Is "George Washington had wooden teeth" true?

No. George Washington never wore wooden dentures.

The hardware that survives was ivory, metal, animal teeth, and human teeth. John Greenwood's 1789 inaugural set used hippopotamus ivory, gold wire springs, and brass screws holding human teeth, with a hole left for Washington's last remaining natural tooth. Mount Vernon's complete surviving set has human teeth, probably horse and cow teeth, and alloys of lead, tin, copper, and silver. None of that is wood.

The lumber story is the one that stuck in classrooms. The ledger is worse, and easier to overstate. In May 1784, Mount Vernon paid £6 2s to enslaved people for nine teeth, on account of the French dentist Jean Pierre Le Mayeur. That purchase is in the books. Historians cannot prove those particular teeth went into Washington's own mouth.

Wooden teeth were a field-trip gag: rustic, a little disgusting, and simple to remember. Founding-father grit you could sketch in a notebook.

The dental misery was real. Washington started losing teeth in his twenties. By the 1789 inauguration he had one natural tooth left. He wore painful false sets for years, shipped them off for repair, and complained that they were uneasy in the mouth and made his lips bulge. Gilbert Stuart's 1796 portraits caught that distortion.

Ivory also stained and browned without constant cleaning. Mount Vernon's records describe chalk, wax, a pine or cedar stick, even soaking the things in broth. HISTORY's account of the myth points to that unsightly brown as the likely seed of the wood rumor. Later storytellers saw grainy ivory and filled in lumber.

Lund Washington, the plantation manager, entered the payment in May 1784. The line does not carry a day of the month. The wording is blunt: cash paid to "Negroes for 9 Teeth," on account of Le Mayeur. The same transaction appears in the daybook under money paid on General Washington's account, then again in Ledger B.

George Washington was in Philadelphia from 26 April through 23 May that year. The money still sat on his account. Mount Vernon treats this as his participation in one documented purchase of teeth from unidentified enslaved people at the estate.

Their names were not written down. Historians cannot tell from the surviving paper whether Lund, Le Mayeur, or anyone else physically forced the extractions, how the £6 2s was split, or whether the people themselves ever held the coins. Calling it a voluntary market sale still misleads. They could not bargain as equals or freely refuse a demand from the man who owned them. Mount Vernon notes the constant threat of punishment. Historian Jennifer Van Horn, quoted in JSTOR Daily, puts the structure in one line: any economic exchange under slavery was inherently not fair.

Le Mayeur was around Alexandria that spring, advertising tooth transplants and offering to buy teeth. Washington was one of his patients, not the only one. In New York he had advertised two guineas apiece for good front teeth. In Richmond he added "slaves excepted." Nine teeth at the New York rate would have been worth almost nineteen pounds. Mount Vernon paid a little more than six.

The popular collapse of this story is a single sentence: Washington's personal dentures were made from his slaves' teeth. The documents do not get you there.

The surviving dentures do include human teeth. Period dentists preferred human teeth when they could get them, and they mixed in cow, horse, and hippopotamus teeth as needed. JSTOR Daily is careful: some of the human teeth in Washington's sets might have been his own pulled teeth. Others may have come from enslaved people. That uncertainty is doing the real work.

The 1784 notation says the nine teeth were taken "on account of" Le Mayeur. Mount Vernon reads that as 18th-century bookkeeping for the dentist receiving the teeth for his practice. If Washington had been buying them for himself, there would have been no reason to name the dentist on the line, the way poultry or garden produce purchases from enslaved people did not need a middleman in the entry.

The two surviving dentures that contain human teeth were made after 1789, years after that May payment. Mount Vernon says those later teeth might still have come from people enslaved at the estate. It also says there is no matching transaction. Washington Papers researcher Kathryn Gehred is blunt: we are not even sure the teeth priced in Ledger B are the same teeth in the dentures.

It remains possible Washington wore teeth taken from enslaved people. Possible is not the same as proven for a particular set.

Drop the wooden teeth. That one is settled.

Keep the purchase. Washington took part in buying teeth from people he enslaved. Even if those nine teeth went into Le Mayeur's traveling stock or some other patient's mouth, the record is still about taking body parts from people who could not refuse on equal terms. The ivory stain made the first president look folksy. The ledger is the part that actually happened.