Archeologists dig up Washington's boyhood home

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - George Washington's boyhood home has finally been excavated in a project that may shed light on the formative years of the first U.S. president, archeologists said on Wednesday.

They say they will try to reconstruct the clapboard farmhouse, where the family moved in 1738, when Washington was 6 years old.

Earlier attempts to find the remains of the house at Ferry Farm, near Fredericksburg, Virginia had failed.

David Muraca, director of archeology for The George Washington Foundation, which owns the property 50 miles south of Washington D.C., said the foundations of the house and cellars are clearly genuine.

"This is it -- this is the site of the house where George Washington grew up," Muraca said in a statement.

"If George Washington did indeed chop down a cherry tree, as generations of Americans have believed, this is where it happened," added Philip Levy, associate professor of history at the University of South Florida.

"There is little actual documentary evidence of Washington's formative years. What we see at this site is the best available window into the setting that nurtured the father of our country."

The work, paid for by the state of Virginia and various private foundations, as well as the National Geographic Society, has turned up many artifacts.

These include pieces of the house's ceilings and painted walls, fragments of 18th-century pottery, wig curlers and toothbrush handles made of bone.

"The land was plowed in the 19th century, so some of the objects we've found are in small pieces," Muraca said.

"We do have larger objects -- parts of a tea set that probably belonged to George's mother, Mary Ball Washington, wine bottles, knives, forks and 10 pieces of a group of small figurines that might have stood on a mantle."

Most of the wood used to build the original farmhouse was plundered to build later structures or destroyed during the Civil War.

As he grew up, the young George Washington farmed tobacco, wheat and corn.

"On these fields, George transitioned from boyhood to manhood. He decided to learn surveying, worked at making social contacts and contemplated joining the British Navy, until his mother vetoed the idea," Muraca said. "If she had let him go, the future of our country would have been very different."

In 1753, Washington moved to his estate on the Potomac River at Mount Vernon, 15 miles south of the city that bears his name.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Alan Elsner)