compass (surveyor's plain)
name: label: owner and user
content: Duval, Samuel
label: owner
content: Kimmel, Anthony
label: owner and user
content: Washington, George
label: maker
content: Rittenhouse, David
notes: label: Description
content: Legend has it that David Rittenhouse gave this compass to George Washington in 1782.
label: Description
content: If we believe this legend--and, indeed, there is no reason to doubt it--we might assume that
label: Description
content: America's most accomplished mathematical instrument maker and one of her leading scientists thought that the hero of the American Revolution should replace his English surveying instrument with one of American manufacture.
label: Description
content: Rittenhouse and Washington might have met in the fall of 1774 when Washington was in
label: Description
content: Philadelphia attending the First Continental Congress. Washington certainly would have been interested in Rittenhouse's instruments and his work in connection with the surveys of several colonial boundaries. However, the first documented connection between the two men dates from June 1779 when Washington wrote to Rittenhouse: "I beg leave to trouble you with a Theodolite which is a little out of repair and to request that you will be good enough to have it put in order."
label: Description
content: Kimmel went on to say that Duval was surveying Mount Vernon with "an imperfect Instrument of English Manufactory" and complaining boisterously of its inaccuracy "within the hearing of the 'Mount Vernon Farmer' who accompanied the surveys." Washington then, "as the tradition affirms, turned silently on his Heel, went to the Mount Vernon Mansion, and returned & brought with him this surveyor's compass and made it a present to Samuel Duval, under a lecture on 'Impatience.'" Kimmel believed that this transfer occurred in 1795. The Smithsonian Institution acquired the compass in 1883, along with other historic relics housed in the United States Patent Office.
label: Description
content: Ref: "The Correspondence Relating the Surveyor's Compass of Gen. George Washington, Made and Presented to him by David Rittenhouse, the Philosopher &amp; Mechanic of Philadelphia 1782, Which was given by the Farmer of Mount Vernon to Captain Samuel Duval, the County Surveyor of Frederick County, Maryland, 1795, and had passed through the hands of William Hobbs &amp; Son, 1815, and of Captain George Riner, 1852, into the Possession of Anthony Kimmel, all of Linganore, Frederick County, Maryland, 1852." This volume of letters is in the Political History collection, #92,542.
place: label: place made
content: United States: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
topic: label: Subject
content: Surveying
setName: label: See more items in
content: Political History: Political History
label: Exhibition
content: American Presidency
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PL.092538
label: catalog number
content: 16108
label: accession number
content: 13152
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Compass (surveyor's plain)
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 13 3/4 in; x 34.925 cm