Plants in Early America - Trees needed a purpose at Geo Washington's (1732-1799) Boyhood Ferry Farm

This article comes from research at George Washington's boyhood home, Ferry Farm, in Virginia.  The lively blog Lives & Legacies tells stories of  George Washington's Ferry Farm and Historic Kenmore.

A History of Trees at Ferry Farm by ferryfarmandkenmore

The moment anyone mentions trees and George Washington, you probably think of the famous Cherry Tree Story. However, this tale of young George taking a hatchet to his father cherry tree and, when confronted about the act, asserting "I cannot tell a lie" is probably just that -- a story meant to demonstrate the integrity of the Father of Our Country. In reality, the trees of Ferry Farm have a much more fascinating history. Their story reflects, on a small local scale, vast environmental changes in eastern North America and shifting American attitudes toward the environment throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

Today, we see wilderness as a good thing that needs protected and preserved. But in the 1700s, Europeans settlers saw wilderness as a bad thing. Preeminent environmental historian William Cronon notes, Europeans described wilderness as “’deserted,’ ‘savage,’ ‘desolate,’ ‘barren’—in short, a ‘waste,’.” People did not look at forests, deserts, or mountains as places to protect and visit. Instead, they were places to be feared and tamed.

The opposite of wilderness was the managed landscape of Europe. In cities, towns, and farms, Europeans tried to control nature and make it follow humanity’s rules.  These efforts to tame the wilderness were transplanted to colonial plantations in the Americas.

The first step in building a plantation and taming the wilderness was clearing the land for farming. Huge numbers of trees were cut down to do this.  On top of that, trees were cut down to make almost everything people of the 1700s and 1800s used and owned.  Furthermore, they were also cut down to do many everyday tasks.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the wood from trees was…

• used as the main architectural building material in houses, most other structures, farm buildings, fences, and more
• used to build ships, boats, ferries, bridges, carriages and wagons that moved people and things from place to place
• used to make everyone’s furniture (beds, chairs, tables, desks, cabinets, and trunks) as well as many household items and farming tools
• used as fuel for the fires needed to cook, heat, and even to make candles and soap. A colonial home needed at least 40 cords of wood for heating and cooking over the course of a year.

Five cords of firewood. A colonial home used 8 or 9 times this amount in a year for just heating and cooking. Credit: Chris Stevenson

Credit: Chris Stevenson

According to the U.S. Forest Service, the area that would become the United States had just over 1 billion acres of forest before European settlement.  By 1910, the U.S. had a total of just over 700 million acres.  The 300 million acres of trees cut down was mostly in the eastern portion of the country.

These large scale trends can be seen on a small scale at Ferry Farm.  The European settlers who lived here, including the Washingtons, cut down a significant number of trees but not so many that there weren’t still quite a few standing when John Gadsby Chapman painted Ferry Farm’s landscape in 1833.

"The Old Mansion of the Washington Family" (1833) by John Gadsby Chapman shows the foundation stones of the house where George grew up at Ferry Farm and trees along the riverbank.

We also have archaeological evidence showing the locations of trees during the Washington era.  This past summer in the yard north of the Washington house replica archaeologists uncovered “soil stains” left after trees fell in the past.  Soil stains are where the soil is a slightly different color than surrounding areas and indicate where people filled in holes created by uprooted trees. In other words, such soil stains indicate that a tree once stood there.

A tree uprooted by a storm. Credit: ykaiavu / Pixabay

In some cases, our archaeologists found that the holes were filled in multiple episodes, indicating that the soil settled and new dirt was later added or the person filling the hole borrowed different dirt of different colors from multiple locations. By excavating the soil from these soil stains and analyzing the artifacts, we can tell around when the holes were filled.

Soil stain marking the site of an 18th and 19th century tree on the landscape at George Washington's Ferry Farm.

One very large tree left the sizable soil stain – almost 5ft x 5ft – pictured above.  Based on artifacts found in its soil, the hole was filled during the mid-19th century.  We can tell by the size of the stain that the tree was quite mature. Together, these facts are evidence of a tree that grew just 40 feet north of the original Washington house during the time George and his family lived at Ferry Farm. This discovery gives us another detail about the landscape so it can eventually be accurately recreated just as we did the main house.

Finally, Ferry Farm archaeologists learned from these tree features and from the lack of other features in this yard that the area was well-kept. In the 18th century, this portion of the landscape was probably well-maintained because it was visible from Fredericksburg across the river.

This tree fell sometime in the 19th century and it was not the only one at Ferry Farm or across the country. Indeed, deforestation at Ferry Farm and nationwide grew more rapid and widespread in the 1800s as “clearing of forest land in the East between 1850 and 1900 averaged 13 square miles every day for 50 years; the most prolific period of forest clearing in U.S. history.”

In the 1860s, the Civil War exacerbated deforestation at Ferry Farm and throughout Stafford County.  Hundreds of thousands of Union Army soldiers radically altered the local environment to get the wood they needed for cooking and heating, to help build their fortifications and pontoon bridges, and even to build shelters.  During winter lulls in fighting, 18th and 19th century armies did not camp in tents. The soldiers built small log cabins.  By war’s end, Ferry Farm and Stafford County were nearly treeless as seen in the two photos of Ferry Farm below taken in the decades after the war ended.

View of Ferry Farm property in the 1870s.

