Centuries-Old Discovery Unearthed at George Washington’s Home
Archaeologists working on a project to rehabilitate the foundation of George Washington's Mount Vernon, VA home made a stunning discovery when they unearthed two intact bottles of cherries from the hardened dirt of the mansion's basement.
Although the discovery of the first bottle was made last November, an excavation team only got to work removing the bottle on March 22, at which point a second bottle was found. Nick Beard, the project's lead archaeologist, told the Washington Post that when he uncovered the neck of the first bottle he initially didn't think much of it, as finding fragments of bottles is not that unusual.
However, the scope quickly became apparent as he kept digging. "It kept [getting] larger and larger," Beard said, adding that he was shocked what happened when he stuck his finger in the mouth of the bottle to wiggle it loose.
"And my finger came back wet. I thought about it for a half-second longer and said, 'Oh my God, my finger is wet,'" he recalled. "I got my flashlight out and shined it in there, and the thing is completely full of liquid."
Beard quickly alerted his colleagues to the unearthed bottle, who were stunned. Jason Boroughs, principal archaeologist at Mount Vernon, called the artifact "an out-of-the-box, next level, spectacular find." "There are whole, recognizable cherries,” he added. "It actually smelled like cherry blossoms when we got to the bottom."
While excavating in George Washington's cellar during Mansion Revitalization, Mount Vernon archaeologists discovered two intact sealed bottles containing cherries preserved within a liquid content.
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Experts at Mount Vernon believe the bottles were buried some 250 years ago in the 1770s, possibly even before the Revolutionary War, in what once had likely been a storeroom. Boroughs called the discovery a "time capsule."
"There are 18th century accounts that talk about proper ways of preserving fruits and vegetables," he explained. "One of the most common, especially for berries, is to dry them as much as possible … put them in a dry bottle, cork it … and then bury them."
The bottled fruit would typically be preserved for up to a year, but clearly the cherries have aged just a bit longer. Boroughs said that it's likely that the cherries were picked, bottled, and stored by some of the hundreds of enslaved people at Mount Vernon, but that they had presumably been consumed upstairs in the main dining room.
After the bottles were unearthed, the contents were siphoned out to help preserve the glass. The liquid and the cherries will eventually be analyzed, but in the meantime they are being stored in fifteen smaller containers.
Built in 1734, Mount Vernon overlooks the Potomac River about 20 miles south of Washington D.C. When the former president inherited the estate from his father in 1761, he expanded the house twice over the decades, with most of the work being done by enslaved people.
Although he was often away from Mount Vernon, particularly while leading American forces during the Revolutionary War, Washington was said to have loved the property and lived at the estate until his death on Dec. 14, 1799.