George Washington, the first president of the United States, lost all but one of his teeth by the time he was inaugurated, and had at least four sets of dentures he used throughout his life. Made with brass, lead, gold, animal teeth and human teeth; the dentures were primarily created and attended to by John Greenwood, Washington's dentist. [1]
In 1756, when Washington was 24 years old, a dentist pulled his first tooth. [2] According to his diary, he paid 5 shillings (£0.25, equivalent to £47in 2023) to a "Doctor Watson" for the removal. His diary also regularly mentioned troubles such as aching teeth and lost teeth. [3] John Adams said that Washington attributed the loss of his teeth to using them to crack walnuts, but modern historians have suggested that calomel, the mineral form of mercury(I) chloride which Washington was given to treat smallpox, probably contributed to the loss. [4]
On April 30, 1789, the day of his first presidential inauguration, although he had mostly dentures, he had only one remaining natural tooth, a premolar. [5] During that same year, he began wearing full dentures.
Washington's last tooth was given as a gift and keepsake to his dentist John Greenwood. [6]
During his life, George Washington had four sets of dentures. He began wearing partial dentures by 1781. [6] Despite many people believing they were made of wood, they contained no wood, and often were made of teeth extracted from enslaved people and other materials, including hippopotamus ivory, brass, and gold. [7] [8] [9] The dentures had metal fasteners, springs to force them open, as well as bolts to keep them together.
Records at Mount Vernon show that Washington bought teeth from slaves. [10] The poor in the Western world had sold teeth as a means of making money since the Middle Ages, which were used as dentures or implants and sold to those of financial means.
During the American Revolutionary War, French dentist Jean Pierre Le Moyer provided services in tooth transplantation. In May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed slaves 122 shillings (£6.10, equivalent to £943in 2023) for a total of nine teeth to be implanted by a French doctor, who became a frequent guest on the plantation over the next few years.
While it is unconfirmed that these purchased teeth were for Washington himself, his payment for them suggests that they were in fact for his use, as does a comment from a letter to his wartime clerk Richard Varick: "I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion," he wrote. Washington used teeth sourced from slaves to improve his appearance, a subject of frequent discomfort to him. [11] However, scholars of the Mount Vernon estate dispute this, stating, "If Washington had been purchasing the teeth for himself, there would have been no need for this information; the entries would have simply recorded the item and payment, as when Washington purchased poultry, wild game, fish, and garden produce from enslaved individuals." As such, it remains unknown whether Washington personally used any teeth purchased from slaves or others. [12]
He took the oath of office while wearing a special set of dentures made from ivory, brass and gold built for him by dentist John Greenwood. [7] According to his diaries, Washington's dentures disfigured his mouth and often caused him pain, for which he took laudanum. [13] Washington once wrote that his lips would "bulge" in an unnatural way. This distortion is noticeable on his image on the one-dollar bill, an image taken from the Athenaeum Portrait , an unfinished painting from 1796 by Gilbert Stuart. [7]
Washington once wrote to his dentist, Greenwood, to avoid modifying the dentures "which will, in the least degree force the lips out more than now do, as it does this too much already." [14]
Apart from the disfiguration caused by the dentures, the distress may also be apparent in many of the portraits painted while he was still in office. [13] [15] [lower-alpha 1] He spent constant effort maintaining his dentures, and often had them shipped to Greenwood, for maintenance. [2]
The mistaken belief that Washington's dentures were wooden was widely accepted by 19th century historians and appeared as fact in school textbooks until well into the 20th century. The possible origin of this myth is that ivory teeth quickly became stained and may have had the appearance of wood to observers. A letter from Greenwood to Washington in 1798 advised more thorough cleaning; "the set you sent me from Philadelphia ... was very black ... port wine being sour takes off all the polish". [16]
The only existing complete set of Washington's dentures is owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, who own and operate George Washington's estate in Fairfax County, Virginia. There is another complete, original, lower jaw denture dated 1795 at the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, Maryland. [17]
At least three of Washington's dentists are identified. His diary mentions "Doctor Watson", the dentist who pulled his first tooth. His personal dentist and friend was Jean-Pierre Le Mayeur. [7] John Greenwood of New York City made and maintained his dentures. [7]
Stuart admired the sculpture of Washington by French artist Jean-Antoine Houdon, probably because it was based on a life mask and therefore extremely accurate. Stuart explained, "When I painted him, he had just had a set of false teeth inserted, which accounts for the constrained expression so noticeable about the mouth and lower part of the face. Houdon's bust does not suffer from this defect. I wanted him as he looked at that time."Stuart preferred The Athenaeum pose and, except for the gaze, used the same pose for the Lansdowne painting. [13]
George Washington was an American Founding Father, politician, military officer, and farmer who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Second Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army in 1775, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and then served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which drafted the current Constitution of the United States. Washington has thus become commonly known as the "Father of his Country".
Jean-Antoine Houdon was a French neoclassical sculptor.