View of the Ferry Farm property in the 1880s

While deforestation sped up in the 1800s, that century also began a changing of people’s attitudes toward the environment.  As Cronon explains, “The wastelands that had once seemed worthless had for some people come to seem almost beyond price. That Thoreau in 1862 could declare wildness to be the preservation of the world suggests the sea change that was going on. Wilderness had once been the antithesis of all that was orderly and good—it had been the darkness, one might say, on the far side of the garden wall—and yet now it was frequently likened to Eden itself.” Wilderness was to be treasured, not feared.

As the 19th century turned into the 20th, wilderness, nature, and the environment were increasingly seen as special and deserving of protection and preservation, sparking the creation of national and state parks, government agencies like the Forest Service, private conservation groups such as the Sierra Club, and, in 1872, the very first Arbor Day.

We can see the impact of new attitudes toward the environment at Ferry Farm in photos below. The top one from the 1930s, a period of intense conservation efforts nationwide, shows trees starting to appear once again while the other from 2017 shows trees on a portion of Ferry Farm stretching out as far as the eye can see to the north.

Aerial view of Ferry Farm taken in 1930.

Aerial view of a portion of Ferry Farm and points north taken in 2017. Credit: Joe Brooks / Eagle One Photography

The early 20th century saw the nadir of American deforestation in 1910. But since that year, forest acres in the U.S. have largely held steady [PDF].  The new conservation ethic symbolized in the practice of planting trees to replace those cut down, the reduced use of wood as a building material and fuel source, the need for less farm land, and the movement of people from rural to urban areas (all of which present their own challenges to the environment) have provided a reprieve for America’s forests.

While George’s mythical chopping of the Cherry Tree is the most well-known tale about trees at Ferry Farm, the more important and fascinating story is how the 300 hundred year history of trees at Ferry Farm reflects broader post-settlement environmental changes in North America and how the Americans who made those changes grew to see the world differently.

Zac Cunningham
Manager of Educational Programs

Elyse Adams, Archaeologist
Archaeology Lab Technician

18C Benjamin Franklin & 19C Mark Twain write of visiting Versailles

1767 David Martin (1737-1797) Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) in France

Benjamin Franklin wrote of Versailles to his daughter Polly on September 14, 1767:

"Versailles has had infinite Sums laid out in Building it and Supplying it with Water: Some say the Expence exceeded 80 Millions Sterling. The Range of Building is immense, the Garden Front most magnificent all of hewn Stone, the Number of Statues, Figures, Urns, &c in Marble and Bronze of exquisite Workmanship is beyond Conception.

"But the Waterworks are out of Repair, and so is great Part of the Front next the Town, looking with its shabby half Brick Walls and broken Windows not much better than the Houses in Durham Yard.

"There is, in short, both at Versailles and Paris, a prodigious Mixture of Magnificence and Negligence, with every kind of Elegance except that of Cleanliness, and what we call Tidyness."

1668 Pierre Patel (French artist, 1605-1676) Versailles

Just over a century later, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote of Versailles in his 1869 The Innocents broad:

"Versailles! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze, and stare, and try to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of Eden—but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite dream. The scene thrills one like military music!

"A noble palace, stretching its ornamented front block upon block away, till it seemed that it would never end; a grand promenade before it, whereon the armies of an empire might parade; all about it rainbows of flowers, and colossal statues that were almost numberless, and yet seemed only scattered over the ample space; broad flights of stone steps leading down from the promenade to lower grounds of the park—stairways that whole regiments might stand to arms upon and have room to spare; vast fountains whose great bronze effigies discharged rivers of sparkling water into the air and mingled a hundred curving jets together in forms of matchless beauty; wide grass-carpeted avenues that branched hither and thither in every direction and wandered to seemingly interminable distances, walled all the way on either side with compact ranks of leafy trees whose branches met above and formed arches as faultless and as symmetrical as ever were carved in stone; and here and there were glimpses of sylvan lakes with miniature ships glassed in their surfaces.

"And every where—on the palace steps, and the great promenade, around the fountains, among the trees, and far under the arches of the endless avenues, hundreds and hundreds of people in gay costumes walked or ran or danced, and gave to the fairy picture the life and animation which was all of perfection it could have lacked.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It was worth a pilgrimage to see. Everything is on so gigantic a scale. Nothing is small—nothing is cheap. The statues are all large; the palace is grand; the park covers a fair-sized county; the avenues are interminable. All the distances and all the dimensions about Versailles are vast. I used to think the pictures exaggerated these distances and these dimensions beyond all reason, and that they made Versailles more beautiful than it was possible for any place in the world to be. I know now that the pictures never came up to the subject in any respect, and that no painter could represent Versailles on canvas as beautiful as it is in reality. I used to abuse Louis XIV for spending two hundred millions of dollars in creating this marvelous park, when bread was so scarce with some of his subjects; but I have forgiven him now. He took a tract of land sixty miles in circumference and set to work to make this park and build this palace and a road to it from Paris. He kept 36,000 men employed daily on it, and the labor was so unhealthy that they used to die and be hauled off by cartloads every night. The wife of a nobleman of the time speaks of this as an "inconvenience," but naively remarks that "it does not seem worthy of attention in the happy state of tranquillity we now enjoy."

