About ten o’clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity…set out for New York in company with Mr. Thompson, [sic] and Colonel Humphries, [sic] with the best dispositions to render service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations.

—George Washington’s diary entry, April 16, 1789

Answering the Call

A re-enactment of Washinton’s 1789 inaugural departure.

In 1939, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the inaugural departure, Mount Vernon put on a show. Powdered wigs and colonel attire were donned; a coach and team of horses secured to reenact the historic moment. Denys Wortman, a New York artist and cartoonist, played George Washington, and Agnes Peter, one of Martha Washington’s great-great-great granddaughters, assumed the role of wife Martha. With much fanfare and publicity, the re-enactors bid farewell and set off with their coachmen on an eight-day journey from Mount Vernon to New York City. Juxtaposed against modern roadways and motorized vehicles, the horse-drawn party drew a great deal of attention as it traveled the same northern route as its predecessor.

The entourage arrived in New York to kick off the 1939 World’s Fair, whose start date of April 30 intentionally coincided with the anniversary of the first presidential inauguration. In his opening speech, President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the original journey: “He left the home he loved so well and proceeded by easy stages to New York, greeted with triumphal arches and flower-strewn streets in the large communities through which he passed on his way to New York City. [He took] ... the oath of office on April 30 on the balcony of the old Federal Hall … in a scene of republican simplicity and surrounded by the great men of the time, most of whom had served with him in the cause of independence throughout the Revolution.”