MDDM Washington, Gershom, Great Dismal Swamp

[Simon Bryquer]

Personally I believe he named him after Gershom Scholem, the
scholar/teacher/writer and world's foremost authority of Jewish mysticism
who devoted his life to the academic study of the Kabbalah. His work  on the
Sabbatai Svi especially and the Sabbatian heresy might shed some interesting
light on this issue. Anyway as I said I think that was the first creative
spark for  a name.  He started with Scholem and then worked backwards into
American history records of the time to find a Gershom and your reference
fits in here.

SCB


----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2002 4:32 PM
Subject: MDDM Washington, Gershom, Great Dismal Swamp


> Possible source for the name of Washington's manservant, Gershom:
>
> "Leaving Mount Vernon on May 16, 1763, Washington set out for Williamsburg
> to attend an extra session of the House of Burgesses. On Wednesday, May
25,
> 1763, according to his carefully kept expense accounts, he set out on
> horseback down the Virginia Peninsula for Hampton, where he paid one
> shilling, five pence to be ferried over to Norfolk. Arriving there,
> Washington took another ferry to Portsmouth, paying one shilling, six
pence
> for his fare, and proceeded to Colonel Edward Riddick's plantation in
> Nansemond County, from which he set out to explore the Great Dismal, which
> he described as 'a glorious paradise'.
>
> [...]
>
> Washington is known to have made at least five other visits to his lands
in
> the Dismal Swamp, but there is no record that he ever passed through
Norfolk
> again. Records indicate that he used Suffolk as a base from then on
because
> of its closer proximity to the swamp. But when Washington wanted his
Dismal
> Swamp holdings charted, he entrusted the survey to Gershom Nimmo
(? -1764),
> the surveyor of Norfolk County, whose map, dated 'Norfolk, 20 November
> 1763', has been preserved. This chart includes the earliest known map of
> Lake Drummond."
>
> http://www.norfolkhistorical.org/highlights/14.html
>
> Historical documents and data pertaining to the development of the Great
> Dismal Swamp, with a reprint of Colonel Byrd's 1728 Journal detailing
plans
> for the propagation of hemp after the draining of the swamp:
>
> http://www.webroots.org/library/usahist/dotds000.html
>
> best
>