"I always thought ill of people at home who trimmed their shrubbery into pyramids and squares and spires and all manner of unnatural shapes, and when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom of it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room, and then surely they look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred thousand tall forest trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of leaf or branch to grow on the trunk lower down than six feet above the ground; from that point the boughs begin to project, and very gradually they extend outward further and further till they meet overhead, and a faultless tunnel of foliage is formed. The arch is mathematically precise. The effect is then very fine. They make trees take fifty different shapes, and so these quaint effects are infinitely varied and picturesque. The trees in no two avenues are shaped alike, and consequently the eye is not fatigued with anything in the nature of monotonous uniformity. I will drop this subject now, leaving it to others to determine how these people manage to make endless ranks of lofty forest trees grow to just a certain thickness of trunk (say a foot and two-thirds); how they make them spring to precisely the same height for miles; how they make them grow so close together; how they compel one huge limb to spring from the same identical spot on each tree and form the main sweep of the arch; and how all these things are kept exactly in the same condition and in the same exquisite shapeliness and symmetry month after month and year after year—for I have tried to reason out the problem and have failed.

"We walked through the great hall of sculpture and the one hundred and fifty galleries of paintings in the palace of Versailles, and felt that to be in such a place was useless unless one had a whole year at his disposal. These pictures are all battle scenes, and only one solitary little canvas among them all treats of anything but great French victories. We wandered, also, through the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon, those monuments of royal prodigality, and with histories so mournful—filled, as it is, with souvenirs of Napoleon the First, and three dead kings and as many queens. In one sumptuous bed they had all slept in succession, but no one occupies it now. In a large dining room stood the table at which Louis XIV and his mistress Madame Maintenon, and after them Louis XV, and Pompadour, had sat at their meals naked and unattended—for the table stood upon a trapdoor, which descended with it to regions below when it was necessary to replenish its dishes. In a room of the Petit Trianon stood the furniture, just as poor Marie Antoinette left it when the mob came and dragged her and the King to Paris, never to return. Near at hand, in the stables, were prodigious carriages that showed no color but gold—carriages used by former kings of France on state occasions, and never used now save when a kingly head is to be crowned or an imperial infant christened. And with them were some curious sleighs, whose bodies were shaped like lions, swans, tigers, etc.—vehicles that had once been handsome with pictured designs and fine workmanship, but were dusty and decaying now. They had their history. When Louis XIV had finished the Grand Trianon, he told Maintenon he had created a Paradise for her, and asked if she could think of anything now to wish for. He said he wished the Trianon to be perfection—nothing less. She said she could think of but one thing—it was summer, and it was balmy France—yet she would like well to sleigh ride in the leafy avenues of Versailles! The next morning found miles and miles of grassy avenues spread thick with snowy salt and sugar, and a procession of those quaint sleighs waiting to receive the chief concubine of the gaiest and most unprincipled court that France has ever seen!"

18C American Townscape

18C American Townscape

History Blooms at Monticello

Peggy Cornett, who is Curator of Plants at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia, tells us that -

During cool autumn days the lush, blue-green leaves of the Sea Kale revive. Crambe maritima was among Thomas Jefferson's favorite vegetables; he first planted seed of it at Monticello in 1809. Native to the seacoast of Great Britain, this hardy perennial of the cabbage family is grown for the early spring sprouts that arise from well established plants (2 to 3 years old).

Sea Kale is also quite ornamental with showy white flowers in summer. Sea Kale has a pleasing, mild cabbage taste. At Monticello the shoots are often covered with large blanching pots as they emerge in spring. When the leaves get six inches high, they are cut from the ground and can be prepared like asparagus.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

18C American Landscape - A Hunt

18C A Hunt in the American Landscape

History Blooms at Monticello - Maple Trees & Maple Sugar

Peggy Cornett, who is Curator of Plants at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia, tells us that -

The Sugar Maple by Monticello’s West Front Flower Walk was planted over two decades ago to replace an original tree that was destroyed in a violent storm in the summer of 1992. In 1791 Thomas Jefferson ordered numerous trees from the William Prince Nursery on Long Island, New York, including Sugar Maple saplings. The venerable Sugar Maple, likely the oldest cultivated tree on the mountain, was part of Jefferson’s vision to establish a domestic sugar industry.

More from The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia -

Sugar Maple
An Article Courtesy Of The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia.

"At the end of November 1790, just a week after his arrival in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson bought fifty pounds of refined maple sugar. Such a purchase seems odd for someone living in a boardinghouse. Jefferson was not, however, beginning to stock the cellars of the new house he would soon occupy. He was making his first contribution to the cause of eliminating slavery in the West Indies.

"Jefferson had known the most vocal champion of the cause, Dr. Benjamin Rush, since the days of the Second Continental Congress. When the new Secretary of State had passed through Philadelphia the previous spring, Rush had called on him, later confiding to his commonplace book his relief at finding Jefferson uncontaminated by five years of contact with European courtiers. "He was plain in his dress," Rush wrote, "and unchanged in his manners." He still professed himself attached to republican forms of government.

