General George Washington was the hero of the American Revolution and he won the electoral vote for president unanimously not just once, but twice.  Attentive to his public image, Washington rode by carriage to his public appearances, but just before arriving left the carriage and mounted a white horse named Nelson for his grand entrance. He disliked shaking hands and felt that pressing the flesh was beneath him.

As one of the richest landowners in Virginia, George lived on a large estate with access to the best food in the country at the time.  However, his health limited his consumption.  As a result of heredity, diet, hygiene, or some combination thereof, George suffered from poor dental health throughout his adult life.  Ron Chernow, in his biography titled Washington: A Life, writes that as a child the president liked to crack nuts with his teeth, a “habit that he later blamed for his long history of dental trouble.” As early as his twenties he experienced regular toothaches, decay and tooth loss, and by the time he was inaugurated president in 1789 he had only one real tooth left in his mouth.  He treated the resulting pain with a range of cleaners, medicines and dentures.

Contrary to popular legend, Washington’s dentures were not made of wood.  Before the Revolutionary War, he wore a partial ivory denture wired to his remaining teeth.  Dr. John Greenwood, a pioneering New York dentist who had fought against Britain in the war, later fashioned more advanced ivory dentures for Washington which featured gold wire springs and brass screws that held human teeth (by some accounts, teeth were occasionally purchased, or even taken from slaves).  Greenwood left space in the denture to accommodate the president’s last tooth but, when it, too, finally was lost, Washington gave it to Greenwood as a keepsake.

Washington’s only surviving full set of dentures on display at Mount Vernon and an unnamed internet scalawag’s vision of what he might have looked like wearing it.

The dentures not only caused pain, but disfigured Washington’s appearance.  He commented that Greenwood’s dentures “are both uneasy in the mouth and budge my lips out” and that the teeth “have, by degrees, worked loose.”  (Look closely at Gilbert Stuart’s portrait above and you can see the budge) The ivory stained easily and required extensive maintenance, and the dentures made speaking and eating a challenge. (He avoided public speaking; his second inaugural address was the shortest ever, containing only 135 words.) The dentures also influenced menus at Mount Vernon, his Virginia estate.  He required soft foods that could easily be masticated and he washed them down with beer he brewed himself using a recipe still available from his estate.

Mount Vernon’s website reports that, “as a colonel of the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, a 20-something-year-old George Washington inscribed the following recipe “To make Small Beer” in the notebook he carried:  Take a large Siffer full of Bran Hops to your Taste. Boil these 3 hours. Then strain out 3 Gallns into a Cooler put in 3 Gallns Molasses while the Beer is Scalding hot or rather draw the Molasses into the Cooler & Strain the Beer on it while boiling Hot [.]. let this stand till it is little more than Blood warm then put in a quart of Yest if the weather is very Cold cover it over with a Blank(et) & let it work in the Cooler 24 hours then put it into the Cask—leave the Bung open till it is almost don(e) woring—Bottle it that day week it was Brewed.”