Washington Slept Here—A Lot: Christiana Campbell’s Williamsburg Taverns

TOPICS: George Washington, Short Biography, Washington or Custis Family, Women in the Colonial & Founding Eras

by William M. Ferraro, Senior Associate Editor
October 29, 2021

Between military service, business activities, and political obligations, George Washington traveled extensively and slept away from home many nights. In fact, he slept in so many places, and those locations so loudly publicized these visits, that the claim “George Washington Slept Here” became humorous.¹

My purpose now is not to trace bad jokes but to introduce a woman who may have provided accommodations for Washington more often and over a longer period than any other person. This woman was Christiana Campbell, who kept taverns in Williamsburg, Va., during the 1760s and 1770s, when Washington routinely visited that town to attend sessions of the House of Burgesses and to conduct business—notably transactions related to the Custis estate that he oversaw for his stepchildren, John Parke and Martha “Patsy” Parke Custis. Why did Washington patronize Campbell’s establishments? And did the two develop a friendship?

Glimpses of Campbell appear regularly in Washington’s diaries and in cash receipts kept during his years in Virginia before the Revolutionary War.² The modern edition of those diaries supplies a generous identification that describes her tavern as Washington’s “habitual lodging place in Williamsburg” and quotes a description of Campbell penned in 1783 that limned her as “a little old Woman, about four feet high; & equally thick, a little turn up Pug nose, a mouth screw’d up to one side.”³ Earlier editors of The Papers of George Washington include that she had married an apothecary located in Blandford, Va., and given birth to a daughter named Molly. Campbell’s husband died in 1752. That event prompted a return to her hometown of Williamsburg, where her father, John Burdett, had kept an inn. Knowing something about the hospitality business, she began operating her own tavern on Duke of Gloucester Street near the Capitol.

Though convenience presumably drew Washington and other burgesses to Campbell’s place, they apparently came back again and again because she was a good cook. Even on the occasions when Washington would lodge elsewhere in Williamsburg, he typically took his meals at Campbell’s table. Cleanliness and a sociable atmosphere likely characterized Campbell’s tavern, because Washington stayed there a few times with his stepson John Parke Custis and even once with his stepdaughter Patsy.⁴

While not on the same level as the Virginia planters who frequented her business, Campbell had social pretensions. She owned enslaved people—a symbol of status in that society—and enrolled their children in a local school.⁵ Jolting to modern sensibilities, the presence of enslaved laborers at Campbell’s tavern probably appealed to her slave-owning patrons.

In 1771, Campbell relocated from the building on Duke of Gloucester Street to a house “behind the Capitol” on Waller Street. She ran an advertisement in the local newspaper promising that “those Gentlemen” who favored her with “their custom” could “depend upon genteel accommodations, and the very best entertainment—I shall reserve rooms for the Gentlemen who formerly lodged with me.”⁶ Washington did not stay with Campbell as often over the next three years, but he still ate most meals there when visiting Williamsburg. Campbell prospered at her new location, and she bought the building and two lots at an auction in July 1773.⁷

Involvement in the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia limited Washington’s time in Williamsburg during 1774, and he left Virginia behind entirely the next year upon taking command of the Continental army. Campbell’s business thrived until the Virginia capital moved to Richmond in 1780. Without a steady flow of affluent visitors, her profits plummeted, and with that misfortune, her ability to care for the property.

Campbell abandoned her decrepit building not long after the Revolutionary War ended in 1783 and moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia. She died in that town on March 25, 1792, and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery, where her gravestone can still be seen. An epitaph reads: “She was humane, generous, and kind, an affectionate and indulgent parent, warm in her attachments. Sincere in her professions, An enemy to oppression, A friend to the distressed, The means whose relief she generously exercised and promoted.”⁸

As his mother and sister lived in Fredericksburg, Washington visited the town occasionally during the years Campbell lived there. No surviving documents mention him seeing or taking any interest in the former tavernkeeper who had prepared his room and meals so often in his earlier life. The utter absence of social contact suggests that Washington never developed a personal friendship with the hospitable woman;  or, if he had, the passage of time and her fall from prosperity had broken the connection. Campbell’s importance in Washington’s life rests on the role she played in facilitating his political relationships and stature in Virginia by providing a suitable environment for meetings and convivial gatherings. For that contribution, Christiana Campbell should not be forgotten.

 

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1. See Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, George Washington Slept Here: A Comedy in Three Acts (New York, 1940). See also Karal Ann Marling, George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876‒1986 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).
2. See, for example, Cash Accounts, June 1770 and May 1771, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington. Colonial Series. 10 vols. (Charlottesville, Va., 1983‒95): 8:346‒47, 452‒55.
3. Entry for May 5, 1768, in Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Diaries of George Washington. 6 vols. (Charlottesville, Va., 1976‒79): 2:58‒59.
4. See entries for Nov. 21‒22, 25‒28, 1769, in Diaries, 2:195‒97.
5. Antonio T. Bly, “In Pursuit of Letters: A History of the Bray Schools for Enslaved Children in Colonial Virginia,” History of Education Quarterly 51 (2011): 449‒50.
6. The Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg; Purdie and Dixon), Oct. 3, 1771.
7. Entry for Dec. 2, 1773, in Diaries, 3:219.
8. Dora C. Jett, Minor Sketches of Major Folk, and where they sleep: The Old Masonic Burying Ground, Fredericksburg, Virginia (Richmond, 1928), 24‒25.