"Although they spent most of the visit deploring the "attachment to monarchy" of their mutual friend John Adams, Rush and Jefferson almost certainly discussed the sugar maple The doctor's enthusiasm for domestic sugar production had been growing during Jefferson's absence in France. In 1788, Rush had published an essay on the "Advantages of the Culture of the Sugar Maple Tree" in a Philadelphia monthly. In 1789 he had founded, with a group of Philadelphia Quakers, the Society for Promoting the Manufacture of Sugar from the Sugar Maple Tree. He had even staged a scientific tea party to prove the potency of maple sugar. The guests – Alexander Hamilton, Quaker merchant Henry Drinker, and "several Ladies" – sipped cups of hyson tea, sweetened with equal amounts of cane and maple sugar. All agreed the sugar from the maple was as sweet as cane sugar

"Rush's aim, like that of the Quaker philanthropists who shared his cause, was "to lessen or destroy the consumption of West Indian sugar, and thus indirectly to destroy negro slavery." Other advocates of a sugar war on slavery used prose of a higher pitch. French abolitionist J.-P. Brissot de Warville, roused by his conversations with Pennsylvania Quakers, believed that tapping the maple would "drive out" the sugar produced by the tears and blood of slaves. "Sugar made at home," announced one almanac maker, "must possess a sweeter flavor to an independent American of the north, than that which is mingled with the groans and tears of slavery.

"Soon after his meeting with Rush, Jefferson joined the chorus. The sugar maple, he wrote a friend in England, "yeilds a sugar equal to the best from the cane, yeilds it in great quantity, with no other labor than what the women and girls can bestow .... What a blessing to substitute a sugar which requires only the labour of children, for that which it is said renders the slavery of the blacks necessary."

"And so, when he made his purchase from sugar refiners Edward and Isaac Pennington in November 1790, Jefferson could dispense with a sweetener tainted by slavery. "Mr. Jefferson uses no other sugar in his family than that which is obtained from the sugar maple tree," Rush wrote in this period. And Jefferson himself documented this use in a memorandum book entry for March 1791. He calculated the cost – two cents – of his morning coffee, noting that "On trial it takes 11. dwt. Troy of double ref[ine]d Maple sugar to a dish of coffee" (eleven pennyweight was the equivalent of 3 ½ teaspoons)

"Jefferson and other conscientious consumers could now, as Brissot phrased it, "put sugar in [their] coffee without being saddened by the thought of all the toil, sweat, tears, suffering and crimes that have hitherto been necessary to procure this product." The Secretary of State, however, envisioned political as well as humanitarian benefits from an American sugar industry. He hoped to gain commercial independence from the British, and even to compete with them by exporting a surplus. In April 1791, Jefferson's expectations were further raised when Rush introduced him to Arthur Noble, who came from upstate New York with sugar samples and accounts of the maple's productivity. Noble wrote William Cooper, his associate in schemes to encourage settlement of their frontier lands, that Jefferson "is as Sanguine as you or I about the Maple Sugar, he thinks in a few years we shall be able to Supply half the World."

"What one scholar has called the "Maple Sugar Bubble" was created by a strange association of land speculators and abolitionists. Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown and father of James Fenimore Cooper, tried to use sugar maples – "these diamonds of America" – to lure settlers to Otsego County. The "Bashaw of Otsego," as Jefferson called him, managed to yoke his own commercial objectives to the prevailing interest in "diffusing useful knowledge," by asking the aid of Rush and other philanthropists in preventing wholesale destruction of maple trees by the advancing tide of settlement.

"Stimulated by the news from New York, Jefferson immediately wrote to President Washington and others, noting that "evidence grows upon us" that the United States could become an exporter of sugar. "I confess I look with infinite gratification to [its] addition to the products of the U.S. ...."

"Two weeks later, Dr. Rush came to Jefferson's house on Market Street for breakfast. Over their cups of coffee sweetened with the "innocent" product of the maple, Jefferson and Henry Drinker listened to Rush read his account of the tree and its benefits and gave him "some useful hints." Rush went home to revise his piece, while Jefferson made preparations for a vacation expedition that would carry him into the heart of sugar maple country.

"On this journey north to Lake Champlain and into New England, Jefferson took seriously his role as a promoter of alternatives to cane sugar. In the new whaling port of Hudson, he urged its founder to find a substitute for the West Indian molasses used in the town's distillery. In Bennington, Vermont, and perhaps elsewhere, he tried to interest some of the more prominent landholders in making maple sugar in a systematic manner, by tending orchards of maples as they would apple trees. His advice was broadcast in the Vermont Gazette and one Bennington acquaintance, Joseph Fay, resolved "to plant an orchard in regular form next Spring, in hopes to encourage others in the same laudable undertaking in case I succeed."

"Jefferson had been making his own efforts to create a sugar grove at Monticello, but the maple seeds he had sent home the previous December "failed completely." On his return journey through Long Island, he stopped at the Flushing nursery of William Prince and reserved Prince's entire stock of sugar maples. Sixty trees reached Monticello in November and were planted "in a grove" below the Second Roundabout on the northeast slope of the mountain.

"Back in Philadelphia in the summer of 1791, Jefferson tried to get one hundred pounds of unrefined maple sugar to send to Albemarle County, "in order, by a proof of it’s quality, to recommend attention to the tree to my neighbors." None of sufficient quality could be found. "Such is the avidity for Maple sugar," he wrote later in the year, "that ... I have not been able this year to buy a pound for myself," and there is no record that he ever bought it again.

