Do you rebel against authority?
112
In 2010 the Samuel Adams beer company trumpeted
beer’s role in founding the nation. It claimed that William
Bradford’s Pilgrims came ashore in Plymouth,
Massachusetts, only because they were “out of beer.”
(Bradford actually wrote that the Pilgrims made straight
for land—“whatsoever it was they cared not”—because
they had “no water, no beere, nor any woode.”) The
Boston beer company further claimed that the American
Revolution originated in the taverns of New England.
“The revolutionaries gathered over beer to plot their
rebellion,” it proposed, adding that George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson were home brewers. Samuel Adams
inherited his father’s beer company, although he “clearly
preferred fomenting rebellion to fermenting beer.” This
was true: Adams’s chief claim to posterity is related to tea.
Yet the founders are so deeply embedded in our cul-
ture that their names, in addition to appearing on beer
bottles, can be spotted almost everywhere. “Washington”
is the name of thirty-one counties and forty-two cities.
Iowa and Indiana together have nearly 100 “Washington”
townships; California has twenty-eight “Washington
Elementary Schools.” After “Main Street,” Washington is
the most common street name in the United States.
School children also relish his name: Since Washington’s