Biography | George Washington — The New Brick Tomb That Finally Followed the Will

People who walk the slope below the mansion think they are standing at the vault used in 1799.

They are not. Washington was first laid in the old family vault four days after he died. The brick chamber visitors face today opened in 1831.

His will had already named the problem. The old vault needed repairs and sat in the wrong place. He asked for a new brick tomb, on a larger scale, at the foot of the Vineyard Inclosure.

Congress wanted something else. After the death it resolved to raise a marble monument in the new Capitol and to place his body in a crypt under the dome.

Martha Washington consented. A crypt was prepared. The transfer was never finished.

The body stayed at Mount Vernon. So did Martha's, after her death in 1802. Both remained in the old vault while the Capitol project stalled.

In 1830 a thief broke into that decaying vault and stole a skull. It was not Washington's. His remains were in a sealed lead coffin. The stolen bones belonged to a relative of Bushrod Washington's wife.

The scare, and the vault's condition, finally produced the building the will had described. In 1831 the surviving executors moved George and Martha Washington, and the other family dead then in the old vault, into the new brick enclosure.

The marble sarcophagus that now holds Washington's lead inner casket was carved in 1837 by John Struthers of Philadelphia. A plainer companion sarcophagus was made for Martha.

The inscription over the iron gate reads that the remains of General George Washington rest within the enclosure. The inner vault still holds other Washington and Custis family dead.

Congress later asked John Augustine Washington for the body again. He refused, citing the will. Virginia asked him not to consent. The Capitol crypt stayed empty of him.

The New Tomb stands west of the mansion, near the fruit garden and nursery, inland from the old vault closer to the river. The address of the estate is 3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway.

The grounds are a public museum. Stand quietly. Do not photograph other visitors. Keep to posted hours.

The useful split is simple. The death belongs to the bedchamber. The afterlife of the body belongs to this 1831 vault.

Photo: Hij802, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons