February 5, 2019 • 42 mins
Returning special guest Christopher Hassiotis joins the guys today for a round-robin discussion of the very weird life of George Washington, first President of the United States. (As you may have guessed from the title, there's more weirdness than we could fit in a single episode.)
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
My name is Ben, my name is no. This is
an interesting kind of tradition, more traditional way to start
the show. You threw me for a loop there, Yeah,
I it took it hard. Somebody somebody remembered you. Guys
on the internet recently referred to me as what's his name?
(00:43):
So I'm gonna try to just play it straight lace
for a little while. Ben. Did they steal your thunder
Have they robbed you of your mojo? I don't know.
I don't want to feel thunderless. How are we going
to get your groove back? Well, we're going to rely
on the help of our super producer, Casey Pegram as always,
and that sound always gets my groove right up. So
we have a pretty fascinating show for you today, folks,
(01:07):
because it came about through a somewhat circuitous fashion. And
who better to help us explain the story of how
we got to this episode for today than our returning
special guest friends and neighbors Christopher Haciotis Hey everybody, Hey Casey, Hey,
no a, what's your name? Too soon? Yeah? Come on,
(01:30):
We've got a nurture band do we we do? Okay,
very contract. This is a safe space, yes, Bishop, container
is a is a safe space. Fine. Fine. So we
love having you on the show, Christopher, and we always
have a bang up time whenever you bless us with
some historical knowledge. But in our conversations off air, the
(01:52):
four of us were, you know, we were kicking around
ideas what should we explore on air today? And you
recently were turned from a trip to Washington. Yeah, that's
Washington state. I was out in Seattle for podcom Too,
which is a podcast convention, podcast conference, so kind of
diving into the weird, strange growing world of podcasting. Headed
(02:15):
out there was a very sort of d i y scene. Um,
a lot of great creators, a lot of great podcasters.
Aaron Manky, who's got some shows over here on our network,
he was out there, and um, it was my first
time in Seattle. And I know you've got your goal
of doing a show about every state. So I don't
know if this really counts that I was in Washington
and we're gonna talk about what we're gonna talk about.
(02:37):
I don't know that accounts for Washington, but that's up
to you. I don't make your rules. I just sit
in the back and judge from a distance. Um. But yeah,
we were out there and and that trip to Seattle
to Washington State made me think, Hey, what's this place
named after? It's named after a guy. Did you have
a guess? You know, it wasn't named after an apple. Okay,
(03:00):
wasn't named after a city on the other side of
the nation. And it wasn't named after George Washington Carver.
It wasn't President Numerouno George Washington himself. Yeah, I thought
there's a there's a lot of cool stuff that we
can talk about when it comes to George Washington. He's
a you know, revered statesman, our first president, a general,
(03:21):
super military commander. Um. You may know him for his
fake teeth, his cherry tree. We can get into all
of that. And whether that actually happened. Quite a snappy dresser,
well weren't. Weren't they all sure he had a particularly
I mean during their paintings, they did exactly know what
they wore on a regular Thursday. Yeah, I mean the paintings,
(03:43):
the things that are on the dollar bill, that's essentially
like the Instagram of the time. It's what they wanted
to put forth. You know, you can be looking at
someone's Instagram feed and they're happy, they're with their significant other,
and you have no idea that they're going through financial
troubles and dealing with a mortgage and they're about to
break up. Looks like the life is so I think
it's just got real. Not not speaking from personal experience here,
(04:06):
but um, yeah, so maybe. Uh. You know, that's one
of the nice things about paintings. You can put the
best foot forward. You can work a lot of symbolism
into it. Um, all of a sudden, we're talking, aren't theory.
But let's let's get back to George. Yeah, let's get
back to George. One thing I want to mention that
I think is a very classy aspect of his character.
He refused to become king. Right. There were proposals early
(04:30):
on in the days of the founding of the nation,
and people said, George, you're great, and he's like, I'll
stop keep going, stop, no, keep going, And they said
you should be king and he said, nah, I guys
were kind of missing the point. And that is, in
my opinion, uh, something that speaks very highly to his
character and his reputation. But along the way. As we
(04:53):
decided to explore the life of George Washington, we also
decided to not not to the basic origin story, life
and times and then death. We decided to look into
some of the strangest, weirdest things the average person might
not know about George Washington. And previously on the show,
(05:13):
nol you and I had answered back and forth about
the misconception surrounding Washington's teeth or his his his allegedly
wooden teeth seahorst teeth. It was straight seahorse teeth and
bringing it back, bring it back, no, but seriously, I mean,
that was a time where it was absolutely a thing
to have animal teeth as dentures. Also, I think the
(05:36):
episode in question was about using the teeth of fallen
soldiers um for dentures. And then we we we discovered
that seahorse teeth weren't actually the teeth of tiny, tiny
sea horses. That was just what they called hippopotamus as
they called them seahorses and Christopher, in case you missed
it now, straight seahorse teeth is one of our new catchphrase,
just like saying something's dope, super dope, straight sea horse teeth. Yeah, yeah, Okay,
(06:02):
you picked it up so quickly, super easy. Somehow it
sounds like it sounds better when you say it straight
sea horse teeth, straight, sea horse teeth. It's hard to say,
my friend, you could not do it. But no, that
just means if I, if I had, I would have
conjured like a little demon sea horse right here. That
would have messed up this studio. Something fierce, sort of
a homunculous type, a bit of a bit of a quister.
(06:26):
Please don't kidding, kidding, kidding, have you ever been present
for the quister? I feel like he's here right now, Sorry, listeners.
He usually is. He kind of does sort of that
ex ray sisty type thing, or he just sort of
clings to the ceiling in his head, rotates and looks
at us downward. It's a whole thing. He's kind of
the n essay of how stuff works. You know, he's
he's always around, but he would agree with us. I
(06:48):
hazard that George Washington is an amazing guy who lived
an astonishing life. We know the gist, Christopher. I think
you set it up quite nicely for us. George Shington
born February twenty second, seventeen thirty two passed away December fourteen,
seventeen ninety nine. But in that span of time he
(07:09):
lived quite a full life, and there are so many
facts about him. There's so many misconceptions he is. He
has moved from the realm of earthly creatures into the
world of myth in many ways. And we decided to
each find some lesser known aspects of George Washington's life
(07:32):
and times and share them with each other, and share
them with you listening today. When did you say his
birthday was been February twenty two? So apparently that in
and of itself is a misconception. Is that the case? Yeah,
according to this mental Philows article twenty five things you
might not have known about George Washington, his actual birthday
was February eleven. But that's that's a that's a calendar
(07:55):
thing we're talking here. This is true because it has
to do with the Gregorian calendar versus the Julian callend.
But it's just that, and I just thought that was fine.
That is, the man is shrouded in mystery. Calendars are
weird anyway, So you're right, the colony switched from the
Gregorian calendar to the Julian calendar, and his birthday was
moved eleven days. I wonder which of those answers is
(08:16):
the acceptable answer in a trivia game. That's a good question,
and it depends on the trivia host. And how how
deep into nartitude do you want to get? I was
about to put a call out to any trivia host
in the audience. Is there a code amongst trivia hosts
as to this kind of thing? How pedantic is too pedantic?
For some of the trivia games I've been to, It's
never too pedants And it depends on how much beer
(08:38):
you've had. So February eleventh, seventeen thirty one, but then
it changed to February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, and
actually also changed in terms of the year. And as
you said, Nold, this is just the beginning of the
of the historical mysteries surrounding George Washington. We learned some
(09:00):
fascinating quick, one off trivia things. You pointed out something
interesting about his name, Christopher. Yeah, George Washington. That's his name.
That's it, Noddle, what are you saying, no middle name,
just George. That's that's illegal. Just George. That's not It's
not okay, George Washington. What happened? What more do you need?
That's he made a state. You know, he's not Prince,
(09:22):
he's not Madonna, He's George Washington. This he's not George
Stephen Washington. This begs the question of when did the
middle name start? And why? Why? Is why people get
so hung up on the middle name because my reaction
there was very real and visceral, but now I'm questioning it.
You know, there is another president who had a middle
name made up. It was are we talking Truman situation here?
(09:47):
It was, Yeah, it was a fake middle initial. Right. Well,
there's there's some dispute about Harry S. Truman, a lot
of and again this kind of gets back to Noel's
favorite pedantic trivia folks. But you know, people will often
claim Harry S. Truman he did not have a period
after the S and his name, and that's the way
it is. And you know, it's the kind of people
who love to jump down your throat on the internet
(10:08):
and say like, well, technically, actually, actually those are our
people that they can be. But those you know, it
can be a little aggressive, It can be a little
off putting. If you are always looking to correct other
people and to shape the world into the way you
see it in my opinion. So, um, yeah, Harry S. Truman.
Sometimes he signed his name with a period after the S.
