The Lore of George Washington’s Ghost
Another bit of Mount Vernon ghost lore involves Josiah Quincy III (1772 – 1864), one of Massachusetts’ more prominent figures in the first half of the nineteenth century. 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 George Washington’s bedroom – the one which the great man had died. By then, Mount Vernon lore already abounded with tales 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 ghost of America’s first president.
