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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
GWHOUS_160823_20.JPG: Bladensburg Archaeology
Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail
Indian Queen Tavern
Around 1763, Jacob and Henrietta Wirt constructed a two story wooden tavern here. During the 18th century, taverns offered dinner, drink, and a comfortable bed to weary travelers. A decade later, Jacob died and left his property, including the brick store (George Washington House), to his heirs. By the mid-19th century, the tavern was demolished and German immigrant Francis Gasch built a home and shop for his cabinet and coffin making business on this lot.
George Washington frequently traveled on this road to Baltimore and Philadelphia and was familiar with the Indian Queen Tavern. In a letter to Elizabeth Willing Powell, dated March 26, 1797, he observed that although Spurrier's Tavern in Jessup was frequented by travelers, "the lodging is bad -- the eating is tolerable; better for lodging and eating. At Bladensburg nine miles beyond, a good house is kept by one Ross (sign of the Indian Queen)."
Archaeological Finds:
In 2010, Maryland State Highway Administration archaeologists excavated within the parking lot of the George Washington House and discovered hundreds of artifacts related to the early tavern, including a cask tap (pictured above). The discovery of glass stemmed goblets, nicely decorated dishes, and expensive cuts of meat suggest the Indian Queen Tavern catered to upscale clientele. To learn more about the archaeology of Bladensburg, visit www.bladensburgarchaeology.com.
GWHOUS_160823_25.JPG: Village Tavern by John Lewis Krimmel. Courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art.
GWHOUS_160823_27.JPG: Archaeological Finds:
In 2010, Maryland State Highway Administration archaeologists excavated within the parking lot of the George Washington House and discovered hundreds of artifacts related to the early tavern, including a cask tap (pictured above). The discovery of glass stemmed goblets, nicely decorated dishes, and expensive cuts of meat suggest the Indian Queen Tavern catered to upscale clientele. To learn more about the archaeology of Bladensburg, visit www.bladensburgarchaeology.com.
GWHOUS_160823_40.JPG: George Washington House (circa 1752): [Historic Marker]
The George Washington House, often referred to as the Indian Queen Tavern, was built by tavern keeper Jacob Wirt. Prior to the Revolution, when Bladensburg was a thriving port town, this building was rented out to Cunningham and Company, a Scottish mercantile firm, which traded in tobacco. The building later served as a tavern and stagecoach stop for weary travellers during their journeys along the Old Post Road, a major route linking the north and south.
From 1774 to 1783, it was run by innkeeper-turned-lawyer and balloonist Peter Carnes. In 1784, Carnes made the first authenticated unmanned and manned balloon ascents in America.
In 1792, this building was sold to further the legal education of William Wirt, Jacob's youngest son. William, born here in 1772, later became a prominent lawyer, author, and noted United States Attorney General (1817 to 1829) and a candidate for President in 1832.
In 1894, populist reformer Jacob Coxey and his army of unemployed protestors camped here during their march on Washington, D.C. seeking federal aid.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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