Mount Vernon is the former residence and plantation of George Washington, a Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States, and his wife, Martha. An American landmark, the estate lies on the banks of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia, approximately 15 miles south of Washington, D.C..
Gilbert Stuart was an American painter born in the Rhode Island Colony who is widely considered one of America's foremost portraitists. His best-known work is an unfinished portrait of George Washington, begun in 1796, which is usually referred to as the Athenaeum Portrait. Stuart retained the original and used it to paint scores of copies that were commissioned by patrons in America and abroad. The image of George Washington featured in the painting has appeared on the United States one-dollar bill for more than a century and on various postage stamps of the 19th century and early 20th century.
Dentures are prosthetic devices constructed to replace missing teeth, supported by the surrounding soft and hard tissues of the oral cavity. Conventional dentures are removable. However, there are many denture designs, some of which rely on bonding or clasping onto teeth or dental implants. There are two main categories of dentures, the distinction being whether they fit onto the mandibular arch or on the maxillary arch.
The Boston Athenaeum is one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States. It is also one of a number of membership libraries, for which patrons pay a yearly subscription fee to use Athenaeum services. The institution was founded in 1807 by the Anthology Club of Boston, Massachusetts. It is located at 10½ Beacon Street on Beacon Hill.
The Lansdowne portrait is an iconic life-size portrait of George Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796. It depicts the 64-year-old president of the United States during his final year in office. The portrait was a gift to former British Prime Minister William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, and spent more than 170 years in England.
The history of George Washington and slavery reflects Washington's changing attitude toward the ownership of human beings. The preeminent Founding Father of the United States and a hereditary slaveowner, Washington became increasingly uneasy with it. Slavery was then a longstanding institution dating back over a century in Virginia where he lived; it was also longstanding in other American colonies and in world history. Washington's will immediately freed one of his slaves, and required his remaining 123 slaves to serve his wife and be freed no later than her death, so they ultimately became free one year after his own death.
A denturist in the United States and Canada, clinical dental technologist in the United Kingdom and Ireland, dental prosthetist in Australia, or a clinical dental technician in New Zealand is a member of the oral health care team and role as primary oral health care provider who provides an oral health examination, planning treatment, takes impressions of the surrounding oral tissues, constructs and delivers removable oral prosthesis treatment directly to the patient.
Ona "Oney" Judge Staines was an enslaved woman owned by the Washington family, first at the family's plantation at Mount Vernon and later, after George Washington became president, at the President's House in Philadelphia, then the nation's capital city. In her early twenties, she absconded, becoming a fugitive slave, after learning that Martha Washington had intended to transfer ownership of her to her granddaughter, known to have a horrible temper. She fled to New Hampshire, where she married, had children, and converted to Christianity. Though she was never formally freed, the Washington family ultimately stopped pressing her to return to Virginia after George Washington's death.
Hercules Posey was a slave owned by George Washington, at his plantation Mount Vernon in Virginia. "Uncle Harkless," as he was called by George Washington Parke Custis, served as chief cook at the Mansion House for many years. In November 1790, Hercules was one of eight enslaved Africans brought by President Washington to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then the temporary national capital, to serve in the household of the third presidential mansion.
Christopher Sheels, was a slave and house servant at George Washington's plantation, Mount Vernon, in Virginia, United States.
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The Athenaeum Portrait, also known as The Athenaeum, is an unfinished painting by Gilbert Stuart of United States President George Washington. Created in 1796, it is Stuart's most notable work. The painting depicts Washington at age 64, about three years before his death, on a brown background. It served as the model for the engraving that would be used for Washington's portrait on the United States one-dollar bill.
West Ford was the caretaker and manager of Mount Vernon, which had been the home of George Washington. Ford also founded Gum Springs, Virginia near Mount Vernon. He was a man of mixed-race, and possibly of Washington family descent.
The history of dental treatments dates back to thousands of years. The scope of this article is limited to the pre-1981 history.
"The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret": George Washington, Slavery and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon is a scholarly book on the history of slavery at Mount Vernon during the times of George Washington. Written by Mary V. Thompson, the book was published in the United States in 2019.
Sarah Johnson was an African American woman who was born into slavery at Mount Vernon, George Washington's estate in Fairfax, Virginia. She worked as a domestic, cleaning and caring for the residence. During the process, she became an informal historian of all of the mansion's furnishings. After the end of the Civil War, she was hired by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, ultimately becoming a council member of the organization. She bought four acres of Mount Vernon land to establish a small farm. The book Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon (2008) tells the story of her life within the complex community of people who inhabited Mount Vernon.
Caroline Branham was an enslaved housemaid and seamstress of George and Martha Washington. She was married to Washington's hired groomsman Peter Hardiman, whose slaveholder was David Stuart. Branham gave birth to nine children, seven with Hardiman. Her son, Austin (1798-1879), and her ninth child, Lucy, are believed to have been a child of the plantation; the boy's and girl's father was George Washington Parke Custis. Branham served the Washington family and their many visitors, ensuring they resided comfortably.