(10:29):
So again, it's one of those things that's not consistent,
and um left to the mysteries of the history and
just to stay in keeping with the pedantry of of
our of our people here. Uh. The middle name actually
began in the Middle Ages, and it had to do
with families not being able to decide whether to give
their kids a family name or a religious name, so
they were able to give them both. And it's different
(10:49):
in other cultures, right exactly. So not to focus too
much on on President Truman in our George Washington episode,
which we are endeavoring to count as our Washington State episode.
You know what, let's let's go. Let's give it a go.
Let's give it a go. I think we can. We
can always leave the door open to do another Washington episode.
(11:10):
But while we're filling out our fifty, I say, who's
gonna stop us? Oh, Chris So so Harry S. Truman,
According to the story, when he was born in eighteen
eighty four, his parents couldn't decide on a middle name,
so they went with the letter S to honor his
paternal grandfather and his maternal grandfather, a Ship and a Solomon, respectively.
(11:37):
When he took the presidential oath of office, the Chief
Justice Harlan F. Stone said, I Harry Ship Truman, and
the President replied, I Harry S. Truman. So we buttoned
that up. Well, does that mean he actually was never president?
As folks said about Obama when there was like a
little bit of a discrepancy during the swearing in, I
(11:59):
don't know, will be not because cable news did not exist.
On Twitter was not a thing, thankfully for Mr Harry Truman.
This is a good point you make. And now we
return to George Washington having solved the case of Harry S.
Truman's frankly fake presidency. Right, that's not a sweeping statement.
He had to make an appearance. He just couldn't couldn't
(12:21):
leave well enough alone. Harry S. Truman, He's the quister
of fo He's the quister of American president. Really really
is so, George Washington? Yeah, no, middle, I mean, is
there more behind the story or is that is that
where the story is there? Okay, and I'll leave you
with that, because that's what I know. I like it.
I like it, I like I like this mysterious air
(12:41):
we are we are creating in today's episode, but we
are not just going to present mysteries for the entirety
of the show. We do have some fascinating facts that
you may not have learned in your school years. Uh,
And I think that I think we're we're all on
(13:01):
the same page. But how do we want to start? Guys?
I thought we were. We were already off to the races. Well,
off to the races. Okay, yeah, let's was that your
first one. Christopher doesn't know that had nothing to do that.
We're just bantering. This is going to be a good one.
You guys to go first. I propose that Christopher goes
pretty here. I am alright, Well, we started off talking
(13:27):
about George Washington's birth, his birth date and the change
of that. So let's just fast forward, let's skip all
the rest, and let's go straight to the end of
his life. So yeah, no, I mean, he's not dead yet.
Twilight Year, He's almost dead. He's not dead yet. So
in George Washington leaves the presidency, what's he gonna do
with his life? He decides. There's an actual quote from
(13:49):
one of his biographers, George Washington when he leaves the presidency,
he wants his retirement to be quote more tranquil and
freer from cares end quote. Yeah, that sounds nice. It
was a chill, Yeah, more tranquil free or from cares.
And he's of course doing this on his palatial estate,
Mount Vernon, right, Yeah, Mount Vernon, which is uh, it's
south of where d C is now. It's on the
(14:10):
Virginia side of the Potomac River. It's his his estate
of tens of thousands of acres. And while there in
his in his final days he's retired, he has a
man managing the plantation, a Scottish immigrant named James Anderson.
Now this plantation manager had a background and a training
in distillation. He made booze. So Anderson suggests to Washington,
(14:33):
Hey Washington, Hey, George Washington, if you're gonna use the
full name, why not start making some booze. So we
almost had George Washington whiskey, and the country did for
a long time. So George Washington died in sin he'd
left the presidency in for the last couple two and
a half years of his life. He started a distillery
(14:53):
in Mount Vernon. It ended up being one of the
largest distilleries in the Americas at the time. By by
early which is the year he ended up dying, at
the end of that year, in December, they were producing
eleven thousand gallons of whiskey. Now, whiskey became really popular
because in the seventeen eighties and during the Revolutionary period,
(15:14):
rum was the drink of choice. Soldiers were given rations
of rum, sometimes whiskey, but essentially it became problematic importing
a lot of the sugarcane from the West Indies to
create rum. So this homegrown liquor whiskey became much more popular.
And um, yeah, there's a distillery right there that Washington ran.
His signature whiskey was made with six rye corn and
(15:36):
five percent barley. And wasn't it considered a non aged rye. Yeah,
it was just it was it was distilled and ready
to go. It didn't last years and years. Um. You
know a lot of the whiskeys you can buy now
in the Rise, they're aged in oak barrels. They're given us.
How it gets the color, Yeah, exactly. They're they're mature
over a long period of time they developed more flavor.
(15:58):
But um, no, I mean the stuff was distilled right
away and sold, So doesn't that mean it was almost
a little bit closer to something like moonshine or lightning
pretty much pretty much. Um, And it was sold, but
it wasn't bottled. It wasn't sold in cans or pouches
or anything like that. It was just packaged in barrels pouches. Yeah. Well,
I'm trying to think of how you could have like
a juice box exactly, like you know, one of those
(16:21):
little foil caprisson kind of things. Sure, it's the kind
of thing you could find it like the I don't know,
fire festival or something too soon. Yeah, it was just
sold in barrel straight straight to taverns. They would buy
a whole barrel of this of this whiskey. They didn't
just make whiskey though. They also made other kinds of
brandy on the side. There was a peach brandy and
(16:43):
apple brandy per simmon brandy, and they would also take
the leavings of that and make vinegar. They would take
all the grains that had fermented and feed those to
the pigs that lived on Mount Vernon, So it's a
sort of cyclical, sustainable, good way to use what you've grown.
Also wildly successful. In his final days, George Washington was
(17:03):
becoming one of the pre eminent whiskey barons in the
United States. The only thing that really derailed the company,
and one of the reasons why we don't have Washington
Whiskey as as a massive legacy institution in the country
today is he died in sev So after he died,
the distillery was passed to Martha, his wife's granddaughter and
her husband. But a fire in eighteen fourteen burned down
(17:26):
the distillery and that was pretty much the end of
the operation. So that that really put the final screw
in the tombstone. Nail in the coffin, screw screw in
the tombstone. It's more secure than a nail. It's one
of those ikea tombstones, I think, and now correct me
if I'm wrong in this, or maybe you have a
better timeline. But they're back at it again at Mount Vernon.
(17:47):
They are. They're back at it. Yeah, a couple of
years ago, within the last ten years, they reopened the
distillery at his historic home. I don't know if they're
using the exact same techniques and methods, but it's in
the same place. And yeah, the Washington distilleries up and running,
probably not going to give some of the other notable
names in the whiskey world today a run for their money,
but if you go visit Washington's historic Mountain Vernon, you
(18:11):
can definitely sample the whiskey. Come for the history, stay
for the whiskey. I thought you were going to say whiskery, whiskery.
I love pronouncing that hard age. According to Mountain Vernon
dot org um, you can buy a bottle of the
stuff for about ninety eight dollars, which, right, sh ain't
cheap um And they refer to the recipe as the
mash bill, which must have been the old timy way
of referring to this whiskey recipe. And it is um
(18:35):
using the same recipe that they found in the ledgers
from the original distillery. So great, I would love I
would love to take a road trip up there. I
think it would be a lot of fun if we
could buy not just a bottle, you know, because you
couldn't buy a bottle then, so they're being a little
a historical. I would just love to just load up
a barrel and bring it back to the office. Get
a whole barrel. That's what the studio is missing. This
would not be our first time sampling some tipple from
(18:59):
George Whiskey Power Washington. I believe we've mentioned on previous episodes.
A good friend of ours, our coworker, producer Alex Williams,
is known around how stuff works for making towards the
end of the year making an historically accurate version of
George Washington's famous eggnog, and just between us folks, that
(19:21):
stuff packs a punch. Oh man, it's boozy. And the
last little direction in the recipe the best part. It
says to let's set in cool place for several days
and taste frequently, as one does with just about anything
in your cool place. There you go. I think it
would startle most of us in the modern age to
travel back in time to the days of the founding
(19:43):
Fathers and see just how much and how often they drank.
It's insane. I would say, there was never a sober moment.
I'll point out though, that you know, we were talking
about George Washington's distillery and his recipes. Again, this was
a man who commanded an entire plantation, so he was
kind of up at the head. This wasn't Washington himself
sitting in there in the distilling room tinkering with a recipe,
(20:05):
coming up with what he most favored. This wasn't really
a passion project for him. It was a way for
him to make money at the end of his life
because he wasn't nearly as rich as some people may
have thought he was. He wrote to a nephew who
was asking him for money, Yeah, I'll give you this loan,
but I'm not made of money like most people think
I am. So this this was really a project of
James Anderson, the plantation manager, as well as six enslaved
(20:28):
Africans who were the ones doing the actual hard labor
of making this this distilled liquor getting none of the credit. No,
and uh, and we'll we'll get back to Washington's enslaved
staff soon. Yes, that's that's foreshadowing. Also, before we get
too into the disturbing facts of Washington's life, I have
a proposal for us on the show. Why don't we
(20:51):
hunt for a middle name for George Washington. In the
course of this episode, as we learned stuff, so right now.
