This is a little off-subject. But I heard that Washington’s false teeth were not wooden. I heard that his “false” teeth actually belonged to his slaves. Has anybody else heard that?
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Colibri
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I’ve heard it - and it’s quite possibly true. The dentures were made with real human teeth - and enslaved people would be a plausible source for that What were George Washington's teeth made of? (It's not wood) | Live Science and this Washington and Teeth from Enslaved People · George Washington's Mount Vernon discuss
Last year there was a fictional story based on that idea - The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington
I find this shocking as well - I always thought of him as a staunch abolitionist (and a quick web search seems to back this up).
What is the WH site referring to here? Maybe he used some slaves that were attached to the WH in some capacity but he paid them? I’m having trouble finding more information about this, and most other lists don’t include the Adamses (and most explicitly exclude them).
ETA: OK, found more information here: https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-enslaved-household-of-john-quincy-adams
Wilson might have “owned” slaves. He was 9 when the war ended and was from a slave-owning family so he absolutely remembered slavery and had attendants.
I guess because he was Governor of New Jersey before he became president, but I hadn’t realized how deep Woodrow Wilson’s Southern ties actually ran. After being born in Virginia, he was raised in Georgia and spent his teen years in South Carolina.
In Chernow’s biography of Washington he discounts that Washington had teeth from his slaves. He states while the rich could and did buy teeth from the poor, there was a stigma in using teeth from slaves and Chernow believes it didn’t happen.
To put a finer point on this, Grant’s wife owned more than one slave for many years. And there is evidence that Grant himself owned one slave, William Jones, for about one year. It is unclear how Grant obtained Jones, but it’s believe that he was given to Grant and that Grant did not buy him. It’s also proven that Grant emancipated him after one year, without any money from Jones.
So while Grant did own one slave for one year, and that unfortunately makes him a slave owner, there is evidence that the detested slavery for his entire life and rapidly freed the one slave that he did own.
Grant’s* fathe*r was an active abolitionist. He stated during his Generalship to a subordinate that he (US Grant) was not. His wife was a slaveowner, who brought her slaves into the camp when Grant was General-in-Chief.
From Wiki: "In 1858, Grant rented out Hardscrabble and moved his family to Julia’s father’s 850-acre plantation.[93] That fall, after suffering from malaria, Grant gave up farming.[94]
The same year, Grant acquired a slave from his father-in-law, a thirty-five-year-old man named William Jones.[95] Although Grant was not an abolitionist, he was not considered a “slavery man”, and could not bring himself to force a slave to do work.[96] In March 1859, Grant freed William by a manumission deed, potentially worth at least $1,000, when Grant needed the money.[97]"