"I dig George"

Washington, that is. Recent archaeological work has found the foundations of the first president's boyhood home in the Rappahannock Valley of Virginia, along with about half a million artifacts so far. According to Smithsonian magazine (check out the link here) the diggers have found a complex representing three centuries of human habitation; Augustine Washington (George's father) evidently built the second house at this site in 1738. Union troops camped there before the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. The find promises to increase our scanty understanding of George's early childhood, for which there is very little documentation. Historians get the nervous sweats when they don't have paper to look at, so we turn to our allied disciplines for their expertise. Check out the Smithsonian's site on Washington-related archaeological work at the title link above. The painting is Grant Wood's "Parson Weems' Fable," depicting the legend of George and the cherry tree, invented by Washington's early biographer, Mason Weems. The story was already well-enough known in 1862 that those Union troops collected cherry pits from the former Washington homestead.