Benjamin ALLSTON (1768- )

Individual Events and Attributes

Individual Note

The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 6. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, ed. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979. Page 125.

GW was rowed to Georgetown "by seven captains of vessels, dressed in round hats trimmed with gold lace, blue coats, white jackets, &c. in an elegant painted boat. On his arriving opposite the market he was saluted by the artillery, with fifteen guns, from the foot of Broad-street; and on his landing he was received by the light-infantry company with presented arms, who immediately after he passed, fired thirteen rounds" ( Md. Journal [Baltimore], 17 May 1791). A committee of seven gentlemen escorted GW to his lodgings, said to be Benjamin Allston's house on Front Street, and at 2:00 P.M. they presented GW with an address from the inhabitants of Georgetown and its vicinity. Immediately afterwards he received another address from the Masonic brethren of Prince George's Lodge No. 16. Both addresses and copies of GW's replies are in DLC:GW.

At the public dinner, which began at 4:00 P.M., GW sat in a chair that "was beautifully ornamented with an arch composed of laurel in full bloom." A similarly decorated chair awaited him in the festooned assembly room where the tea party was held following the dinner, but GW "declined the formality of being placed in a manner unsocial." Instead of sitting in the chair after being introduced to the ladies, he "seated and entertained several of them" there "in succession." The dress of the ladies on this occasion was conspicuously patriotic. "There appeared," said a newspaper account, "sashes highly beautified with the arms of the United States, and many of the ladies wore head-dresses ornamented with bandeaus, upon which were written, in letters of gold, either 'Long life to the President,' or 'Welcome to the hero'" ( Md. Journal [Baltimore], 31 May 1791). A ball apparently followed the tea party.

Georgetown, established 1735, lies at the head of Winyah Bay where the Waccamaw, Pee Dee, and Sampit rivers converge. A detachment of British soldiers occupied the town from July 1780 to May 1781, but the burning resulted from internecine warfare between Patriot and Loyalist partisans after the British departure: on 25 July 1781 Thomas Sumter sent some of his South Carolina State Troops to plunder the property of Loyalists in the Georgetown area, and a few days later a Loyalist privateer retaliated by attacking and burning the town (BASS [2], 202--3; Nathanael Greene to Continental Congress, 25 Aug. 1781, DNA: PCC, Item 155).