speaker 1: grow up to be like him. People then described visiting
Speaker 1: his tomb as being a rapturous, almost religious experience, and
Speaker 1: there was a sense that putting his bones in DC
Speaker 1: would help bind the country together in the run up
Speaker 1: to the Civil War. As one biographer said, the question
Speaker 1: was whether Washington's memory belonged more to the state he
Speaker 1: called home or to the country he created. So in
Speaker 1: the race to capture a relic of George Washington, whether
Speaker 1: it was a lock of his hair or his entire head,
Speaker 1: the motivation seems to have been based on the desire
Speaker 1: to somehow hold on to his physical presence in people's
Speaker 1: lives for as long as they possibly could. Hope you're
Speaker 1: enjoying The Backstory with Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for
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Speaker 1: to dm me if you have a story you would
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Speaker 1: writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
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Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't
Speaker 1: know you needed to know.