Where the Cherry Tree Grew
The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Noted historian pens biography of Ferry Farm—George Washington's boyhood home—and its three centuries of American history
In 2002, Philip Levy arrived on the banks of Rappahannock River in Virginia to begin an archeological excavation of Ferry Farm, the eight hundred acre plot of land that George Washington called home from age six until early adulthood. Six years later, Levy and his team announced their remarkable findings to the world: They had found more than Washington family objects like wig curlers, wine bottles and a tea set. They found objects that told deeper stories about family life: a pipe with Masonic markings, a carefully placed set of oyster shells suggesting that someone in the household was practicing folk magic. More importantly, they had identified Washington's home itself—a modest structure in line with lower gentry taste that was neither as grand as some had believed nor as rustic as nineteenth century art depicted it.
Levy now tells the farm's story in Where the Cherry Tree Grew. The land, a farmstead before Washington lived there, gave him an education in the fragility of life as death came to Ferry Farm repeatedly. Levy then chronicles the farm's role as a Civil War battleground, the heated later battles over its preservation and, finally, an unsuccessful attempt by Wal-Mart to transform the last vestiges Ferry Farm into a vast shopping plaza.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 2008, historian and archeologist Levy (Fellow Travelers: Indians and Europeans Contesting the Early American Trail) announced that he and his team had uncovered George Washington's boyhood home on the banks of Virginia's Rappahannock River. Levy regales readers with a fascinating tale of a home, a family, and the legends surrounding Washington that grew out of the soil of Ferry Farm. When Washington's father, Augustine, died, he willed the land to his son; at 11 years old, the young Washington thus became a "landowner and a slaveholder." Yet Washington's tenure at Ferry Farm was a brief one he left the spot when he was 16 to become a surveyor of new territories out west, a job he came to love. As Levy points out, the future first president did not have fond memories of Ferry Farm his father and sister died on the land yet his life there hardened him to deal with the ravages of the Revolutionary War. While Levy offers no especially new insights into Washington's life and times, he does provide a glimpse into the role of land and the power of place in shaping history and identity. 8-page b&w photo insert.
