|
 George
Washington, later to become the 1st President of the United
States of America, visited Barbados in 1751 and spent about
two months.
Barbados was the only country he ever visited
outside colonial America.
This fact alone should make a tour
of George Washington House, the place where he stayed while
in Barbados, a must-do activity for all visitors from the
USA.
The House, now appropriately under the control of the
Barbados National Trust, is also of interest to other visitors,
including Barbadians, as it gives useful insights into life
as it was in the Barbados of 250 years ago.
The ground floor
of the building is furnished in the manner in which it might
have been in 1751. On display are such basic items as a four
poster bed with a rather lumpy mattress surrounded with mosquito
netting very much needed then as protection against these
little pests, a small face basin and ewer in one corner and,
under the bed, the very necessary chamber pot since at that
time there were no indoor bathroom facilities. Other rooms
display different requirements for “civilised” living – chairs
of various kinds, a marble table top on which to place hot
dishes, and various items of crockery and cutlery, some recovered
from the nearby gully.
The House provides interesting insights
into the ways in which people of that day made the best of
circumstances and were quite imaginative in “making
do”, as we today would think of it, with what was available.
For example ice was not available so wine bottles were kept
reasonably cool in two rooms so situated as to benefit from
an almost steady breeze. Interesting, as well, was the means
used both to filter water and to keep it cool. Water was
poured into a stone jar and because of the vessel’s
porosity the water gradually dripped into another similar
jar below it and from this into yet a third jar below the
second one. As a result, impurities in the water were filtered
out and as some of the water evaporated it absorbed warmth
(heat) from the containing vessels and thus cooled the main
body of water.
The second floor of the building is devoted
entirely to displays of items typical of life in the mid-eighteenth
century, and the items are richly described with both visual
and audio aids. On display are some medical appliances of
the time – pharmaceutical bottles, thumb lancets and
cupping glasses which “were heated to create suction
to draw blood to the skin’s surface”. An interesting
item is a reminder that Washington contracted small pox,
a deadly disease that was rampant at that time and quite
frequently resulted in death to those who contracted it,
so Washington was fortunate in the doctor who tended him
and helped restore him to health. According to the record
he was successfully treated by a Dr. Lanaham “a third-generation
Barbadian” who was “a practitioner of physick
and surgery”, and the note adds the thought-provoking
comment by historian Eustace Shilstone that “The course
of the nation and perhaps of the whole world may have been
changed if the doctor had been less skilful and attentive;
a theme which needs no elaboration”.
 Other artefacts
on display remind present day visitors of the existence of
slavery at the time Washington came to Barbados for open
to view are such things as spiked manacles, manacle and chain
and barbed-neck collars “used as a form of restraint/punishment”.
Also displayed are agricultural implements like sickle, cane
bill and hoe as well as other items found by archaeologists
in digs close to Bush House, as Washington House was previously
known. These include stoneware, porcelain bowl, buttons,
buckle, glass beads “probably used by slaves”,
pipe bowls, grape shot (cannon balls), gun flints, musket
balls, bottle fragments and earthenware chamber pots. All
these constitute a treasure trove helping to shed light on
the Barbados which Washington visited.
Barbadian visitors
will find of interest other striking bits of information
not widely known such as that “in the context of the
British Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries, Barbados played
a surprisingly large and important role ... (and) was the
central hub of the Caribbean for travellers and goods”.
It also had “one of the best fortified coast lines
in the British Caribbean” something that proved of
particular interest to George Washington who, with the approval
of the Fort’s Commander, examined these with great
care. One report suggests that “the knowledge gained
during his visits to the various forts along the west coast
surely influenced his future military career”. Washington
was “an excellent horseman” and a “passionate
landowner” as well so it is of some importance that “What
he observed for the first time in Barbados were some of the
most innovative agricultural techniques of the day”.
These included “using dried cane stalks or bagasse
as fuel in the boiling process’, and “dung farming
where animals were put into pens, fed grasses, brush or green
matter to produce rich manure … to renew depleted
soil in sugar cane fields”. Barbadian and other visitors
to Washington House will also learn, almost certainly to
their surprise, that “the grapefruit originated in
Barbados”.
The display features an interesting reference
to the African, Olaudah Equiano, who “purchased his
freedom for £40 in 1766 … (and) worked in London
as a hairdresser and a seaman”, his autobiography rightly
being considered “a manifesto for the abolition of
slavery”. This serves as a reminder that in the matter
of slavery Washington found himself between a rock and a
hard place, to use present-day idiom. He was a slave owner
yet “struggled with, and recorded in his papers, the
many moral dilemmas of owning human property”. Indeed
he was challenged on this matter in a letter from one Edward
Rushton in 1797: “Washington, Ages to come will read
with astonishment that the man who was foremost to wrench
the rights of America from the tyrannical grasp of Britain
was among the last to relinquish his own oppressive held
of poor and unoffending negroes”.
George Washington
did seek to free his own slaves but, according to the information
presented, he and his wife together owned some 300 slaves
and “It would have cost nearly £6,000 to free
them all. However, his plantations made only £900 a
year”. So, as the display puts it, “the question
of slavery was left to another generation to resolve.”
George
Washington House is most certainly worth a visit by all,
Barbadians included.
View photos of George Washington House
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To visit this beautiful location and others, take an island tour.
Other Barbados attractions and points of interest within 0.5 miles of George Washington House
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