Evening star., 1932-05-15
BY THOMAS r. HENRY,
staff Correspondent of The Star.

WAKEFIELD MANOR, Va, May IA
A family group of Virginia farm folks
down in the Popes Greek country-who
might have been the American royalty
If one Of their relatives had held a diff
ferent political philosophy gathered at
the low brick manor house of their an
cestral estate yesterday.
The men had left their planting and
crimson clover moving and the women
their kitchen work long enough to wit
ness the presentation of the ancient
manor, with its restored mansion and
its graveyard containing the bones of
their long-dead kinsfolk, to the Nation
as precious heritage-the soil from
which sprang the founder of the great
republic.
They came to play their part in the
transfer of Wakefield, birthplace of
George Washington. to the ownership of
the American people.
Return to Farms.
Some of the Popes Greek Washing
tons remained during the ceremony.
their pictures taken together and shake
get back to the farm work. This is a
busy season in Westmoreland County.
The coming of the Washingtons gave
a singularly appropriate and homely
tone to the ceremony. In the features
of all of them there was something
however tenuous and intangible-re-
minding one of the man to whom the
race owes its distinction, and whose
200th birthday anniversary the world
Is celebrating this year. 1t gave the
whole affair domestic, family atmos-
phere. 1t made it far easier-using the
words with which Secretary of the In
terror Ray Lyman Wilbur closed his ad-
dress of acceptance-'to think of Wash
ington as we think of one another"
A few years ago Wakefield was a
bush-tangled waste in the midst of
q red cedar forest, its history buried
so deeply under the forlorn grave time
had thrown over it that only an arche-
ologist could discover traces of it. The
birthplace of Washington in two CEN
turies had been about as completely
wiped off the face of nature as Troy
or Nineveh. Fire had destroyed the
mansion. The pillow had gone over
the place. The bramble had claimed it.
House Disappeared.
The Washingtons were scattered,
although considerable number of them
still remained on farms in the close
neighborhood The family graves were
lost. The tombstones were broken and
scattered. Some of the Washingtons
may have rebelled against this situa-
ton. But they were poor folk. The
Civil War had desolated the country.
They were living in an age too busy
with building the future to be mindful
OF the past. So the home of John
Washington, the sailor who founded
the family line in the New World, was
allowed to disappear.
One little girl OF the Washington line,
reared in the neighborhood where
Pope's Creek emptieS into the Potomac,
may have been born with more i'm
agination or more sentiment than the
others. She played about the Wake
field peninsula and explored the
bramble- covered fields of the old estate
She rebelled against the advance of
oblivion. The dream of her life was
to see the manor restored to its original
condition-to an exact reproduction of
what it had been that long ago Febru-
ary night when George Washington was
born in the mansion and during those
long Summers when he learned to
crawl and walk on the broad lawns that
reached down to the river
Later she came into financial circum-
stances which enabled her to realize
her vision. She found the American
people growing more sensitive to the
past-especially after the Great War
which seemed to have brought tre-
mendous increases of patriotic senti-
ment, wealth and leisure. The Govern
ment had taken over Wakef1eld-in
part. Eleven acres Of the manor was a
national hn l;n
ton Of the War Department. There
was monument there, rising through
the bramble. Even that was attracting
many visitors who braVed the bad roads