Fathers of Invention

by Sarah Wildman | DC magazine | December 27, 2011

The drumbeat of Washington seems to be perpetually timed to the upcoming election cycle, no matter what the year. However, a few boldface names have prompted the city’s citizenry to start mining its roots. In his run up to the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama embraced Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Abraham Lincoln with such passion that the 150th anniversary celebration in 2009 of the former president’s inauguration felt as hip as the incoming president. Sarah Palin helped start a movement where the idea of the founding fathers—however misquoted—became a zeitgeist flashpoint for the country as well. Fast-forward to the eve of the next presidential cycle and you can now sip cocktails in a chic bistro named for the 16th president (Lincoln), party in a music venue inspired by the country’s first treasury secretary (Hamilton) and dine in multiple restaurants with cuisine taking its roots from Jefferson’s agrarian lifestyle (The Federalist and Plume, among them). Suddenly the men who shaped this country are rather au courant.

Mount Vernon may not top the list of places to find of-the-moment modernity, but the folks at the country’s first president’s home hope to show just how much 21st century Martha and George Washington had in them. With the searing impact of the sustainability movement, the local food lifestyle is as en vogue today as it was necessary in 1776. Opening on Feb. 18, the exhibition Hoecakes & Hospitality: Cooking with Martha Washington shows how the first first family did the very things our urban farmers are attempting today.

On display will be rarely seen 18th-century cooking instruments and Martha Washington’s cookbook (a how-to for running a modern home regarding everything from cooking goose pie to preparing sweet perfume water for cloth), among other things. The Washingtons conceived of a system to grow lettuce under glass, for colder months, stored some 700 bushels of potatoes annually, and pulled more than a million fish each year from the Potomac. “One of the misconceptions about 18th-century food was that it was meat-heavy,” says Mary Thompson, research historian at Mount Vernon. But Martha’s cookbooks are filled with veg recipes and methods for preserving food sans electricity. The farm planted different varietals of seasonal fruits, timed to ripen sequentially, providing fruit for the house well into the fall. Cattle were, it goes without saying, grass-fed. The pigs ate from the forest floor. And the chickens were free-range. But, of course, as timely as their sustainable eating may have been, the Washingtons still relied on forced labor—a slave labor force that wouldn’t be freed until Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation more than half a century later.

Like Washington, Lincoln has been co-opted and adopted by hipsters and intellectuals alike. On Feb. 12, Ford’s Theatre will open the Center for Education and Leadership across the street from the scene of Lincoln’s assassination. The tech-heavy cultural arena will explore the life and legacy of Lincoln, and his continued reach, as well as act as a center devoted to public speaking and oratory.

Calling Lincoln a continued inspiration, Director Paul Tetreault says the center will “highlight his courage and integrity, his promotion of tolerance and equality, and his creativity.” The center’s Lincoln Legacy Project will offer an interactive series focusing on topics such as the Laramie Project. Fords will put up the play and use it as a launch point to discuss gay rights, extending the legacy of Lincoln to the present day.