Review: George Washington Written upon the Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, and Landscape by Philip Levy

Abstract

Most public historians, especially those who labor at singular historic sites, may notspend much time connecting their work to the academic discourse on ‘‘big history,’’but perhaps they should. While it is true that focused chronologies are tidier towork with than expansive epochs, there are benefits to thinking ‘‘big’’ about relatively small places. In George Washington Written upon the Land: Nature, Memory,Myth, and Landscape, Philip Levy draws our attention to Ferry Farm, a storied siteoutside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, best known as a boyhood home of GeorgeWashington. Levy creates a rich and compelling landscape biography in which heinvestigates everything from the meaning of an excavated cache of white clay wigcurlers to Ferry Farm’s role in the rise of the Anthropocene. A professor of historyat the University of South Florida and a historical archaeologist, Levy has beeninvestigating Ferry Farm for fifteen years. This is his second book about the site.The first provided a historical context for the farm covering the seventeenththrough late twentieth centuries. In this more theoretically ambitious work, Levyknits together a memory study of Washington’s childhood years and a landscapestudy of Ferry Farm, an inquiry that culminates in a discussion linking myth andplace to the transformation of the biosphere.