We've got mash Bill, which I think is right. I'm
a fan of seahorse teeth. Seahorse teeth, I think that's great.
One word, yeah, okay. I also like whiskey pouch because
it makes them seems so disreputable. It's very good. Can
(21:12):
I can I suggest George George George Washington. That sounds
like an eighties singer. It's George George Washington. Uh yeah,
let's see, let's see what we find. These are all
some great contenders, but we are just setting off on
our weird Washington journey. What do you what do you think?
Do you have one? Do you want to go? Do
(21:33):
you want to flip? For sure? Okay, it's one to
three go. We've got Christopher is a witness? All right?
Ready go? No, does that mean you get to choose
what you do? Does that mean you gobih that? I think? Man?
I'd like you to go. Man, Okay, I have something
(21:55):
that is a bit strange but will be old beans
to people who also are fans of our other show stuff.
They don't want you to know. George Washington, you see,
had any number of extracurricular activities, one of which was freemasonry.
George Washington became a Master Mason in seventeen fifty three,
and ever since this has driven more fringe or conspiratorial
(22:19):
researchers further and further into the depths of speculation. He
was a young Virginia planter when he became a master
Mason in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Masonic Lodge number four. He was
only twenty one years old, and soon he would command
his first military operation as a major in the Virginia
(22:41):
Colonial Militia. We know, I think basically what freemasonry is.
It's evolved from the practices and rituals of Stonemason's guilds
in the Middle Ages, and it was still a powerful
force in America even and during the time of tension
(23:01):
in the later in the War for Independence against the
British Empire. The first American Masonic Lodge was founded in
Philadelphia in seventeen thirty and do you know who was
a founding member of that. It's pretty easy to guess,
Benny Franks. It is it is. It's the old Libertine himself.
(23:22):
So for a lot of people, this association would seem
to indicate that there's something at work behind the behind
the screen of history right that Freemasonry was involved in
the American Revolution, or that people were acting under orders
(23:42):
of the Masonic organization. But really, for George Washington, joining
the Mason's was a rite of passage, and it was
sort of an exercise of his civic responsibility. After he
became a master Mason again at the age of twenty one,
he had the option of passing through a number of
additional rights that would take him to higher degrees that
would place him higher in the hierarchy of Masonry. In
(24:05):
shortly before he became the first President of the US,
he was elected the first Worshipable Master of Alexandria Lodge
number twenty two. And he was not alone in this,
as we pointed out, Benjamin Franklin was also a Mason.
As where Paul Revere, John Hancock, the Marquis de Lafayette
(24:26):
of the Hamilton's musical fame, and the Boston Tea Party,
saboteurs and Masonic rights were in play. They were witnessed
events like Washington's inauguration, the laying of the cornerstone of
the US Capitol Building in Washington, d C. D C.
Again is a city supposedly designed with a lot of
Masonic symbols in mind. You have to admit the Washington
(24:48):
Monument it's pretty abstract, you know what I mean. He
definitely looms large in the horizon in a very sinister way.
If you're walking around on the mall at night, it
kind of gives me the creeps. To be honest, I
the whole idea of conspiracy and the Masonic lodge and
all that, it's it doesn't really take into account the
reality of the situation at the time. It's now in
(25:09):
the two thousands. It's easy to look back and think,
oh my gosh, all these people knew each other, they
were all part of the same organization. Everything ties into everything.
But the reality is the population of the colonies at
the time was so small compared to what what we
have today, right, So, I mean, essentially you're talking about
a population in terms of the landowners and the white
(25:30):
European immigrants or settlers. We're talking tens of thousands, hundreds
of thousands of people. Essentially. These are small towns or
small cities, so everyone's going to know everyone, especially if
you're near the top of the the upper echelon of society.
It's not quite as nefarious cabal creating as it sounds,
absolutely not. That's that's the thing. In many ways, it's
(25:51):
a social club. These people are sharing their interests, and
do they talk about things that they want to do,
like do they talk about political goals or business ideas?
Of course they do, because that's what friends do when
they hang out with each other, you know, they talk
about the things they care about and the things that
they're working on. I enjoy this theory, and I especially
(26:14):
appreciate Christopher, you're pointing out that it's easy for us
to look back in retrospect and perhaps see patterns where
none actually exist. You know what I mean. A lot
of history is coincidence. The human species is not chock
full of amazing planners with very complicated schemes. Now, everything
(26:35):
in the past looks like it unfolded in a way
that it was meant to and in a way that
made sense. But that's because that's the way we know
how things unfolded. There are innumerable other ways things could
have happened, and other paths history could have taken that
if we travel down those timelines, would make this one
look particularly ridiculous or strange. The guys you're completely overlooking
(26:56):
the blood magic rituals to molok Oh, I mean they
did on the regular. Yeah, but that's I mean I
think that I thought we were talking about the one
that I was going to do later. I didn't mean
to blow up yall. Spot you guys are coming right well.
I didn't get an invite. I brought snacks. I love
a good snack. I mean, come for the mallock, stay
for the snacks. One last thing about freemasonry and George
(27:21):
Washington in d C. I have such a fun time
imagining the pitch meeting for building the Washington Monument and say, okay,
we think he's the greatest president, we think he's the
first president. We need something that really says this man
the first president. And you know, they go back and
(27:41):
forth and someone says, well, maybe a statue of the guy.
And they go, uh, I like the idea of something
like a big structure. Okay, okay, maybe like he's on
a horse or as you like to say, Ben, No,
let's get weird with it. That's exactly it. Yeah, they said,
let's get let's get weird with it. Have you guys
heard of like obelisk? And then you mean obelisks like
(28:04):
a dude like in Egypt right on, and that was history.
I am mostly kidding because if you look into the
story of the Washington Monument, which could be its own episode,
they had much more ambitious plans, and what we see
today is essentially a compromise in scaling down. Again, the
story of our nation and the story of our history
(28:26):
is compromises, half baked plans that in retrospect look like
what should have happened, but in reality we're just thrown
together at the time with no real idea of what
ramifications would come to pass decades down the line. I mean,
look at anything involving well, we don't need to get
into health insurance and tax law and all sorts of
compromises made in Congress. But yeah, we we are just
(28:49):
a collection of mistakes and bumbles through through the years,
some of which have incredible staying power. Yes, very much.
So much like a monument itself to our first president,
I would argue, maybe they just want were like, how
are we going to remind people that he was the
first president? Let's this This looks like a big number
one number one, So let's reset just a second here,
(29:16):
because it occurs to me that we may be well
on the way to making something that sounds like a
hit piece on George Washington. Because he's a whiskey tycoon,
he's a freemason, he's a slave owner. He's a slave owner. Yeah,
we can't forget that part. But it wasn't it wasn't
all complicated, weird, problematic stuff he had. He had some
(29:37):
other notable wins. And I don't think being a whiskey
tycoon is that bad. I have nothing wrong with that.
I think was a slave labor I think that while
there's me. Yeah, and it's also one of those things
where it's I can't even fall behind the whole. It
was just that everyone was doing it. It It was it
was a different time. I mean, the thing is he
he also was a pretty forward thinking individual in so
(29:59):
many ways. In fact, he was so influential in creating
the structure that is very much still a part of
our military today that he was posthumously given this title
um the General of the Armies of the United States,
that is forever un out rankable. Yeah, it's total, total
god mode. You know, you can't let's say they create
seven star generals, eight star generals, nine star generals in
(30:21):
the next couple of years, those still will be underneath Washington.
Kind of similar in some ways to the eternal President
of the d p R K. Kim Il Sung, but
we didn't call him internal president. We just called him
General of everything. Yeah, and I think it's important to
remember about Washington that and and most of the men
back then, this was the first time they were doing that.
(30:44):
He was setting the precedent for the president, the presidential
precedent exactly. And so yeah, he the way he acted,
the choices he made, the statements he put forth, they
set the stage for what we've had, what we've had
over the past several hundred years leading up to today.
It's important to keep in mind that anyone who's given
that sort of authority carries weight. They embody what a
(31:07):
country is moving forward. And that actually played into some
of the misconceptions about Washington because his biographers said, we
we don't need just a man, we need a myth.
So we're going to invent this whole thing about the
cherry tree. We're gonna make up some stories to make
him larger than life. Biographer Weems, biographer Slash mythologize absolutely
(31:29):
and and just blatantly, like made it up, not not
fudged it a little bit. Some of the stuff was
just made up to make him larger than life. Oh absolutely,
I mean, and I honestly, very very frequently confused the
myth of the cherry tree with Abe Lincoln because if
everyone called him honest Abe, so I sometimes conflate those
stories because he also was a very larger than my figure,
(31:51):
who grew up poor and in kind of more of
a rural setting. And he's also similar to Washington. He
has a real underdog story because Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for office.
