Upon This Land: Episode 1

On this episode, we interview Dr. Philip Levy, the author of a new historic resource study for George Washington Birthplace National Monument (GEWA). He breaks down how he began studying the Washington family and his involvement with unraveling some of the mysteries surrounding George Washington’s birthplace.

Intro music courtesy of Wolf Patrol. Outro music courtesy of Brumbaugh Family

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Dustin Baker: Welcome and thank you for joining us. I'm Dustin Baker, and I'm the chief of interpretation at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. Upon first glance, one might assume that we have a pretty straightforward story to tell. George Washington was one of the most recognizable names in the world, and he was born here. What more needs to be said than that? Well, for many visitors, George Washington Birthplace National Monument is a surprisingly complex, historic site. It is a place where people come to remember George Washington, but also find a story of how the past can be lost, reshaped and rediscovered. It is a place ruled by water. Although Washington, D.C. is only 60 miles up the Potomac River, this place has retained a rural character, and the surrounding area remains essentially undeveloped. Visitors here can still experience sights and sounds that would have been familiar to the Native Americans since the Washington family and the enslaved people from Africa who found themselves all connected by water here in the 17th century. This is a place where seven generations of the Washington family lived and prospered in a colonial Tidewater culture where acquiring land and cultivating tobacco through the use of enslaved labor was essential to building the family's wealth and gentry status. This is a place that was central to one of the earliest federal efforts to memorialize George Washington during the worldwide celebration of his bicentennial birth anniversary. Where inspired nostalgia in the spirit of the undertaking were more important than historical accuracy, leaving behind an interpretive conundrum that we still wrestle with today. And most surprisingly of all, this is a place where the archeological resources that contained critical information about the lives of all who inhabited this land over time are only beginning to be understood. So, on behalf of the staff at George Washington Birthplace National Monument, join us as we share our passion for this place with our new podcast series Upon This Land History, Mystery, and Monuments. For our first episode, we're going to be interviewing Dr. Philip Levy. He's the author of a new historic resource study for the park, which is titled “Upon This Land: Seven Generations of the Washington Family and the Residents of Popes Creek and Mattox Neck.” And you might find that title familiar because it's the direct inspiration for the title of our podcast series. Dr. Philip Levy is a professor of history at the University of South Florida and is an organization of American Historians, Distinguished Lecturer. He is the author of several books, many of which deal with George Washington both as a person and a national icon, where the Cherry Tree grew, the story of Ferry Farm, George Washington's boyhood home, and George Washington written upon the land, nature, memory, myth and landscape focus on the places of Washington's childhood. The permanent resident excavations and explorations of the life of George Washington, winner of the prestigious Society of Historical Archeology, James Dietz Award explores the many sites of Washington's life and how their stories have been shaped by archeology and issues of memory and commemoration. His newest book, Yardbirds the Lives and Times of Americans Urban Chickens, tells a very different story from his other work and explores the fascinating relationships both past and present between urban areas and domestic fowl. Interviewing Dr. Philip Levy today is lead interpretive Park ranger Jonathan Malriat.

Jonathan Malriat: What started you in researching George Washington? What was the starting point?

Dr. Philip Levy: Yeah, I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could say, you know, a lifelong interest in the first president to get an answer like that? And that would not be true. Largely an accident or set of circumstances. I was in grad school at William and Mary, and I was in the history program. I was working with the late, great James Axtell. I still working on Indian colonial relations, which is what I went there to work on. And she had been an advocate of historians coming to understand anthropology that you had to kind of work in different fields. And the program at William and Mary had an internship in historical archeology. So, you could be a history master's student, but you could also do some coursework and field work in historical archeology. And I did that partly because I just want to better understand that field and make some sense out of it. And what I found was that I had an aptitude for it and that I liked it. And over the course of my graduate career, I kind of doubled down on historical archeology, doing more and more work in archeology at the point where that kind of became what I really do. It sort of supplant. I wrote my dissertation, I wrote my first book on Indian colonial relations, but I haven't really worked on that all that much since then. The archeology sort of took over and I got very involved with Colonial Williamsburg digging sites there. And during that time, I worked with David LaRocca, who was a staff archeologist at that colony Williamsburg guy who kind of ran the sites that I was working on. I was supervising all this. And he sort of became my first field mentor, sort of learning a lot of stuff from him, working with other people like Amy Morocco, who helped a lot. So, learning the field from them. And Dave and I kind of struck up a friendship and which is still very much alive and a partnership. And so, by the time I was done with grad school, I had kind of built a little world historical archeology. I got hired at that point at the University of South Florida in the history department, and Dave took a job managing the excavation at George Washington's Childhood home at Ferry Farm. And we had been running field schools together since, you know, the 1990s, the mid-1990s through clay was boring. And we said, well, let's take our field school model and do it over at Berry Farm. This was take, you know, pack up our goods and bring it over there. We both walked into the world of George Washington studies really oddly, both of us sharing a focus on the 17th century. I think we both came in really with a very strong interest in 17th century Virginia landscapes and the rise of slavery. And you know what was going on in that arena. We didn't; George was going to be part of the story. We knew because that was the nature of the site, but that was not what we came in with. And gradually what Dave likes to say about Ferry Farm was it changes everyone, everybody who comes in with one interest, you end up with other ones. And I did not really anticipate it. I had a fellowship one summer nominally to work on 17th century Virginia landscapes. I'd written something about the area of what was called Middle Plantation, which is where Williamsburg is, and I had imagined expanding that into a larger study, and I had a fellowship to work on that, and I spent most of my time looking at 20th century photographs of Ferry Farm, so I got very obsessed with the sequence of buildings trying to understand it. And it took a little while to recognize that that this was going to take over that Washington and that landscape and subsequently other landscapes that that Washington and the memory of his memory in the landscape was going to become what I was doing. And it took a little while, but I got there. So that's sort of how that works. And it's just been it's been endlessly rewarding. There's- there's no reason to stop. There's always more to talk about and more to see. So, you know, one of the things that makes Washington so interesting is that there's- we could talk about Washington as a as an 18th century figure, you know, so he's an ultra for us into the world of the 18th century, which is useful and valuable and understanding American history, his role in American history. But he's one of these people because of his significance at the founding of the Republic. He doesn't go away just because he physically goes away. His memory becomes a very, very important national possession. And, you know, we have everything from national parks to all sorts of resources and objects and commemorations tied to his name. So, there's more to study than just Washington as an 18th century figure there. Also, his impact on the way America thinks of itself and remembers its past and so on. So, there is that I would say there isn't- It's virtually every single dimension of American history has some George Washington angle. What Washington has invoked in virtually every discussion that we have politically, he is always present in some way. You need to enlist him on your side in some cases to make it to make your argument effective. So, he's kind of a scholar's gift that keeps on giving. There's just a lot to talk about beyond just that 18th century life, which could keep people busy for their own careers. So, there's a lot there. And then when you add the materials dimension to it, when you start looking at landscapes and historical sites, it just proliferates. There's just a ton to talk about. So yeah, so I did not plan this, but this is how it has lined up.

Jonathan Malriat: It sounds like quite the journey to get there. one of the other ones. Would you mind taking a second to describe, since you've now talked about how you got into the world of George Washington, How about here the world around George Washington Birthplace National Monument. How did