The Jefferson County (WV) Historical Society, Friends of Happy Retreat, and the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics are pleased to sponsor a lecture by Dr. Philander Chase, editor of the Colonial Series of the Papers of George Washington at 2pm on Saturday, April 19th. The lecture will be hosted by the Byrd Center for Legislative Studies and will be held in the Center's auditorium on the campus of Shepherd University at 213 N. King Street, Shepherdstown, WV.
Dr. Chase will discuss George Washington's experiences as a Shenandoah Valley surveyor and landowner in what is now Jefferson County, WV, and how those experiences fostered his commitment to western development and American nationalism. Dr. Chase will also discuss briefly the Washington Papers project. Much of this lecture will be drawn from his essay "A Stake in the West: George Washington as Backcountry Surveyor and Landholder," published in Warren R. Hofstra, ed., George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry (Madison, WI: Madison House Publishers, 1998). Quoting from an online description of Washington's surveying experiences (http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/education/life/life2.html):
"In the three years he spent as a surveyor, young George earned a large sum of money and also acquired over 2,000 acres of land for himself. Later in life, Washington used his surveying skills to measure his own property and farms, and his familiarity with approximating distances and using a compass aided him in the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars."
Philander Chase is the senior editor of the Colonial Series of the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia. He is now in his thirty-fifth year of editing Washington's papers, having joined the project's editorial staff in 1973, the same year in which he received his Ph.D. in early American history from Duke University. In addition to his editing duties, Dr. Chase has written numerous articles and reviews. Dr. Chase and other Washington Papers editors presented President G.W. Bush with a copy of Volume 12 of the Presidential Series of the Washington Papers in April 2005.
The formal portion of the lecture will last for about forty minutes. Additional time will be provided for questions and answers about any other aspects of Washington's life the audience may wish to raise.
Saturday, April 19, 2008, 2:00 pm