That's multiple times, you know, so people love to see
some perseverance. Oh man, we're I think we're doing pretty
well here so far. We've got we're drawing in Truman,
(32:13):
we're drawing in Lincoln. Well, remember earlier, Christopher, when you're
talking about how the United States was sort of a
agglomeration of half baked ideas. I look forward to the
emails speaking of half baked ideas. Washington smoked a lot
of weed. No, that's not true, but he grew a
lot of hemp. That is true. That part is true.
(32:33):
I was waiting for that. I needed to do that
call back. I had to do it. Thank you for
supplying me with that never true. Um. Hemp was one
of his main cash crops well before he got into
the whiskey trade. On Mount Vernon, Um he grew copious
amounts of hemp, which is marijuana, but it is a
(32:53):
slightly different strain of marijuana. Doesn't contain the psychoactive substance
th HC or it's very very very low tetra hydra
cannabin alls um. And it was used historically for making ropes.
It was a fantastic fiber used the stem that had
these uh. They grew it so it would have these
(33:13):
elongated strands, these fibers in the stems um as opposed
to the plants that were grown to smoke, or you
would think of the ones that are grown today to
smoke are much shorter, less hardy plants. Um. They look
a little more like little bushes. But he grew fields
of this stuff in an area on Mountain Vernon that
he called the Muddy Hole, the Muddy Hole, and it
(33:37):
was because it was a very uh sought after substance,
because it was used to make They even referred to
ropes in those days as hemps. They call them like
sailing hemps, like for what all the riggings in various
types of vessels, and he um would have continued to
grow it if he hadn't have done some kind of
shrewd calculations and realized that actually, wheat is probably a
(34:00):
more profitable crop to um use his land for. But yeah,
he he grew it for quite some time. And as
it turns out, in the very same way that Mountain
Vernon is now back to distilling whiskey Mashville. Um, they're
also now growing hemp. Yeahs of two thousand eighteen, right, right,
(34:20):
they harvested their first hemp crop in centuries, I believe.
And the interesting thing is is that hemp, even though
it doesn't contain very high levels of the psychoactive substance
at all, were outlawed and made a Schedule one drug
right alongside um. They more you know, trippy counterparts. UM,
(34:42):
So growing hemp was outlawed. But it's not the same thing, right,
I Mean, they're there, these plants are cousins, they're related.
But that's like if you had prohibition of alcohol and
all of a sudden you couldn't serve cough syrup at
a drug store, right because just because it has a
little bit of alcohol in it. We're kind of on
the same thing, like like people are over re thing
and and bunching things together, very very very similar. But
(35:03):
if you look at a field of hemp, it looks
like a field of marijuana players. I mean, they're very
very similar. And in fact, so what I was what
I was getting to is in there was a farm
bill that passed that allowed UM research for growing hemp,
and some states have legalized essentially limited hemp farming, and
another bill that passed in the Senate was going to
(35:27):
allow for full legalization. I don't know if that one
has has gone through yet or not. I don't have
to do a little more follow up on that, but
the point is you can get UM. There's another substance
of compound that's in marijuana and hemp. It's called cb D,
which you may have read a lot of research about
people use it for anxiety. It can treat a lot
of different ailments and just kind of has become a
(35:49):
very popular UM kind of remedy that people are using,
and it is legal in states where marijuana is not
legal because you can get it from hemp. It's pretty
interesting UM but Yeah. Now there's no evidence. A lot
of other Founding fathers grew have to, like John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson, um, but there is no evidence showing
that any of them ever tried to smoke. Yeah, it's
(36:09):
it's a useful crop, and it's a It might be
a disappointment to your stoner buddy out there who's saying, oh,
Washington and the Founding Fathers had hemp, we need to
legalize everything. It's not quite the same thing, but it
does argue for nuance, It argues for understanding the uses
of plants and that uh that anyone plant or one
species can have different applications. Well said. And also just
(36:34):
a soft historical note there. I don't believe any form
of cannabis was actually scheduled one until the nineteen seventies,
so it's relatively recent, right, Yeah. And I mean we
are definitely in a ce change of legalization sweeping the
nation right now, which is pretty fascinating time to be
around with so many of these changes coming so quickly. Um.
There's actually a pretty quick great quote in this article
(36:56):
for the Smithsonian that talks about the first hemp crop
um being harvested at Mount Vernon recently from this fellow
by the name of John Hudak. He says, I think
where we're at right now is a situation in which
finally a lot of members of Congress and finally stopped
buying drug war era rhetoric, stopped thinking about the cannabis
plant in a very uniform way. So very much sad
(37:16):
supports your point, Christopher, and fascinating For all of our
listeners outside of the US and my friends who live
in different countries, it's it's a weird process to explain
to them that you can be arrested for one thing
in one state and it's completely fine in another, and
you can hop a flight for a few hours and
(37:38):
being a place where you're in the same country, but
the laws are completely different. And I kind of have
a feeling that old George Washington might have had issues
with prohibition of any kind, you know, being that he
liked his whiskey and he liked his hamp and you know,
it seemed like a you know, civil liberties kind of fellow.
You know, I don't know, I wonder what he would
have to say as long as it applied to white landowners. Well, okay,
(37:59):
that's fair. It was a different time. Yeah, And and
there there is historical record of of Washington complaining about
soldiers who were drunkards, who consumed too much, who over indulged.
And that's been argued by some that Washington was a
little more uptight than you might be led to believe.
But to me, in reading what he actually said and wrote,
it looks more like he was against the over indulgence,
(38:20):
not the actual substance itself. He didn't assign a moral
value to alcohol or to whatever might have been smoked.
You know what else he wasn't was evangelical. He was
actually very a religious He was a very moral man
and had a real code that he lived by. But
he was not a strict adherent to any form of religion.
That has been made clear in the record which he had.
(38:42):
He had these sorts of beliefs placing rational morality over
spiritually motivated morality, in common with some other Founding fathers
like Jefferson and his famous Jefferson Bible, where he really
he removes everything that he thought was remotely supernatural, which
is story for another day. Okay, so we we've painted
(39:05):
uh pretty in depth picture right now, and just to
just to recap. We've got a whiskey tycoon who is
also a freemason who is also a hemp farmer. Hemp tycoon?
Is that fair? It seems like he was testing in
a little bit more and then he kind of like
switched over to grain um. But I don't know. He
(39:26):
definitely made some money. And it turns out to that
the it became a very profitable export because the Brits
really relied on it. They were actually growing in a
lot when the colonies were still under British control and
they relied on that from them. So when they split,
they turned it into much more of a business like exchange.
(39:46):
So hang on, guys, hang on, Casey, could we get
a like a game show out of time sound effect? Perfect?
What's going on? Well, it turns out, Christopher, that we
have made a game time decision. We are unning low
on times. We want to give this topic the justice
it deserves, which means that we are in for a
(40:07):
spontaneous two partter. What do you guys say, Oh my gosh,
I love it when you actually decide it's going to
be a two partner in real time as opposed to postmortem.
You know, Wait, Ben, what's going on. It sounds like
you've just got to get out of here. You don't
want to hang out with us for another couple of
hours and talk about George Washington. I I do, I do,
and through the magic of editing, will do that in
a later episode. Okay, okay, okay, because as we know
(40:30):
in the podcast world, time is but an illusion, a
flat circle. Indeed, we've actually been here in the studio
for about twelve hours talking about George Washington has always
been here here. We are check in anytime you like,
but you can never leave. We're kidding. This will mark
the end of part one of our George Washington and
Washington State episode technically, but this will not mark the
(40:53):
end of the show. Please tune in for our next episode,
when we explore even more strange of secure facts about
the first president of the United States. In the meantime,
you can say hello to Casey, Noel, Christopher and myself
on Instagram. You can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Twitter. Hit us up with your favorite
strange historical facts, and if you want to hang out
(41:15):
with our favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners,
visit us on our community page. Ridiculous historians on Facebook.
If you want a little tiny peek into our relatively
run of the mill lives, but you know, we do
some cool things every now and then, you can check
me out at embryonic Inside on Instagram, and I am
at Ben Bullen on Instagram molock free photo content. So far,
(41:37):
it's good to know. Until the next episode comes out,
I'm just gonna be sitting here pulling dollar bills out
of my wallet, very very few dollar bills, two money bags,
just staring at George, staring at George. Wanted to talk
about him with you guys again soon. I can't wait.
Do you have any plugs you'd like to plug? I
do have some plugs. If you want to find me
on Instagram, I'm at Haciotis. That's h A S. S
I O T I S. And we all hang out
(41:58):
on the Ridiculous of his story and Facebook page. We'll
be there too. In the meantime. We would like to think,
of course, our super producer, Casey Pegram, would like to
thank Alex Williams, who composed our track. We'd like to
thank our pal Gabe who helps us out with research,
and of course you'd like to thank Christopher Haciota is
our incredible guest uh and lifelong pal. No, thank you, Casey.
