Twitter ca 1748

I have a thing for US Presidents. Don't ask me why, but I can name them all in order and I find them pretty interesting. I've found that learning about them is a pretty nice gateway for learning about the history of this fine country through the ages. Most recently I've been hooked on the OG himself, Mr. George Washington.


Late last year, I read a book all about the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. While Jimmy was in town last month I picked up the first book in the "American Presidents" series at our favorite local used book store for $5. The bibliographies of these two works led me to discover that the Internet is a great place for armchair historians. You want to read the actual writings of GW? Blammo! Another fabulous reason to stare at my computer all day... awesome.

Anyway, that brings me to the title of this post. The first extant writings are a diary that GW kept while performing a survey of some land in the Virginia backcountry. Ah, for the days of private diaries... If Twitter had existed back in the mid-18th century, we would have ended up with pointless tweets like this:

"This Morning Mr. James Genn, ye surveyor, came to us ; we travell'd over ye Blue Ridge to Capt. Ashbys on Shannandoah River. Nothing remarkable happen'd."

Sheesh George! If nothing interesting happened, why'd you waste the ink? Incidentally, this made me learn all about the word ye. Did you know that when used in this context it's just a typographical shortcut for the word the? It should even be read and pronounced as such. You really do learn something new every day.