Gum Springs: A Slave’s Legacy, Part IV
Michael K. Bohn
This is the last in a four-part series on the history and future of Gum Springs, a historically African-American community in the Mount Vernon area. It was published in the Mount Vernon Gazette during February 2010 in recognition of African-American History Month.
West Ford’s Father
“George Washington is my fifth great-grandfather,” Linda Allen Bryant declared on the CBS News TV show, “Sunday Morning” in February 2004. Her assertion, which she first made in 1996, created a stir on two fronts—historians regard George as childless, and Ms. Bryant is African-American.
Bryant, a descendent of Gum Springs founder West Ford, maintains that General Washington was Ford’s father. A health writer and pharmaceutical representative in Aurora, Colorado, Bryant seemed to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings revelations in 1998 to draw attention to her claim.
The issue of southern plantation masters having their way with female slaves has simmered for years, largely among historians. But the controversy boiled over into the larger public consciousness following disclosures of Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings. Mulatto slaves were a common sight on Virginia’s plantations in the 1700s. They were the product of what some men then considered sport, and the slaves viewed as a loathsome manifestation of their plight.
The Ford Family Argument
Linda Bryant has written that John Washington sent Venus to comfort his brother George as a “sleep partner” during a visit by George to his brother’s home. The two surviving portraits of Ford show a resemblance to Washington men, and Ford’s freedom and inheritance reflected special status. Bryant expands her version of the family’s allegations in her novel, I Cannot Tell a Lie. She called it a “narrative history,” but the dialogue she injects into the subject is all hers.
Knowing that DNA testing resolved the Hemings’s family claims, the Ford descendents have pressed Mount Vernon for hair samples from the General. The Ladies Association has refused the request.
The Ladies Association’s Position
The Mount Vernon Ladies Association has adamantly denied that General Washington fathered West Ford. “The Ford family contention is based on a family tradition,” said Dennis Pogue, Mount Vernon’s associate director of preservation in 2000. “We respect that, but if this is true, there should be other evidence to support it.” Pogue’s polite approach took a sharper edge in 2004, when he said, “there’s not a shred of evidence” to support the Ford family allegation. In late 2009, Pogue again reiterated Mount Vernon’s position.
The Ladies Association invited the Ford family to Mount Vernon in 2000 in order to hear their case. The association assembled several historians to assess the claims, but all remained non-committal. One, Philip Schwarz from Virginia Commonwealth University, used poorly-chosen metaphors when saying, “it was not an open and shut case . . .there’s no smoking gun.”
Washington seemed to have held a view of slaves typical of the plantation class, at least perhaps until the Revolutionary War. The steadfast participation of freedman in the Continental Army—they amounted to a quarter of the force in 1781—surely influenced him. According to the Ladies Association, Washington never spoke publicly about abolition after the war for fear a North-South debate would shatter the new nation. Yet by the time of his death in 1799, Washington had decided that all of the slaves that he owned be freed upon Martha’s death. According to a Washington biographer, of the 316 slaves at Mount Vernon when Washington died, only 123 were his; he rented forty, and the remainder were dower slaves that would pass with the Custis estate after Martha’s death.
Many point to Washington’s personal rectitude as a reason that would have prohibited a relationship with a slave girl. Biographer Henry Wiencek writes in his book, An Imperfect God, that Washington was obsessed with maintaining his good standing in society and avoided potential indiscretions at all cost. The General constantly guarded against lapses of self-discipline, and a sexual encounter with Venus would have been just that.
Lastly, historians and Washington family members suggest the General had been rendered impotent by a case of smallpox, which he caught during a 1751 trip to Barbados. However, Dr. David Thomas, a smallpox expert, told the news media in 2000 that sterility was not a common result of the disease.
Judgments
Biographer Wiencek concludes that one of John Washington’s sons—Bushrod, Corbin, or William—likely fathered West Ford. William died at age eighteen in 1785, about the time Ford was born. He gathers the most interest because his premature death may have been the basis for his mother Hannah’s attention to West.
Dennis Pogue rightly points out that DNA testing in the Jefferson-Hemings case only proved that one of Hemings’s children had a male Jefferson for a father. “It was the contextual documentary evidence that served to eliminate all of the candidates other than Thomas.” Pogue said that the association compared hair samples said to be Washington’s to male family descendents, but the results were inconclusive. The General’s skeletal remains are in his tomb, but Pogue said, “the Ladies Association has made it clear that they have no interest in disturbing Washington’s resting place to obtain a [DNA] sample.
Linda Allen Bryant continues to press her case in the court of public opinion, but her views are creating less and less interest.