Thanks and if one of you guys would thank what's
(42:19):
his name over here for me, I'd appreciate it. We'll
see you next time.
Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
My name is Ben, my name is no. This is
an interesting kind of tradition, more traditional way to start
the show. You threw me for a loop there, Yeah,
I it took it hard. Somebody somebody remembered you. Guys
on the internet recently referred to me as what's his name?
(00:43):
So I'm gonna try to just play it straight lace
for a little while. Ben. Did they steal your thunder
Have they robbed you of your mojo? I don't know.
I don't want to feel thunderless. How are we going
to get your groove back? Well, we're going to rely
on the help of our super producer, Casey Pegram as always,
and that sound always gets my groove right up. So
we have a pretty fascinating show for you today, folks,
(01:07):
because it came about through a somewhat circuitous fashion. And
who better to help us explain the story of how
we got to this episode for today than our returning
special guest friends and neighbors Christopher Haciotis Hey everybody, Hey Casey, Hey,
no a, what's your name? Too soon? Yeah? Come on,
(01:30):
We've got a nurture band do we we do? Okay,
very contract. This is a safe space, yes, Bishop, container
is a is a safe space. Fine. Fine. So we
love having you on the show, Christopher, and we always
have a bang up time whenever you bless us with
some historical knowledge. But in our conversations off air, the
(01:52):
four of us were, you know, we were kicking around
ideas what should we explore on air today? And you
recently were turned from a trip to Washington. Yeah, that's
Washington state. I was out in Seattle for podcom Too,
which is a podcast convention, podcast conference, so kind of
diving into the weird, strange growing world of podcasting. Headed
(02:15):
out there was a very sort of d i y scene. Um,
a lot of great creators, a lot of great podcasters.
Aaron Manky, who's got some shows over here on our network,
he was out there, and um, it was my first
time in Seattle. And I know you've got your goal
of doing a show about every state. So I don't
know if this really counts that I was in Washington
and we're gonna talk about what we're gonna talk about.
(02:37):
I don't know that accounts for Washington, but that's up
to you. I don't make your rules. I just sit
in the back and judge from a distance. Um. But yeah,
we were out there and and that trip to Seattle
to Washington State made me think, Hey, what's this place
named after? It's named after a guy. Did you have
a guess? You know, it wasn't named after an apple. Okay,
(03:00):
wasn't named after a city on the other side of
the nation. And it wasn't named after George Washington Carver.
It wasn't President Numerouno George Washington himself. Yeah, I thought
there's a there's a lot of cool stuff that we
can talk about when it comes to George Washington. He's
a you know, revered statesman, our first president, a general,
(03:21):
super military commander. Um. You may know him for his
fake teeth, his cherry tree. We can get into all
of that. And whether that actually happened. Quite a snappy dresser,
well weren't. Weren't they all sure he had a particularly
I mean during their paintings, they did exactly know what
they wore on a regular Thursday. Yeah, I mean the paintings,
(03:43):
the things that are on the dollar bill, that's essentially
like the Instagram of the time. It's what they wanted
to put forth. You know, you can be looking at
someone's Instagram feed and they're happy, they're with their significant other,
and you have no idea that they're going through financial
troubles and dealing with a mortgage and they're about to
break up. Looks like the life is so I think
it's just got real. Not not speaking from personal experience here,
(04:06):
but um, yeah, so maybe. Uh. You know, that's one
of the nice things about paintings. You can put the
best foot forward. You can work a lot of symbolism
into it. Um, all of a sudden, we're talking, aren't theory.
But let's let's get back to George. Yeah, let's get
back to George. One thing I want to mention that
I think is a very classy aspect of his character.
He refused to become king. Right. There were proposals early
(04:30):
on in the days of the founding of the nation,
and people said, George, you're great, and he's like, I'll
stop keep going, stop, no, keep going, And they said
you should be king and he said, nah, I guys
were kind of missing the point. And that is, in
my opinion, uh, something that speaks very highly to his
character and his reputation. But along the way. As we
(04:53):
decided to explore the life of George Washington, we also
decided to not not to the basic origin story, life
and times and then death. We decided to look into
some of the strangest, weirdest things the average person might
not know about George Washington. And previously on the show,
(05:13):
nol you and I had answered back and forth about
the misconception surrounding Washington's teeth or his his his allegedly
wooden teeth seahorst teeth. It was straight seahorse teeth and
bringing it back, bring it back, no, but seriously, I mean,
that was a time where it was absolutely a thing
to have animal teeth as dentures. Also, I think the
(05:36):
episode in question was about using the teeth of fallen
soldiers um for dentures. And then we we we discovered
that seahorse teeth weren't actually the teeth of tiny, tiny
sea horses. That was just what they called hippopotamus as
they called them seahorses and Christopher, in case you missed
it now, straight seahorse teeth is one of our new catchphrase,
just like saying something's dope, super dope, straight sea horse teeth. Yeah, yeah, Okay,
(06:02):
you picked it up so quickly, super easy. Somehow it
sounds like it sounds better when you say it straight
sea horse teeth, straight, sea horse teeth. It's hard to say,
my friend, you could not do it. But no, that
just means if I, if I had, I would have
conjured like a little demon sea horse right here. That
would have messed up this studio. Something fierce, sort of
a homunculous type, a bit of a bit of a quister.
(06:26):
Please don't kidding, kidding, kidding, have you ever been present
for the quister? I feel like he's here right now, Sorry, listeners.
He usually is. He kind of does sort of that
ex ray sisty type thing, or he just sort of
clings to the ceiling in his head, rotates and looks
at us downward. It's a whole thing. He's kind of
the n essay of how stuff works. You know, he's
he's always around, but he would agree with us. I
(06:48):
hazard that George Washington is an amazing guy who lived
an astonishing life. We know the gist, Christopher. I think
you set it up quite nicely for us. George Shington
born February twenty second, seventeen thirty two passed away December fourteen,
seventeen ninety nine. But in that span of time he
(07:09):
lived quite a full life, and there are so many
facts about him. There's so many misconceptions he is. He
has moved from the realm of earthly creatures into the
world of myth in many ways. And we decided to
each find some lesser known aspects of George Washington's life
(07:32):
and times and share them with each other, and share
them with you listening today. When did you say his
birthday was been February twenty two? So apparently that in
and of itself is a misconception. Is that the case? Yeah,
according to this mental Philows article twenty five things you
might not have known about George Washington, his actual birthday
was February eleven. But that's that's a that's a calendar
(07:55):
thing we're talking here. This is true because it has
to do with the Gregorian calendar versus the Julian callend.
But it's just that, and I just thought that was fine.
That is, the man is shrouded in mystery. Calendars are
weird anyway, So you're right, the colony switched from the
Gregorian calendar to the Julian calendar, and his birthday was
moved eleven days. I wonder which of those answers is
(08:16):
the acceptable answer in a trivia game. That's a good question,
and it depends on the trivia host. And how how
deep into nartitude do you want to get? I was
about to put a call out to any trivia host
in the audience. Is there a code amongst trivia hosts
as to this kind of thing? How pedantic is too pedantic?
For some of the trivia games I've been to, It's
never too pedants And it depends on how much beer
(08:38):
you've had. So February eleventh, seventeen thirty one, but then
it changed to February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, and
actually also changed in terms of the year. And as
you said, Nold, this is just the beginning of the
of the historical mysteries surrounding George Washington. We learned some
(09:00):
fascinating quick, one off trivia things. You pointed out something
interesting about his name, Christopher. Yeah, George Washington. That's his name.
That's it, Noddle, what are you saying, no middle name,
just George. That's that's illegal. Just George. That's not It's
not okay, George Washington. What happened? What more do you need?
That's he made a state. You know, he's not Prince,
(09:22):
he's not Madonna, He's George Washington. This he's not George
Stephen Washington. This begs the question of when did the
middle name start? And why? Why? Is why people get
so hung up on the middle name because my reaction
there was very real and visceral, but now I'm questioning it.
You know, there is another president who had a middle
name made up. It was are we talking Truman situation here?
(09:47):
It was, Yeah, it was a fake middle initial. Right. Well,
there's there's some dispute about Harry S. Truman, a lot
of and again this kind of gets back to Noel's
favorite pedantic trivia folks. But you know, people will often
claim Harry S. Truman he did not have a period
after the S and his name, and that's the way
it is. And you know, it's the kind of people
who love to jump down your throat on the internet
(10:08):
and say like, well, technically, actually, actually those are our
people that they can be. But those you know, it
can be a little aggressive, It can be a little
off putting. If you are always looking to correct other
people and to shape the world into the way you
see it in my opinion. So, um, yeah, Harry S. Truman.
Sometimes he signed his name with a period after the S.
(10:29):
So again, it's one of those things that's not consistent,
and um left to the mysteries of the history and
just to stay in keeping with the pedantry of of
our of our people here. Uh. The middle name actually
began in the Middle Ages, and it had to do
with families not being able to decide whether to give
their kids a family name or a religious name, so
they were able to give them both. And it's different
(10:49):
in other cultures, right exactly. So not to focus too
much on on President Truman in our George Washington episode,
which we are endeavoring to count as our Washington State episode.
