1. Haunted Mount Vernon
One of Massachusetts’ more prominent figures in the first half of the nineteenth century was Josiah Quincy III (1772 – 1864). He served in the US House of Representatives from 1805 to 1813, as mayor of Boston from 1823 to 1828, and as President of Harvard University from 1829 to 1845. In 1806, he visited Mount Vernon, inherited by George Washington’s nephew Bushrod Washington. Quincy stayed overnight, and Bushrod hosted him in the first president’s bedroom – the one in which the great man had died. By then, rumors already abounded of spooky encounters with Washington’s ghost in that bedroom. Quincy, who like most Americans of his generations revered George Washington, was not afraid.
Indeed, he actually hoped “that he might be found worthy to behold the glorified spirit of him who was so revered by his countrymen“. As his son Josiah Quincy Jr. recounted decades later, his father was not disappointed. At some point that night, he reported that he did, indeed, meet the ghost of George Washington. Frustratingly, however, Quincy Jr. gave no details, other than inform readers that his father’s “assurance in this matter was perfect“. We are thus left to wonder what might have passed between the Massachusetts bigwig and the spooky ghost of America’s first president.
_________________
Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Atlantic, The, October 17th, 2014 – White House Sheep, a History
Atlas Obscura – The Great Lengths Taken to Make Abraham Lincoln Look Good in Portraits
Auto Blog – LBJ’s Amphibious Car Caught Friends and Dignitaries by Surprise
Brodie, Fawn McKay – Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974)
Chernow, Ron – Washington: A Life (2010)
Daily Beast – Happy Mother’s Day! Meet the Worst Mothers in History
Dugatkin, Lee Alan – Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America (2009)
Gawker – LBJ Was Obsessed With His Dick
History Collection – How George Washington Saved the American Revolution
Jacobin, August 28th, 2012 – Lincoln and Marx
Listverse – 10 Stories That Show the Weird Side of Thomas Jefferson
Miller, Nathan – Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (1992)
Mount Vernon – Ghost Stories: Washington’s Ghost Haunts Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon Digital Collection – The Journal of Major George Washington
National Park Service – Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Vehicles
National Wrestling Hall of Fame – Abraham Lincoln
NPR – Thomas Jefferson Needs a Dead Moose Right Now to Defend America
Sandburg, Carl – Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1929)
Sandburg, Carl – Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939)
Thayer, William Roscoe – Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography (1919)
ThoughtCo. – Was Abraham Lincoln Really a Wrestler?
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Digital Commons – The Journal of Major George Washington (1754)
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum – Wilson’s Sheep