In the meantime, Benjamin Rush read his revised account of the sugar maple at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society on August 19, 1791. This essay, Rush told Jefferson, "owes its existence to your request." It took the form of a letter to Jefferson, describing the process of making maple sugar and discussing its superiority to West Indian cane sugar. He furnished figures to prove that New York and Pennsylvania could provide for the entire domestic consumption and leave sugar worth a million dollars for export. Several pages were spent extolling the "nutritious qualities" of sugar and its remedial use in medicine. "It has been said," Rush added, "that sugar injures the teeth, but this opinion now has so few advocates, that it does not deserve a serious refutation."

"Bringing his reading to a close, Rush confessed that "I cannot help contemplating a sugar maple tree with a species of affection and even veneration, for I have persuaded myself to behold in it the happy means of rendering the commerce and slavery of our African brethren in the sugar islands as unnecessary as it has always been inhuman and unjust." And finally, Jefferson's contributions to the cause were highlighted: "I shall conclude this letter by wishing that the patronage which you have afforded to the maple sugar as well as the maple tree by your example, may produce an influence in our country as extensive as your reputation for useful science and genuine patriotism."

"Because of "the impatience of the gentlemen interested in the sugar lands," Rush published his essay as a pamphlet in 1792. It was widely reprinted in the United States and Europe and its words were often repeated in books and encyclopedias. But despite Rush's publicity and Jefferson's subtler patronage, through recommendation and example, the great expectations of patriots and land promoters alike were disappointed. The various New York enterprises failed and Rush's Pennsylvania company of Quakers was dissolved in 1795 with the loss of £1400. The "large plantations" of maples that Jefferson envisioned for the slopes of Monticello consisted in 1794 of only eight surviving saplings. Two more trees were sent south in 1798, and one of them may be the ancient specimen still standing near the West Lawn today.

"Both Jefferson and Rush must have looked with distaste on another maple product brought by Arthur Noble from New York – maple whiskey. Jefferson went so far as to sample it, but was gratified to hear that "less profit is made by converting the juice into spirit than into sugar." Rush praised instead the weaker beverages that could be made from the maple. The thin sap afforded "a cool and refreshing drink in the time of harvest" and "a pleasant summer beer could be made from its syrup."

"Rush died after twenty years of silence on the subject of the sugar maple, his visionary ideas of 1791 forgotten. Jefferson, although he had tempered his hope for a national sugar industry, still advocated the cultivation of the sugar maple on a household scale: "I have never seen a reason why every farmer should not have a sugar orchard, as well as an apple orchard."

"By then, his attention was caught by another possible substitute for cane sugar. Hearing of the auspicious beginnings of the beet sugar industry in France, Jefferson asked two French correspondents for "recipes" of the process of making sugar from the beet, as well as advice on the best species. He lauded the sugar beet as he had the sugar maple: "[It] promises to supplant the cane particularly, and to silence the demand for the inhuman species of labour employed in it’s culture & manipulation."

Lucia C. Stanton, 11/90. Originally published as "Sharing the Dreams of Benjamin Rush," in Fall Dinner at Monticello, November 2, 1990, in Memory of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, VA: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1990), 1-12.


PRIMARY SOURCE REFERENCES
Undated. "Take up the young aspens and plant a dble. row of them on the road leading from the gate down towards the landing. Where they fail, plant locusts, walnuts, wild cherries, elms, lindens, maples, and cedars, just as you can get them."

1786 February 8. (Jefferson to James Madison). "The seeds of the sugar maple too would be a great present."

1786 May 12. (Madison to Jefferson). "I have taken measures for procuring the Paccan nuts and the seed of the Sugar Tree."

1787 December 9. (Madison to Jefferson). "The annexed list of trees will shew you that I have ventured to ... add 8 other sorts of American trees, including 20 of the Sugar Maple."

1788 October 8. (Madison to Jefferson). "I shall send along with this a few seed of the sugar maple, the first and the whole that I have been able to obtain."

1790 June 27. (Jefferson to Benjamin Vaughan). "Though large countries within our Union are covered with the Sugar maple as heavily as can be concieved, and that this tree yeilds a sugar equal to the best from the cane, yeilds it in great quantity, with no other labor than what the women and girls can bestow, who attend to the drawing off and boiling the liquor, and the trees when skilfully tapped will last a great number of years, yet the ease with which we had formerly got cane sugar, had prevented our attending to this resource. ... What a blessing to substitute a sugar which requires only the labour of children, for that which it is said renders the slavery of the blacks necessary."

1790 December 16. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph). "I send herewith some seeds which I must trouble you with the care of. They are the seeds of the Sugar maple and the Paccan nuts. Be so good as to make George prepare a nursery in a proper place and to plant in it the Paccan nuts immediately, and the Maple seeds at a proper season."

1791 May 1. (Jefferson to William Drayton). "The attention now paying to the sugar-Maple tree promises us an abundant supply of sugar at home; and I confess I look with infinite gratification to the addition to the products of the U.S. of three such articles as oil, sugar, and upland rice."

1791 May 1. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph). "I shall be glad to hear how the white wheat, mountainrice, Paccan and Sugar maples have succeeded. Evidence grows upon us that the U.S. may not only supply themselves the sugar for their own consumption but be great exporters."

1791 May 1. (Jefferson to George Washington). "A Mr. Noble has been here, from the country where they are busied with the Sugar-maple tree. He thinks Mr. Cooper will bring 3000£’s worth to market this season ...."