You know what, let's let's go. Let's give it a go.
Let's give it a go. I think we can. We
can always leave the door open to do another Washington episode.
(11:10):
But while we're filling out our fifty, I say, who's
gonna stop us? Oh, Chris So so Harry S. Truman,
According to the story, when he was born in eighteen
eighty four, his parents couldn't decide on a middle name,
so they went with the letter S to honor his
paternal grandfather and his maternal grandfather, a Ship and a Solomon, respectively.
(11:37):
When he took the presidential oath of office, the Chief
Justice Harlan F. Stone said, I Harry Ship Truman, and
the President replied, I Harry S. Truman. So we buttoned
that up. Well, does that mean he actually was never president?
As folks said about Obama when there was like a
little bit of a discrepancy during the swearing in, I
(11:59):
don't know, will be not because cable news did not exist.
On Twitter was not a thing, thankfully for Mr Harry Truman.
This is a good point you make. And now we
return to George Washington having solved the case of Harry S.
Truman's frankly fake presidency. Right, that's not a sweeping statement.
He had to make an appearance. He just couldn't couldn't
(12:21):
leave well enough alone. Harry S. Truman, He's the quister
of fo He's the quister of American president. Really really
is so, George Washington? Yeah, no, middle, I mean, is
there more behind the story or is that is that
where the story is there? Okay, and I'll leave you
with that, because that's what I know. I like it.
I like it, I like I like this mysterious air
(12:41):
we are we are creating in today's episode, but we
are not just going to present mysteries for the entirety
of the show. We do have some fascinating facts that
you may not have learned in your school years. Uh,
And I think that I think we're we're all on
(13:01):
the same page. But how do we want to start? Guys?
I thought we were. We were already off to the races. Well,
off to the races. Okay, yeah, let's was that your
first one. Christopher doesn't know that had nothing to do that.
We're just bantering. This is going to be a good one.
You guys to go first. I propose that Christopher goes
pretty here. I am alright, Well, we started off talking
(13:27):
about George Washington's birth, his birth date and the change
of that. So let's just fast forward, let's skip all
the rest, and let's go straight to the end of
his life. So yeah, no, I mean, he's not dead yet.
Twilight Year, He's almost dead. He's not dead yet. So
in George Washington leaves the presidency, what's he gonna do
with his life? He decides. There's an actual quote from
(13:49):
one of his biographers, George Washington when he leaves the presidency,
he wants his retirement to be quote more tranquil and
freer from cares end quote. Yeah, that sounds nice. It
was a chill, Yeah, more tranquil free or from cares.
And he's of course doing this on his palatial estate,
Mount Vernon, right, Yeah, Mount Vernon, which is uh, it's
south of where d C is now. It's on the
(14:10):
Virginia side of the Potomac River. It's his his estate
of tens of thousands of acres. And while there in
his in his final days he's retired, he has a
man managing the plantation, a Scottish immigrant named James Anderson.
Now this plantation manager had a background and a training
in distillation. He made booze. So Anderson suggests to Washington,
(14:33):
Hey Washington, Hey, George Washington, if you're gonna use the
full name, why not start making some booze. So we
almost had George Washington whiskey, and the country did for
a long time. So George Washington died in sin he'd
left the presidency in for the last couple two and
a half years of his life. He started a distillery
(14:53):
in Mount Vernon. It ended up being one of the
largest distilleries in the Americas at the time. By by
early which is the year he ended up dying, at
the end of that year, in December, they were producing
eleven thousand gallons of whiskey. Now, whiskey became really popular
because in the seventeen eighties and during the Revolutionary period,
(15:14):
rum was the drink of choice. Soldiers were given rations
of rum, sometimes whiskey, but essentially it became problematic importing
a lot of the sugarcane from the West Indies to
create rum. So this homegrown liquor whiskey became much more popular.
And um, yeah, there's a distillery right there that Washington ran.
His signature whiskey was made with six rye corn and
(15:36):
five percent barley. And wasn't it considered a non aged rye. Yeah,
it was just it was it was distilled and ready
to go. It didn't last years and years. Um. You
know a lot of the whiskeys you can buy now
in the Rise, they're aged in oak barrels. They're given us.
How it gets the color, Yeah, exactly. They're they're mature
over a long period of time they developed more flavor.
(15:58):
But um, no, I mean the stuff was distilled right
away and sold, So doesn't that mean it was almost
a little bit closer to something like moonshine or lightning
pretty much pretty much. Um, And it was sold, but
it wasn't bottled. It wasn't sold in cans or pouches
or anything like that. It was just packaged in barrels pouches. Yeah. Well,
I'm trying to think of how you could have like
a juice box exactly, like you know, one of those
(16:21):
little foil caprisson kind of things. Sure, it's the kind
of thing you could find it like the I don't know,
fire festival or something too soon. Yeah, it was just
sold in barrel straight straight to taverns. They would buy
a whole barrel of this of this whiskey. They didn't
just make whiskey though. They also made other kinds of
brandy on the side. There was a peach brandy and
(16:43):
apple brandy per simmon brandy, and they would also take
the leavings of that and make vinegar. They would take
all the grains that had fermented and feed those to
the pigs that lived on Mount Vernon, So it's a
sort of cyclical, sustainable, good way to use what you've grown.
Also wildly successful. In his final days, George Washington was
(17:03):
becoming one of the pre eminent whiskey barons in the
United States. The only thing that really derailed the company,
and one of the reasons why we don't have Washington
Whiskey as as a massive legacy institution in the country
today is he died in sev So after he died,
the distillery was passed to Martha, his wife's granddaughter and
her husband. But a fire in eighteen fourteen burned down
(17:26):
the distillery and that was pretty much the end of
the operation. So that that really put the final screw
in the tombstone. Nail in the coffin, screw screw in
the tombstone. It's more secure than a nail. It's one
of those ikea tombstones, I think, and now correct me
if I'm wrong in this, or maybe you have a
better timeline. But they're back at it again at Mount Vernon.
(17:47):
They are. They're back at it. Yeah, a couple of
years ago, within the last ten years, they reopened the
distillery at his historic home. I don't know if they're
using the exact same techniques and methods, but it's in
the same place. And yeah, the Washington distilleries up and running,
probably not going to give some of the other notable
names in the whiskey world today a run for their money,
but if you go visit Washington's historic Mountain Vernon, you
(18:11):
can definitely sample the whiskey. Come for the history, stay
for the whiskey. I thought you were going to say whiskery, whiskery.
I love pronouncing that hard age. According to Mountain Vernon
dot org um, you can buy a bottle of the
stuff for about ninety eight dollars, which, right, sh ain't
cheap um And they refer to the recipe as the
mash bill, which must have been the old timy way
of referring to this whiskey recipe. And it is um
(18:35):
using the same recipe that they found in the ledgers
from the original distillery. So great, I would love I
would love to take a road trip up there. I
think it would be a lot of fun if we
could buy not just a bottle, you know, because you
couldn't buy a bottle then, so they're being a little
a historical. I would just love to just load up
a barrel and bring it back to the office. Get
a whole barrel. That's what the studio is missing. This
would not be our first time sampling some tipple from
(18:59):
George Whiskey Power Washington. I believe we've mentioned on previous episodes.
A good friend of ours, our coworker, producer Alex Williams,
is known around how stuff works for making towards the
end of the year making an historically accurate version of
George Washington's famous eggnog, and just between us folks, that
(19:21):
stuff packs a punch. Oh man, it's boozy. And the
last little direction in the recipe the best part. It
says to let's set in cool place for several days
and taste frequently, as one does with just about anything
in your cool place. There you go. I think it
would startle most of us in the modern age to
travel back in time to the days of the founding
(19:43):
Fathers and see just how much and how often they drank.
It's insane. I would say, there was never a sober moment.
I'll point out though, that you know, we were talking
about George Washington's distillery and his recipes. Again, this was
a man who commanded an entire plantation, so he was
kind of up at the head. This wasn't Washington himself
sitting in there in the distilling room tinkering with a recipe,
(20:05):
coming up with what he most favored. This wasn't really
a passion project for him. It was a way for
him to make money at the end of his life
because he wasn't nearly as rich as some people may
have thought he was. He wrote to a nephew who
was asking him for money, Yeah, I'll give you this loan,
but I'm not made of money like most people think
I am. So this this was really a project of
James Anderson, the plantation manager, as well as six enslaved
(20:28):
Africans who were the ones doing the actual hard labor
of making this this distilled liquor getting none of the credit. No,
and uh, and we'll we'll get back to Washington's enslaved
staff soon. Yes, that's that's foreshadowing. Also, before we get
too into the disturbing facts of Washington's life, I have
a proposal for us on the show. Why don't we
(20:51):
hunt for a middle name for George Washington. In the
course of this episode, as we learned stuff, so right now.
