Countless fragments of colorful earthenware and stoneware pottery were found, together with a fine assortment of oriental porcelain. Much of the pottery (including slip-decorated earthenware, Delftware, white salt-glazed stoneware, “Whieldon” ware, hand-decorated Staffordshire, and creamware) was made in England; some was imported from Holland (tin-glazed Delftware) and Germany (stoneware), whereas most of the porcelain came from China.
Tools unearthed near the site of the home in which George Washington was born—iron hoes, an iron pestle, small ax, and fragment of an ice saw. All tools shown date from 1690 to 1775.
Sgraffito (scratched) earthenware bowl.
All pieces of furniture acquired by the association for the memorial house are of the early 18th-century English styles, having been made between 1700 and 1750. Only one item in the house, a tilt-top tea table, is said to have been in the original home. The last owner of the house, William Augustine Washington (George’s eldest nephew), saved it at the time of the fire in 1779.
The Wakefield National Memorial Association has also acquired appropriate cooking utensils of the early 18th-century period for the colonial-style kitchen. Once again, excavated artifacts—including pot-hooks, kettle fragments, skewers, ladles, and numerous other cooking accessories—were used as guides in locating suitable kitchen equipage.
Since 1932 over a million people from all parts of the world have visited Wakefield and enjoyed its natural beauties and historical associations. The serenity of the restored plantation with its cultivated fields and oldtime flower garden, its fragrant boxwood and sweet-scented herbs, and the lovely water views afforded by Popes Creek and the Potomac River, make unforgettable impressions. The memorial house furnished with beautiful and appropriate pieces from a bygone day, the early 18th-century style kitchen with its huge fireplace and ancient cooking equipment, and the family burying ground at Bridges Creek, almost 300 years old, are integral parts of the scene. In addition to these glimpses of colonial life are the well-kept grounds, the carefully tended flower beds, and the grove of native cedar trees which stand like venerable sentinels on Burnt House Point.
Such enchanting scenes which impress the senses and mind are taken for granted today, as few pilgrims realize that not so many years ago the birthplace of our Nation’s First Citizen was all but forgotten. Without the dedicated labor of many people and organizations there would be no Wakefield plantation today, and to these individuals our Nation will forever owe a debt of gratitude.
But the restored plantation is more than a monument to the people who saved it. It is a memorial to the boy who played in the red brick house by the tidal creek, in the stables, barns, tobacco sheds, and other outbuildings; in the smokehouse and summer kitchen; in the spinning and weaving house and buttery; and near the forge where the blacksmith beat red-hot iron rods into tools and hardware and farm implements. The restored plantation is a shrine to the young boy with reddish-brown hair and blue eyes who romped through the green meadows and fields of corn, and watched the growing wheat, rye, and tobacco; the youth who picked luscious figs, climbed the gnarled apple trees, and played games in the cedar grove of that day.