A Lamentation for Gen. Washington, Esq. commander in chief of the combined forces of America and France, during the Revolutionary War, and afterwards president of the United States of America---who died December 14th, 1799

This sheet includes five elements dealing with Washington’s death: a lengthy headnote reviewing Washington’s positions and date of death, a mourning song, a prose Masonic elegy, a biblical quotation, and finally a Masonic funeral song. Following the headnote are two verses of a longer hymn apparently written by a Hartford, Connecticut, author. The lyric was printed in the Norwich Courier on January 8, 1800. The Courier carried the text, copied from the Connecticut Courant of December 30, 1799, with a full description of the local memorial service for Washington at which the hymn was read, apparently not yet set to music.

The text was soon set to music and called “Mount Vernon” by Stephen Jenks (1772-1856), a composer and singing master who grew up in Ellington, Connecticut. The text has persisted in Sacred Harp tradition and is still in print today in the same form that it first appeared (McGraw 110; Jenks, Collected Works 140-41).[1] The Coverly broadside includes verses 1 and 3 of the Courier poem. The fuging chorus in the musical example, beginning “Where shall our country turn its eye,” was verse 4. A paragraph follows beginning with biblical quotes from 2 Samuel 1:19 and continues, asking Masons to mourn for their “departed chief.”

The Masonic funeral song, “Columbia’s Lamentation for General Washington,” is preceded by two brief biblical quotations. The first, “Our Fathers, where are they?” is an oft-quoted phrase from Zechariah 1:5,

Your fathers, where are they?
And the prophets, do they live for ever?

The second is a reference to Methuselah from Genesis 5:27.

The song itself is an extended Masonic elegy, full of biblical references, and written as a personal mourning piece. The first four verses are in the voice of Washington’s mother, Mary, who actually died in 1789, but beginning with verse five, the tenor of the lyrics changes. By verse seven, the responsibility to keep Washington’s name and reputation alive is given to his Masonic brethren. Masonic images and expressions dominate the text that was distributed chiefly on broadsides into the 1830s.