Martha Wasn't There! And Other Common Misconceptions

With the Old Senate Chamber opening in just over a month, no one can ignore the myths that have taken hold over the past several centuries surrounding the room. While the Old Senate Chamber is filled with many fascinating tales, some true and some less so, it’s time to set the record straight on at least a few of these favorite stories.

The ladies in the gallery during the resignation, including Martha Washington at the center. Crop from General George Washington Resigning His Commission by John Trumbull, 1824. U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Commemorating George

In the early twentieth-century, Annapolis lawyer and amateur historian George Forbes would give lectures using vintage photographs of Annapolis that he had collected over the years. When one picture of Edwin White’s Washington Resigning would appear on the slideshow’s projector, Forbes would read a speech from his lecture notes on the history of the painting, and wouldn’t be able to resist adding, “Something should be done to commemorate this scene either by marking the place with a star, where Washington stood; by erecting a statue of him thereon, or in a way which I think better still, and which I urged in an address before the Municipal Art Society, to reproduce the entire scene in wax, after the works of Eden Musee, and Madam [Tussauds] in London.”[1]

Forbes was far from the first person to believe that the momentous occasion of Washington’s resignation needed to be immortalized in the room where it took place. Though perhaps not as eclectic as Forbes’ wax sculpture scene, people over the years have come up with a multitude of creative ways to immortalize the resignation.

Plastic mannequin of George Washington - one of the most recent incarnations of a tribute to the resignation. Gift of the Maryland Society of Senates Past and the Colonial Dames of America, Chapter One, Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 1545-808.

"Standing on this spot..."

The dedication of the plaque commemorating where Washington resigned 

Recorded on page 554 of the voluminous (1300 page) proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Continental Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution, held in Washington, D.C. from April 17-22, 1916, is a record of the activities of the Peggy Stewart Tea Party Chapter for the previous year. Among the Annapolis chapter's expenses is:

"$40.10 for tablet set in floor of Old Senate Chamber to mark the spot where Gen'l Washington stood when he resigned his commission in the Continental Army."

1920 - 1924 
Photograph of reenactment of Washington's resignation in restored Old Senate Chamber 
Howard E. Hayman, Jr. Collection 
MSA SC 1804-02-0058