In 2010 the Samuel Adams beer company trumpeted beer's role in founding the nation. It claimed that William Bradford's Pilgrims came ashore in Plymouth, Massachusetts, only because they were "out of beer." (Bradford actually wrote that the Pilgrims made straight for land—"whatsoever it was they cared not"—because they had "no water, no beere, nor any woode.") The Boston beer company further claimed that the American Revolution originated in the taverns of New England.
"The revolutionaries gathered over beer to plot their rebellion," it proposed, adding that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were home brewers. Samuel Adams
Inherited his father's beer company, although he "clearly preferred fomenting rebellion to fermenting beer." This was true: Adams's chief claim to posterity is related to tea.
Yet the founders are so deeply embedded in our culture that their names, in addition to appearing on beer bottles, can be spotted almost everywhere. "Washington" is the name of thirty-one counties and forty-two cities. Iowa and Indiana together have nearly 100 "Washington" townships; California has twenty-eight "Washington Elementary Schools." After "Main Street," Washington is the most common street name in the United States.
School children also relish his name: Since Washington's
World History