1791 May 27. "Cohoes. Sugar Maple."

1791 June 5. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph). "We were more pleased however with the botanical objects which continually presented themselves. Those either unknown or rare in Virginia were the Sugar maple in vast abundance ...."

1791 July 6. (Jefferson to William Prince). "When I was at your house in June I left with you a note to furnish me with the following trees, to wit[:] Sugar maples. All you have."

1791 July 7. (Thomas Mann Randolph to Jefferson). "In a late letter you desire us to let you know our success with the seeds you sent from Philadelphia. The Sugar maple has failed entirely, a few plants only having appeared which perished allmost immediately.... For both of these [rice] and the maple we preferred the flat ground below the park on the little stream which passes thro' it, being the natural situation of the latter, and more suitable to the former than the garden."

1791 July 17. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph). "I have taken effectual means of repairing the loss of the sugar maple seed, by bespeaking a new supply of seed, and purchasing a considerable number of young trees from Prince in Long-island who will forward them to Richmond in the fall."

1791 August 9. (Joseph Fay to Jefferson). "... respecting the sugar maple seed ... I had determined to furnish you had you not written, but the seed does not come to maturity until the Month of October, when the frost kills the stem of the leaf and seed, and causes them to fall from the tree .... no time shall be lost in doing it in the proper season and forwarding them to you. I have examined my young groves since you left this, and find the young maple very thrifty and numerous, by calculation nearly one thousand to the acre. I intend to plant an orchard in regular form next Spring, in hopes to encourage others in the same laudable undertaking in case I succeed."

1791 August 30. (Jefferson to Fay). "I am to acknolege the receipt of your favor of the 9th. inst. and to thank you for your attention to my request of the Maple seed. Every thing seems to tend towards drawing the value of that tree into public notice. The rise in the price of West India sugars, short crops, new embarrasments which may arise in the way of our getting them, will oblige us to try to do without them."

1791 November 8. "60 Sugar Maples trees at 1/ 3-0-0."

1791 November 25. (Jefferson to William Short). "Such is the avidity for Maple sugar, that it is engaged in the country before it comes to market. I have not been able this year to buy a pound for myself .... When double refined it is equal to the double refined of the Cane, and a like equality exists in every state of it. There is no doubt but that were there hands enough in the Sugarmaple country, there are trees enough not only to supply the U. S. but to carry a great deal to Europe and undersell that of the cane. The reason why it may be cheaper, is that it is the work of women and children only, in a domestic way, and at a season when they can do nothing in the farm. The public attention is very much excited towards it, and the high price of W. India sugars will draw these forth."

1791 November 29. (Fay to Jefferson). "I am sorry to inform you that not a single seed of the Maple has come to maturity this year in all this Northern Country. I have made diligent inquiry thro’ the State; wheather this is owing to the Worms, or a General blast is uncertain. The Great Scarcity and high price of sugars (owing to the Insurections in the Islands) occasions the Greatest preparations for improving the Maple in this quarter, every providential circumstance seems to Conspire to promote this usefull branch."

1791 December 11. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph). "Mr. Brown writes me word that the 4. bundles of trees from Prince are safe arrived there, so that I am in hopes you have recieved them."

1792 January 26. (Rush to Jefferson). "I enclose you a few copies of the tract on the manufactory of Maple Sugar. It owes its existence to your request."

1792 March 27. (Thomas Mann Randolph to Jefferson). "The sugar maple, it appears, is the most delicate of the whole number, for all of them are totally lost. It gives some consolation however, to know with certainty that this plant is abundant about Calf-pasture ...."

1792 April 19. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph). "I am sorry to hear my sugar maples have failed. I shall be able however to get here any number I may desire, as two nurserymen have promised to make provision for me. It is too hopeful an object to be abandoned."

1792 May 27. (Martha Jefferson Randolph to Jefferson). "Many of your sugar maples are alive and tolerably flourishing considering the drouth."

1792 July 2. (Jefferson to Hugh Rose). "I am now endeavoring to procure as many as I can of the Sugar maple trees, to commence large plantations of these."

1792 October 8. (Fay to Jefferson). "I have taken the earliest care to collect a few of the maple seeds, which you will receive herewith by the post; should the soil of Virginia prove friendly you will soon be able to furnish the State, as they produce very spontaniously. Please to offer a few to Mr. Madison with my best respects. I also enclose a Small bunch to his Excellency the President which perhaps his curiosity will lead him to accept, if you will please to take the Trouble to offer them. This seed must be committed to the Earth as soon as convenient this fall, in some place where they will not be exposed to be devoured by fouls and squirrels."

1792 October 16. (Jefferson to Washington). "Colo. Fay having sent him a paper of Sugar-Maple seed, Th:J., on his request, asks the President's acceptance of the within."

1792 November 4. (Jefferson to Fay). "I have delivered a part to the President and will deliver another portion to Mr. Madison who is just arrived here. In the name of us all accept thanks for this present, which I deem valuable.... Of 80. trees I bought in N. York, very few survived the transplantation. Do they begin to increase the quantity of sugar made with you?"

1794 April 20. "There are 8. sugar maples alive."

1798 March 22. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph). "I have just had put on board the sloop Sally ... a box of plants ... as follow: ... Sugar maple 2. plants."

