Father/Daughter Duo Impress at DAR

On Friday February 11, following an introduction by staff historian Dave Winkler, who spoke on progress made on the Naval Documents of the American Revolution series, former NHF Executive Director Capt. Todd Creekman and his daughter Amanda Isaac offered an encore presentation to the board of directors of the Daughters of the American Revolution of one held at Mount Vernon last September. The subject: two Chinese porcelain punch bowls that were commissioned in the late 18th century by Revolutionary War privateer hero and postwar merchant ship captain, Commo. Thomas Truxtun. In the midst of overseeing construction of Constellation, one of the U.S. Navy’s first six frigates, in the 1795–1797 timeframe, Truxtun ordered two large punch bowls featuring a detailed Chinese artist’s depiction of a 44-gun frigate rigged for war gracing the bowls’ interiors. The bowls were exact duplicates, except for the outside decorative cartouches featuring Truxtun’s stylized initials “TT” on one bowl and our first president George Washington’s “GW” on the other. In addition, the Washington Bowl has the word “Defender” added below the ship image, likely Truxtun’s tribute to Washington’s role as the Revolutionary War’s military victor. While the

details of how and when Truxtun presented the “Defender” bowl to Washington are lost to history, the bowl was at Mount Vernon by the time of Washington’s 1799 death. Truxtun’s bowl remained in his family through several generations, until one of the Commodore’s descendants gifted the “TT” bowl to the Naval Historical Foundation in the late 1940s. It was displayed in the Foundation’s downtown Washington, D.C., Truxtun–Decatur Museum and subsequently the Navy’s national museum at the Washington Navy Yard, where it remains today. The “GW” or “Defender” bowl had a more exciting journey through Amanda Isaac looks on as her father, former history. Bequeathed at her 1802 Naval Historical Foundation Executive Director death as “the bowl with the ship Capt. Todd Creekman presents Daughters of the American Revolution President General Denise VanBuren with a replica Truxtun Bowl. in it” by Martha Washington to grandson George Washington Parke Custis, the bowl passed to his daughter Mary at his death in the late 1850s. Mary had married young U.S. Army officer Robert E. Lee in 1831, and their family was living at the Custis estate at the outbreak of the Civil War. When Mrs. Lee and family left for Richmond, Virginia, after Virginia seceded and her husband resigned his U.S. Army commission, the bowl remained behind in the Lee residence, Arlington House, during the war. It went missing during the property’s occupation by Union Army troops and emerged years later in New England. The Washington bowl returned to Mount Vernon in time for the 1976 Purchase Your Bicentennial. In 1981 an NHF member and Truxtun descendant Truxtun Bowl at the happened to visit Mount Vernon and noted the similarity Navy Museum Store with the bowl in the Navy Museum, and the bowls were briefly reunited for the first time. Close coordination between NHF, the Navy Museum, and Mount Vernon Our Price: $160.00 facilitated a reunion last September at Mount Vernon to Sale Price: $112.00 closely examine and compare the two bowls with the assisSavings: $48.00 tance of modern technology. Captain Creekman and his daughter updated the gathered group at DAR Headquarters downtown on some of the similarities found between https://museumstore.navyhistory.org the two bowls and, of course, noted replicas of the “TT” bowl were available for sale at the Navy Museum gift shop.