We've got mash Bill, which I think is right. I'm
a fan of seahorse teeth. Seahorse teeth, I think that's great.
One word, yeah, okay. I also like whiskey pouch because
it makes them seems so disreputable. It's very good. Can
(21:12):
I can I suggest George George George Washington. That sounds
like an eighties singer. It's George George Washington. Uh yeah,
let's see, let's see what we find. These are all
some great contenders, but we are just setting off on
our weird Washington journey. What do you what do you think?
Do you have one? Do you want to go? Do
(21:33):
you want to flip? For sure? Okay, it's one to
three go. We've got Christopher is a witness? All right?
Ready go? No, does that mean you get to choose
what you do? Does that mean you gobih that? I think? Man?
I'd like you to go. Man, Okay, I have something
(21:55):
that is a bit strange but will be old beans
to people who also are fans of our other show stuff.
They don't want you to know. George Washington, you see,
had any number of extracurricular activities, one of which was freemasonry.
George Washington became a Master Mason in seventeen fifty three,
and ever since this has driven more fringe or conspiratorial
(22:19):
researchers further and further into the depths of speculation. He
was a young Virginia planter when he became a master
Mason in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Masonic Lodge number four. He was
only twenty one years old, and soon he would command
his first military operation as a major in the Virginia
(22:41):
Colonial Militia. We know, I think basically what freemasonry is.
It's evolved from the practices and rituals of Stonemason's guilds
in the Middle Ages, and it was still a powerful
force in America even and during the time of tension
(23:01):
in the later in the War for Independence against the
British Empire. The first American Masonic Lodge was founded in
Philadelphia in seventeen thirty and do you know who was
a founding member of that. It's pretty easy to guess,
Benny Franks. It is it is. It's the old Libertine himself.
(23:22):
So for a lot of people, this association would seem
to indicate that there's something at work behind the behind
the screen of history right that Freemasonry was involved in
the American Revolution, or that people were acting under orders
(23:42):
of the Masonic organization. But really, for George Washington, joining
the Mason's was a rite of passage, and it was
sort of an exercise of his civic responsibility. After he
became a master Mason again at the age of twenty one,
he had the option of passing through a number of
additional rights that would take him to higher degrees that
would place him higher in the hierarchy of Masonry. In
(24:05):
shortly before he became the first President of the US,
he was elected the first Worshipable Master of Alexandria Lodge
number twenty two. And he was not alone in this,
as we pointed out, Benjamin Franklin was also a Mason.
As where Paul Revere, John Hancock, the Marquis de Lafayette
(24:26):
of the Hamilton's musical fame, and the Boston Tea Party,
saboteurs and Masonic rights were in play. They were witnessed
events like Washington's inauguration, the laying of the cornerstone of
the US Capitol Building in Washington, d C. D C.
Again is a city supposedly designed with a lot of
Masonic symbols in mind. You have to admit the Washington
(24:48):
Monument it's pretty abstract, you know what I mean. He
definitely looms large in the horizon in a very sinister way.
If you're walking around on the mall at night, it
kind of gives me the creeps. To be honest, I
the whole idea of conspiracy and the Masonic lodge and
all that, it's it doesn't really take into account the
reality of the situation at the time. It's now in
(25:09):
the two thousands. It's easy to look back and think,
oh my gosh, all these people knew each other, they
were all part of the same organization. Everything ties into everything.
But the reality is the population of the colonies at
the time was so small compared to what what we
have today, right, So, I mean, essentially you're talking about
a population in terms of the landowners and the white
(25:30):
European immigrants or settlers. We're talking tens of thousands, hundreds
of thousands of people. Essentially. These are small towns or
small cities, so everyone's going to know everyone, especially if
you're near the top of the the upper echelon of society.
It's not quite as nefarious cabal creating as it sounds,
absolutely not. That's that's the thing. In many ways, it's
(25:51):
a social club. These people are sharing their interests, and
do they talk about things that they want to do,
like do they talk about political goals or business ideas?
Of course they do, because that's what friends do when
they hang out with each other, you know, they talk
about the things they care about and the things that
they're working on. I enjoy this theory, and I especially
(26:14):
appreciate Christopher, you're pointing out that it's easy for us
to look back in retrospect and perhaps see patterns where
none actually exist. You know what I mean. A lot
of history is coincidence. The human species is not chock
full of amazing planners with very complicated schemes. Now, everything
(26:35):
in the past looks like it unfolded in a way
that it was meant to and in a way that
made sense. But that's because that's the way we know
how things unfolded. There are innumerable other ways things could
have happened, and other paths history could have taken that
if we travel down those timelines, would make this one
look particularly ridiculous or strange. The guys you're completely overlooking
(26:56):
the blood magic rituals to molok Oh, I mean they
did on the regular. Yeah, but that's I mean I
think that I thought we were talking about the one
that I was going to do later. I didn't mean
to blow up yall. Spot you guys are coming right well.
I didn't get an invite. I brought snacks. I love
a good snack. I mean, come for the mallock, stay
for the snacks. One last thing about freemasonry and George
(27:21):
Washington in d C. I have such a fun time
imagining the pitch meeting for building the Washington Monument and say, okay,
we think he's the greatest president, we think he's the
first president. We need something that really says this man
the first president. And you know, they go back and
(27:41):
forth and someone says, well, maybe a statue of the guy.
And they go, uh, I like the idea of something
like a big structure. Okay, okay, maybe like he's on
a horse or as you like to say, Ben, No,
let's get weird with it. That's exactly it. Yeah, they said,
let's get let's get weird with it. Have you guys
heard of like obelisk? And then you mean obelisks like
(28:04):
a dude like in Egypt right on, and that was history.
I am mostly kidding because if you look into the
story of the Washington Monument, which could be its own episode,
they had much more ambitious plans, and what we see
today is essentially a compromise in scaling down. Again, the
story of our nation and the story of our history
(28:26):
is compromises, half baked plans that in retrospect look like
what should have happened, but in reality we're just thrown
together at the time with no real idea of what
ramifications would come to pass decades down the line. I mean,
look at anything involving well, we don't need to get
into health insurance and tax law and all sorts of
compromises made in Congress. But yeah, we we are just
(28:49):
a collection of mistakes and bumbles through through the years,
some of which have incredible staying power. Yes, very much.
So much like a monument itself to our first president,
I would argue, maybe they just want were like, how
are we going to remind people that he was the
first president? Let's this This looks like a big number
one number one, So let's reset just a second here,
(29:16):
because it occurs to me that we may be well
on the way to making something that sounds like a
hit piece on George Washington. Because he's a whiskey tycoon,
he's a freemason, he's a slave owner. He's a slave owner. Yeah,
we can't forget that part. But it wasn't it wasn't
all complicated, weird, problematic stuff he had. He had some
(29:37):
other notable wins. And I don't think being a whiskey
tycoon is that bad. I have nothing wrong with that.
I think was a slave labor I think that while
there's me. Yeah, and it's also one of those things
where it's I can't even fall behind the whole. It
was just that everyone was doing it. It It was it
was a different time. I mean, the thing is he
he also was a pretty forward thinking individual in so
(29:59):
many ways. In fact, he was so influential in creating
the structure that is very much still a part of
our military today that he was posthumously given this title
um the General of the Armies of the United States,
that is forever un out rankable. Yeah, it's total, total
god mode. You know, you can't let's say they create
seven star generals, eight star generals, nine star generals in
(30:21):
the next couple of years, those still will be underneath Washington.
Kind of similar in some ways to the eternal President
of the d p R K. Kim Il Sung, but
we didn't call him internal president. We just called him
General of everything. Yeah, and I think it's important to
remember about Washington that and and most of the men
back then, this was the first time they were doing that.
(30:44):
He was setting the precedent for the president, the presidential
precedent exactly. And so yeah, he the way he acted,
the choices he made, the statements he put forth, they
set the stage for what we've had, what we've had
over the past several hundred years leading up to today.
It's important to keep in mind that anyone who's given
that sort of authority carries weight. They embody what a
(31:07):
country is moving forward. And that actually played into some
of the misconceptions about Washington because his biographers said, we
we don't need just a man, we need a myth.
So we're going to invent this whole thing about the
cherry tree. We're gonna make up some stories to make
him larger than life. Biographer Weems, biographer Slash mythologize absolutely
(31:29):
and and just blatantly, like made it up, not not
fudged it a little bit. Some of the stuff was
just made up to make him larger than life. Oh absolutely,
I mean, and I honestly, very very frequently confused the
myth of the cherry tree with Abe Lincoln because if
everyone called him honest Abe, so I sometimes conflate those
stories because he also was a very larger than my figure,
(31:51):
who grew up poor and in kind of more of
a rural setting. And he's also similar to Washington. He
has a real underdog story because Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for office.