1808 July 15. (Jefferson to C.P. de Lasteyrie). "I should think the maple-sugar more worthy of experiment. There is no part of France of which the climate would not admit this tree. I have never seen a reason why every farmer should not have a sugar orchard as well as an apple orchard. The supply of sugar for his family would require as little ground, and the process of making it as easy as that of cider."

1809 November 6. (Jefferson to Thomas Lomax). "I propose to make me a large orchard of Paccan & Roanoke & Missouri scaly barks which I possess .... to these I shall add the sugar maple tree if I can procure it."

Notes, References, & Further Sources on the above article available here.

Also see the Peggy Cornett's Twinleaf article from January 2004 Encounters with America’s Premier Nursery and Botanic Garden here

For more information & the possible availability for purchase
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Garden Ornaments - The Ornamental Urn

An urn is a marble, stone, earthenware, or metal vessel or vase of a round or ovoid form standing on a rectangular or circular base. Traditional Greek & Roman forms of ornamental garden urns are the tazza, a cup-shaped form whose width exceeds it height; & the campana, or upturned bell-shaped form.

Because early urns also were used to hold ashes of the departed, urns are usually solemn ornaments of reverence, taste, & refinement. Cremation was prevalent among the Greeks & during the Roman Empire, 27 B.C. to 395 A.D., it was widely practiced. The custom called for cremated remains to be stored in urns, which were sometimes elaborate & often placed within detached columbarium-like buildings in Roman & Greek gardens.
Detail of Closed or Lidded Campana Urn on an oversized Pedestal. 1772 William Williams (American artist, 1727-1791). The William Denning Family.

Christians considered cremation pagan, & Jews preferred traditional sepulcher entombment. By 400 A.D., as a result of Constantine's Christianization of the Roman Empire, earth burial replaced cremation, except for rare instances of plague or war, for the next 1,500 years throughout Europe & its colonies.

In fact, it was news in the colonies, when urns filled with charred remains were found in Ireland in 1733. The South Carolina Gazette reported, "Dublin, Octob . 31. Last Week as some Workmen were digging up Stones for the Buildings at Power's Court, in turning over some great Rocks, they found several great curious Pieces of Antiquity, being 3 old Urns of a very uncommon Make, deposited together, and filled with Ashes, supposed to belong to some of the Danes, or old Roman People, who formerly visited this Island."
Detail Closed or Lidded Campana Urn on a Classical Pedestal at Mount Clare in Baltimore. Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Margaret Tilghman (Mrs Charles Carroll the Barrister).

In 1737, the South Carolina Gazette also reported on an extract of a letter from England, "There was lately discover'd on Mr. Campton's Estate, at Coddlestock, near Oundle in Northhamtershire a beautiful Roman Pavement 20 Foot square and very little defac'd by Time; near it were found Bones, Ashes, and Pieces of Urns , an Indication that the Body of some noted Heathen had been buryed there."

Thirty years later in 1767, the Virginia Gazette reported similar findings "from Perth, that as some labourers were sinking a well near Abernethy, in Scotland, they discovered two urns , containing several pieces of antique silver coin, and from their inscriptions it appeared that that place had formerly been a Roman station." Later in the same year, they noted that in "Glasgow that some fishermen lately drug up, in the island of ST. Kilda, two antique urns , containing a quantity of Danish silver coin, which by the inscription appears to have lain there upwards of 1800 years."
Closed or Lidded Campana Urn. 1784 Charles Willson Peale.(1741-1827). Mrs. Thomas Russell.


The South Carolina Gazette printed a pastoral elegy to a local gentleman in 1757, which not only referred to urns but also to the crop he must have grown, rice. "Port-Royal plains! let never balmy dew, Pouring from chrystal sluices, water you, Nor, from their silver urns , the Pleiad 's poar The fruitful rain and soft prolific show'r. May blights and mildews on your fields remain. And wormy insects gnaw your ricy grain: For in your neld's, entomb'd, does Damon lie. Port-Royal gods! Why did my Damon die?"

Urn-shapped tea ware, usually silver-plated or japanned & often called Roman urns, appeared in the colonies by the 1760s. In October of 1764, the Pennsylvania Gazette was advertising classical tablewar, including urns, "Just imported in the Philadelphia Packet, Captain Budden, and Sparks, from London, and to be sold on the lowest and best terms...silver pillared and fluted candlesticks of the Corinthian order...chased and plain ewers, urns and milkpots."
Detail Closed or Lidded Campana Urn on a Stone Wall. 1787 Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) Mrs. John O'Donnell (Sarah Chew Elliott).

In the same year, jeweler Philip Tidyman of Charlestown, South Carolina advertised, "just imported, in the Friendship, Capt. Bail, and Heart of Oak, capt. Gunn...a few articles of plate of the most fashionable kind, viz. fine pierced and polish'd bread baskets, orange strainers, punch ladies, chais'd urns and ewers."

By 1769, Jacob Hanke placed an ad in the Pennsylvania Gazette to announce his architectural ornaments, "THE subscriber takes this method of informing the public, that he has set up the Turnerbusiness (which he formerly followed in this city) and makes and sells...columns, urns , newel posts, bannisters, and all kinds of Turnerwork, at his shop, at the Sign of the Spinning Wheel...in Spruce street, near the Drawbridge."

Closed or Lidded Campana Urn on a Classical Pedestal. 1789 Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Mary Claypoole Peale.

