Christmas 1779

Christmases tended to be tough on the Father of Our Country.

In 1740, George Washington's boyhood home burned to the ground on Christmas Eve. The family sheltered in the cook-house for what the eight-year-old later called "a cheerless Christmas Day."

In 1753, while stationed on the frontier with the Virginia militia, Washington spent Christmas Eve at a trading post named Murdering Town, where his troops did battle with the French and Indians.

In 1759, during the couple's first Christmas together, George and Martha Washington stayed in separate rooms at Mount Vernon, because Martha was violently ill with the measles.

In 1776, on the darkest Christmas of the American Revolution, Washington crossed the Delaware.

In 1799, only two weeks before Christmas, Washington caught a wicked head cold and died.

Washington's Christmas of 1779 was quite a bit better.

The day saw the commander-in-chief and his Continental Army hunkered down in bucolic Morristown, New Jersey. 

Three weeks before, Washington had chosen the village as his army's winter quarters, because a nearby mountain chain made it invulnerable to British attack. He summarily ordered his troops to build log cabins to live in, and threatened the villagers with martial law, if they failed to open their homes to his officers. 

A merchant named Ford loaned his home to Washington, a house so luxurious it prompted George to ask Martha to travel from Mount Vernon to the Ford Mansion, to join him there for the holidays.

On Christmas Day, the couple dined in comfort in the Ford home; and while they dined, in a tavern two blocks away Benedict Arnold stood trial for war-profiteering—a charge he'd be cleared of, but barely.

Nine months later, Arnold would betray Washington, committing the deed that still makes his name synonymous with treason: conspiring to surrender West Point to the British.