That's multiple times, you know, so people love to see
some perseverance. Oh man, we're I think we're doing pretty
well here so far. We've got we're drawing in Truman,
(32:13):
we're drawing in Lincoln. Well, remember earlier, Christopher, when you're
talking about how the United States was sort of a
agglomeration of half baked ideas. I look forward to the
emails speaking of half baked ideas. Washington smoked a lot
of weed. No, that's not true, but he grew a
lot of hemp. That is true. That part is true.
(32:33):
I was waiting for that. I needed to do that
call back. I had to do it. Thank you for
supplying me with that never true. Um. Hemp was one
of his main cash crops well before he got into
the whiskey trade. On Mount Vernon, Um he grew copious
amounts of hemp, which is marijuana, but it is a
(32:53):
slightly different strain of marijuana. Doesn't contain the psychoactive substance
th HC or it's very very very low tetra hydra
cannabin alls um. And it was used historically for making ropes.
It was a fantastic fiber used the stem that had
these uh. They grew it so it would have these
(33:13):
elongated strands, these fibers in the stems um as opposed
to the plants that were grown to smoke, or you
would think of the ones that are grown today to
smoke are much shorter, less hardy plants. Um. They look
a little more like little bushes. But he grew fields
of this stuff in an area on Mountain Vernon that
he called the Muddy Hole, the Muddy Hole, and it
(33:37):
was because it was a very uh sought after substance,
because it was used to make They even referred to
ropes in those days as hemps. They call them like
sailing hemps, like for what all the riggings in various
types of vessels, and he um would have continued to
grow it if he hadn't have done some kind of
shrewd calculations and realized that actually, wheat is probably a
(34:00):
more profitable crop to um use his land for. But yeah,
he he grew it for quite some time. And as
it turns out, in the very same way that Mountain
Vernon is now back to distilling whiskey Mashville. Um, they're
also now growing hemp. Yeahs of two thousand eighteen, right, right,
(34:20):
they harvested their first hemp crop in centuries, I believe.
And the interesting thing is is that hemp, even though
it doesn't contain very high levels of the psychoactive substance
at all, were outlawed and made a Schedule one drug
right alongside um. They more you know, trippy counterparts. UM,
(34:42):
So growing hemp was outlawed. But it's not the same thing, right,
I Mean, they're there, these plants are cousins, they're related.
But that's like if you had prohibition of alcohol and
all of a sudden you couldn't serve cough syrup at
a drug store, right because just because it has a
little bit of alcohol in it. We're kind of on
the same thing, like like people are over re thing
and and bunching things together, very very very similar. But
(35:03):
if you look at a field of hemp, it looks
like a field of marijuana players. I mean, they're very
very similar. And in fact, so what I was what
I was getting to is in there was a farm
bill that passed that allowed UM research for growing hemp,
and some states have legalized essentially limited hemp farming, and
another bill that passed in the Senate was going to
(35:27):
allow for full legalization. I don't know if that one
has has gone through yet or not. I don't have
to do a little more follow up on that, but
the point is you can get UM. There's another substance
of compound that's in marijuana and hemp. It's called cb D,
which you may have read a lot of research about
people use it for anxiety. It can treat a lot
of different ailments and just kind of has become a
(35:49):
very popular UM kind of remedy that people are using,
and it is legal in states where marijuana is not
legal because you can get it from hemp. It's pretty
interesting UM but Yeah. Now there's no evidence. A lot
of other Founding fathers grew have to, like John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson, um, but there is no evidence showing
that any of them ever tried to smoke. Yeah, it's
(36:09):
it's a useful crop, and it's a It might be
a disappointment to your stoner buddy out there who's saying, oh,
Washington and the Founding Fathers had hemp, we need to
legalize everything. It's not quite the same thing, but it
does argue for nuance, It argues for understanding the uses
of plants and that uh that anyone plant or one
species can have different applications. Well said. And also just
(36:34):
a soft historical note there. I don't believe any form
of cannabis was actually scheduled one until the nineteen seventies,
so it's relatively recent, right, Yeah. And I mean we
are definitely in a ce change of legalization sweeping the
nation right now, which is pretty fascinating time to be
around with so many of these changes coming so quickly. Um.
There's actually a pretty quick great quote in this article
(36:56):
for the Smithsonian that talks about the first hemp crop
um being harvested at Mount Vernon recently from this fellow
by the name of John Hudak. He says, I think
where we're at right now is a situation in which
finally a lot of members of Congress and finally stopped
buying drug war era rhetoric, stopped thinking about the cannabis
plant in a very uniform way. So very much sad
(37:16):
supports your point, Christopher, and fascinating For all of our
listeners outside of the US and my friends who live
in different countries, it's it's a weird process to explain
to them that you can be arrested for one thing
in one state and it's completely fine in another, and
you can hop a flight for a few hours and
(37:38):
being a place where you're in the same country, but
the laws are completely different. And I kind of have
a feeling that old George Washington might have had issues
with prohibition of any kind, you know, being that he
liked his whiskey and he liked his hamp and you know,
it seemed like a you know, civil liberties kind of fellow.
You know, I don't know, I wonder what he would
have to say as long as it applied to white landowners. Well, okay,
(37:59):
that's fair. It was a different time. Yeah, And and
there there is historical record of of Washington complaining about
soldiers who were drunkards, who consumed too much, who over indulged.
And that's been argued by some that Washington was a
little more uptight than you might be led to believe.
But to me, in reading what he actually said and wrote,
it looks more like he was against the over indulgence,
(38:20):
not the actual substance itself. He didn't assign a moral
value to alcohol or to whatever might have been smoked.
You know what else he wasn't was evangelical. He was
actually very a religious He was a very moral man
and had a real code that he lived by. But
he was not a strict adherent to any form of religion.
That has been made clear in the record which he had.
(38:42):
He had these sorts of beliefs placing rational morality over
spiritually motivated morality, in common with some other Founding fathers
like Jefferson and his famous Jefferson Bible, where he really
he removes everything that he thought was remotely supernatural, which
is story for another day. Okay, so we we've painted
(39:05):
uh pretty in depth picture right now, and just to
just to recap. We've got a whiskey tycoon who is
also a freemason who is also a hemp farmer. Hemp tycoon?
Is that fair? It seems like he was testing in
a little bit more and then he kind of like
switched over to grain um. But I don't know. He
(39:26):
definitely made some money. And it turns out to that
the it became a very profitable export because the Brits
really relied on it. They were actually growing in a
lot when the colonies were still under British control and
they relied on that from them. So when they split,
they turned it into much more of a business like exchange.
(39:46):
So hang on, guys, hang on, Casey, could we get
a like a game show out of time sound effect? Perfect?
What's going on? Well, it turns out, Christopher, that we
have made a game time decision. We are unning low
on times. We want to give this topic the justice
it deserves, which means that we are in for a
(40:07):
spontaneous two partter. What do you guys say, Oh my gosh,
I love it when you actually decide it's going to
be a two partner in real time as opposed to postmortem.
You know, Wait, Ben, what's going on. It sounds like
you've just got to get out of here. You don't
want to hang out with us for another couple of
hours and talk about George Washington. I I do, I do,
and through the magic of editing, will do that in
a later episode. Okay, okay, okay, because as we know
(40:30):
in the podcast world, time is but an illusion, a
flat circle. Indeed, we've actually been here in the studio
for about twelve hours talking about George Washington has always
been here here. We are check in anytime you like,
but you can never leave. We're kidding. This will mark
the end of part one of our George Washington and
Washington State episode technically, but this will not mark the
(40:53):
end of the show. Please tune in for our next episode,
when we explore even more strange of secure facts about
the first president of the United States. In the meantime,
you can say hello to Casey, Noel, Christopher and myself
on Instagram. You can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Twitter. Hit us up with your favorite
strange historical facts, and if you want to hang out
(41:15):
with our favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners,
visit us on our community page. Ridiculous historians on Facebook.
If you want a little tiny peek into our relatively
run of the mill lives, but you know, we do
some cool things every now and then, you can check
me out at embryonic Inside on Instagram, and I am
at Ben Bullen on Instagram molock free photo content. So far,
(41:37):
it's good to know. Until the next episode comes out,
I'm just gonna be sitting here pulling dollar bills out
of my wallet, very very few dollar bills, two money bags,
just staring at George, staring at George. Wanted to talk
about him with you guys again soon. I can't wait.
Do you have any plugs you'd like to plug? I
do have some plugs. If you want to find me
on Instagram, I'm at Haciotis. That's h A S. S
I O T I S. And we all hang out
(41:58):
on the Ridiculous of his story and Facebook page. We'll
be there too. In the meantime. We would like to think,
of course, our super producer, Casey Pegram, would like to
thank Alex Williams, who composed our track. We'd like to
thank our pal Gabe who helps us out with research,
and of course you'd like to thank Christopher Haciota is
our incredible guest uh and lifelong pal. No, thank you, Casey.
Thanks and if one of you guys would thank what's
(42:19):
his name over here for me, I'd appreciate it. We'll
see you next time.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.