ARCHAEOLOGY- Centuries-old bottles of cherries unearthed at George Washington’s home!

Many people have heard a story about the first U.S. President, George Washington cutting down a cherry tree in his youth. Although that story has been disproven, there is a true association with Washington and cherries as there were two bottles full of them unearthed at his Mt. Vernon home in northern Virginia. BTW, the cherry tree tale came from Mason Locke Weems’ biography, The Life of Washington, first published in 1800 and was an instant bestseller. The cherry tree myth did not appear until the book’s fifth edition, published in 1806 for some reason. Regardless, this new finding at Mount Vernon was pretty cool. Here's the story from the Washington Post.

(Photo:  The two bottles contained cherries, pits, stems and liquid. (Image credit: Mount Vernon)

Centuries-old bottles of cherries unearthed at George Washington’s home 

  By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post, April 22, 2024

Archaeologist Nick Beard was gently pushing aside the hardened dirt in the basement of George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, Va., last fall when he spotted the mouth of a glass bottle.

Beard worked his trowel a little more and the neck of the bottle emerged. Not that unusual, he thought. Archaeologists find lots of bottle fragments. But as he dug, more of the object appeared. “It kept [getting] larger and larger,” he said.

He stuck his finger in the mouth to see if he might wiggle the piece loose. “And my finger came back wet,” he said. “I thought about it for a half-second longer and said, ‘Oh my God, my finger is wet,’” he recalled. “I got my flashlight out and shined it in there, and the thing is completely full of liquid,” he said.

He summoned colleagues. They were stunned. Here was “an out-of-the-box, next level, spectacular find,” said Jason Boroughs, Mount Vernon’s principal archaeologist.

Experts at Mount Vernon said last week (April 16, 2024) that Beard and other archaeologists have now discovered two intact bottles that still had, along with liquid, some of the cherries they contained when they were buried about 250 years ago. The area of the discovery was believed to have once been a storeroom, Beard said.

(Photo: George Washington's Mount Vernon, Virginia. Credit: https://www.facebook.com/HistoricMountVernon/

Much of the liquid could be ground water that seeped in after the cork seals deteriorated, but pits, stems, sodden cherries, and gooey residue were also present, the experts said.

“There are whole, recognizable cherries,” said Boroughs. “It actually smelled like cherry blossoms when we got to the bottom.”

Boroughs noted two other finds in Virginia of historic intact bottles containing cherries, and other fruits: one in 1966 in Williamsburg, and the other in 1981 at Thomas Jefferson’s estate, Monticello, outside Charlottesville.

“We don’t find complete objects or artifacts often ever in archaeology,” said Lily Carhart, Mount Vernon’s curator of preservation collections. “Usually we’re dealing with very tiny fragments. Where we find even the beginning of something that looks like it might be complete, that is a truly exceptional day for us.”

(Photo: Cherry and peach trees in bloom at Mt. Vernon. Credit: Mt. Vernon) 

WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? - The cherries were probably picked at Mount Vernon in the 1770s, perhaps before the Revolutionary War, and stored for the future. The bottles, imported from England, dated to the mid-1700s and were likely buried between 1758 and 1776, Boroughs said. “So it’s a time capsule,” he said.

(Photo: Nick Beard, Project Archaeologist at George Washington's Mount Vernon./ Photo: LinkedIn) 

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHERRIES AFTER DISCOVERY? - Most of the contents were siphoned from the bottles, to help preserve the glass, and stored in fifteen small containers. The liquid and the cherries will be analyzed later, said Carhart.

ABOUT MT. VERNON - Mount Vernon, George Washington’s famous mansion overlooking the Potomac River, is about 20 miles south of Washington. The original house was a modest structure built for his father in 1734. Washington inherited it in 1761, and expanded it dramatically over the decades – most of the work being done by those enslaved at Mount Vernon, officials said. By the time of Washington’s death in 1799 more than 300 people were enslaved on the plantation there.