What the Founding Fathers would have put on their Fourth of July wishlists
Since the Fourth is almost here, I thought it would be fun to imagine what a few of the Founding Fathers would have asked for if they had sat down and made themselves a wishlist. I gave myself one rule while I was putting this together: every single item has to connect to something the man actually did, owned, or worked on. I think this kind of post makes for interesting reading as well as marketing WishPoster. So here is what I think these guys would have wanted.
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin is the easy place to start, because the man was basically a one-person gadget catalog. He invented or tinkered with so much of his own stuff that his list practically writes itself.
I could envision him having a wishlist that looks like the following:
Mr. Heater Radiant Propane Heater4,000-9,000 BTU of radiant heat; indoor / outdoor use$90
While the bifocals are the obvious one of his inventions, I left it off his 'wishlist' as everyone would need to see an optometrist rather than just buying these anywhere. Franklin got tired of swapping between his reading glasses and his distance glasses, so he had both lenses cut in half and fused into a single frame, and that is genuinely where bifocals come from.
The swim fins are less famous, but wow, what a great idea. Franklin made his first pair as a kid out of two oval pieces of wood that strapped to his hands, all so he could move faster across the water.
The space heater is a stand-in for the Franklin stove, his metal-lined fireplace that threw far more heat into a room than an open hearth did.
The chess set is not random either, since he was a serious enough player to write an entire essay on the game and later land in the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.
And the grabber tool is my favorite entry on this whole page (I have one of these!). In his eighties, Franklin got tired of climbing to reach the books on his top shelves, so he invented a long wooden arm with a gripping claw on the end. He would have loved that you can get one for a few dollars now.
Thomas Jefferson
If Franklin was the inventor, Jefferson was the foodie aristocrat who could not stop fiddling with the design of everyday objects. Here's my Jefferson-inspired wishlist:
The swivel chair belongs at the top because Jefferson is often credited with popularizing it, having designed himself a swiveling Windsor chair so he could turn to his books and side table without getting up.
Jefferson developed such a fondness for pasta abroad that he sketched out a macaroni machine and brought the real thing back to the States, which is a big part of why we credit him with helping popularize macaroni here.
The ice cream maker is the one that surprises people. The earliest known ice cream recipe written down by an American survives in Jefferson's own handwriting, and he served ice cream to guests often enough that it shows up again and again in their accounts of his table.
The decanter rounds it out, since he was a famous wine enthusiast who liked to set out the best European bottles he could get his hands on.
George Washington
Washington's list is the most on-brand for a Fourth of July cookout, because it comes down to two of his real passions: good whiskey and a lot of dogs.
- A bottle of rye whiskeyThe finest you can find
By the end of his life, Washington was running one of the largest whiskey distilleries in the entire country out of Mount Vernon, turning out close to eleven thousand gallons in a single year. Washington would have wanted a nice bottle and the glasses to go with it.
Washington was such a devoted dog breeder that he is considered the father of the American Foxhound, and he gave his dogs names like Sweet Lips and Drunkard. I like to think he would have splurged on the fancy harness.
In conclusion
I had to cut this off somewhere, but every founder has a list like this hiding in the historical record. John Adams reportedly started his mornings with a tankard of hard cider. Hamilton wrote all the time and would have wanted a nice pen. I might give a few of them their own wishlists later on, so if there is a historical figure you want to see get this treatment, that is exactly the kind of thing this blog was built to do anyway. Happy Fourth.
Ready to make your own wishlist?