Michael K. Bohn
This is the last in a four-part series on the history and future of Gum Springs, a historically African-American community in the Mount Vernon area. It was published in the Mount Vernon Gazette during February 2010 in recognition of African-American History Month.
West Ford’s Father
“George Washington is my fifth great-grandfather,” Linda Allen Bryant declared on the CBS News TV show, “Sunday Morning” in February 2004. Her assertion, which she first made in 1996, created a stir on two fronts—historians regard George as childless, and Ms. Bryant is African-American.
Bryant, a descendent of Gum Springs founder West Ford, maintains that General Washington was Ford’s father. A health writer and pharmaceutical representative in Aurora, Colorado, Bryant seemed to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings revelations in 1998 to draw attention to her claim.
The issue of southern plantation masters having their way with female slaves has simmered for years, largely among historians. But the controversy boiled over into the larger public consciousness following disclosures of Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings. Mulatto slaves were a common sight on Virginia’s plantations in the 1700s. They were the product of what some men then considered sport, and the slaves viewed as a loathsome manifestation of their plight.
The Ford Family Argument
Linda Bryant has written that John Washington sent Venus to comfort his brother George as a “sleep partner” during a visit by George to his brother’s home. The two surviving portraits of Ford show a resemblance to Washington men, and Ford’s freedom and inheritance reflected special status. Bryant expands her version of the family’s allegations in her novel, I Cannot Tell a Lie. She called it a “narrative history,” but the dialogue she injects into the subject is all hers.
Knowing that DNA testing resolved the Hemings’s family claims, the Ford descendents have pressed Mount Vernon for hair samples from the General. The Ladies Association has refused the request.
The Ladies Association’s Position
The Mount Vernon Ladies Association has adamantly denied that General Washington fathered West Ford. “The Ford family contention is based on a family tradition,” said Dennis Pogue, Mount Vernon’s associate director of preservation in 2000. “We respect that, but if this is true, there should be other evidence to support it.” Pogue’s polite approach took a sharper edge in 2004, when he said, “there’s not a shred of evidence” to support the Ford family allegation. In late 2009, Pogue again reiterated Mount Vernon’s position.
The Ladies Association invited the Ford family to Mount Vernon in 2000 in order to hear their case. The association assembled several historians to assess the claims, but all remained non-committal. One, Philip Schwarz from Virginia Commonwealth University, used poorly-chosen metaphors when saying, “it was not an open and shut case . . .there’s no smoking gun.”
Washington seemed to have held a view of slaves typical of the plantation class, at least perhaps until the Revolutionary War. The steadfast participation of freedman in the Continental Army—they amounted to a quarter of the force in 1781—surely influenced him. According to the Ladies Association, Washington never spoke publicly about abolition after the war for fear a North-South debate would shatter the new nation. Yet by the time of his death in 1799, Washington had decided that all of the slaves that he owned be freed upon Martha’s death. According to a Washington biographer, of the 316 slaves at Mount Vernon when Washington died, only 123 were his; he rented forty, and the remainder were dower slaves that would pass with the Custis estate after Martha’s death.
Many point to Washington’s personal rectitude as a reason that would have prohibited a relationship with a slave girl. Biographer Henry Wiencek writes in his book, An Imperfect God, that Washington was obsessed with maintaining his good standing in society and avoided potential indiscretions at all cost. The General constantly guarded against lapses of self-discipline, and a sexual encounter with Venus would have been just that.
Lastly, historians and Washington family members suggest the General had been rendered impotent by a case of smallpox, which he caught during a 1751 trip to Barbados. However, Dr. David Thomas, a smallpox expert, told the news media in 2000 that sterility was not a common result of the disease.
Judgments
Biographer Wiencek concludes that one of John Washington’s sons—Bushrod, Corbin, or William—likely fathered West Ford. William died at age eighteen in 1785, about the time Ford was born. He gathers the most interest because his premature death may have been the basis for his mother Hannah’s attention to West.
Dennis Pogue rightly points out that DNA testing in the Jefferson-Hemings case only proved that one of Hemings’s children had a male Jefferson for a father. “It was the contextual documentary evidence that served to eliminate all of the candidates other than Thomas.” Pogue said that the association compared hair samples said to be Washington’s to male family descendents, but the results were inconclusive. The General’s skeletal remains are in his tomb, but Pogue said, “the Ladies Association has made it clear that they have no interest in disturbing Washington’s resting place to obtain a [DNA] sample.
Linda Allen Bryant continues to press her case in the court of public opinion, but her views are creating less and less interest.