Mantle ornaments in the shape of urns appeared in 1773, when Nicholas Langfore, a bookseller in Charlestown advertised in the local newspaper, " a Consignment of a Set of Ornaments for a Chimney Piece, confisting of seven Petrifactions of Water from Derhyshire, resembling Jasper, in the Form of Altars, Urns , Vasses, &c. most elegantly mounted in Or Moule, which are to be sold at a small Advances, on the first Cost."

An intriguing carved walking cane went missing in Charleston in 1774, "With a golden Head, engraved with Urns and Festoons."

Few garden urns are mentioned in early American documents, but painters of the period occasionally depicted urns in their portraits. Open urns are often referred to as vases by colonial observers. Maryland-born artist Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) was particularly partial to painting urns as props in his portraits.

Hannah Callender visited William Peters' garden at Belmont in 1762, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She noted, "On the right you enter a labyrinth of hedge of low cedar and spruce. In the middle stands a statue of Apollo. In the garden are statues of Diana, Fame and Mercury with urns."

The 1778 South Carolina Gazette advertised the property of Thomas Loughton Smith for sale after his death, noting, "there are a few elegant urns and statues in the garden which will be sold with the premises."

Early colleges in America often had walled grounds. My favorite description of one of these walls was by Moreau de St. Mery (1750-1819), when he visited Princeton, New Jersey in the 1790s. In a 1764 print, Nassau Hall is depicted with a wall & urns. He wrote, "Before it is a huge front yard set off from the street by a brick wall, and at intervals along the wall are pilasters supporting wooden urns painted gray."
Detail of Nassau Hall with Wooden Campana Urns on the Wall, Princeton, New Jersey, in 1764.

After Thomas Jefferson's death, a Monticello visitor noted, "cattle wandering among Italian mouldering vases." The Governor's Palace in Williamsburg was recorded as having "lead vases" in its gardens. A description of Eliza Hasket Derby's garden in Salem, Massachusettes, was said to have "large marble vases" which gave it a finished appearance.
Closed or Lidded Campana Urns at Falling Garden in Annapolis, Maryland at the William Paca (1740-1799) House. These urns have recently been replaced by large pineapple or artichoke (Cynara) finials on classical pedestals.
Tazza Urn on a tall pedestal at Belvedere, Home of Governor John Eager Howard (1752-1827), Baltimore, Maryland. Painting by Augustus Weidenbach c 1858.

Urn at Governor's Palace, Colonial Williamsburg

In the Early Republic & well into the 19C, depictions of urns in the landscape were used as memorial objects in the work being produced by American girls in private female academies, where the young women learned decorative painting & sewing as well as reading & writing. Outdoor memorial urns were usually depicted with a nearby weeping willow tree.

By the time of George Washington's death in late 1779, the weeping willow tree was firmly established as a solemn memorial; as the Pennsylvania Gazette reported on Mount Vernon high above the Potomac River in Virginia, "Now the flocks, the shades, the walks, the weeping willows, the mourning bird of night, the pensive streams, and the sad murmurs of the broad Potomac, which in pride rolled its waves before the mansion of its great improver, call, again and again, the sad story which has filled the world with sorrow, that the illustrious Chief of Mount Vernon is no more."

The emerging middle-class of the early republic & later Industrial Revolution embraced classic Roman & Greek literature & motifs. Urns appeared on imported wallpapers; on mourning jewelry; as furniture inlay; on funeral carriages; as knife cases; and as architectural ornamentation on private homes, outbuildings, & public buildings.

In 1789, needing more space & wanting a building of their own, Benjamin Franklin's Library Company bought a parcel of land near the corner of Philadelphia's 5th & Chestnut Streets. William Thornton, physician & amateur architect, won the design competition. His proposed building featured white pilasters & a balustrade surmounted by urns.

Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Greenhouse in the East Building Elias Hasket Derby House

The John Peirce House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, built in 1799, featured a lantern tower crowned by urns. The Samuel McIntire, Peirce-Nichols House in Salem, Massachusettes, begun in 1782, has urns punctuating its fence. In 1795, he recorded in his journal paying for "Carving 4 Vases for the Summer House." The Elias Hasket Derby House, also in Salem, built in the late 1790s, had a roof balustrade with pilasters supporting 6 urns. 

Urns remained in the landscape designs of the Early Republic.  Urns & weeping willow trees dotted 19C cemeteries, but it would be many decades before cremation was once again a commonly accepted form of burial in America.
1789 Detail Schoolgirl Depiction of a Memorial Urn.

1792 Mourning Brooch. 2 funeral urns, plus locks of hair memorialize Mann Page & Anne Corbin Page of Virginia. Made in Philadelphia.

1811 Sally Miller's Needlepoint Urn from Litchfield Female Academy.

1815 Detail Schoolgirl Memorial Urn.

1817 Detail of Miss Diademia Austin Haines composition of silk, spangles, paint and ink on silk. Moravian Museum of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

1819 Memorial for Lucy Libby. Miss Mayo's School, Portland, Maine.

1822 Memorial for Robert B. Harding. Miss Mayo's School of Portland, Maine.

1836 Detail Schoolgirl Memorial Urn.

For more about schoolgirl needlework, see Girlhood Embroidery, American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework by Betty Ring (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993) and The "Ornamental Branches," Needlework and Arts from the Lititz Moravian Girls' School Between 1800 and 1865 by Patricia T. Herr (Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County, 1996).