Washington Memorial Window, All Saint’s Church (Maldon, 1928)

Laurence Washington, who died in Maldon, Essex in 1652, was the great-great grandfather of George Washington. In 1924, Malden, Massachusetts was celebrating its 275^th anniversary. Isaac Lothian Seymour, vicar of Maldon back in the ‘Old World’, was invited to the ceremonies as a special guest. He told them that he had evidence, gleaned from the church archive, that Laurence Washington was buried in his parish. Citizens of Malden, headed by William H. Winship and supported by the Sulgrave Institution (an Anglo-American society), volunteered to pay for a memorial window to honour this evocative connection.

Designed by a Londoner, A. K. Nicholson, the three panes of stained-glass feature: St George (representing Patriotism); St Nicholas, patron saint of sailors, holding a model of the Mayflower (representing Colonisation); and Joan of Arc (representing Freedom). Smaller images show: George Washington taking the Presidential oath, the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and also of Columbus; the coat of arms of England, the US, Washington and Maldon; and the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell (Philadelphia), and the Washington Monument. Put together, the window celebrated the supposed characteristics of the Anglo-American ‘race’ and the connections between the two countries – of which the Mayflower was clearly a serviceable emblem.

The window was unveiled in July 1928 by the American Ambassador (Governor Fuller of Massachusetts) and dedicated by the Lord Bishop of Chelmsford. The silver drums of the 1^st Batt. Essex Regiment played throughout the day. The streets were apparently ‘thronged’ with local people welcoming the many American visitors and, ‘everywhere flew the Star-spangled Banner, cheek by jowl with the Union Jack’. A civic reception for the local elite was also held at the Parish Hall, decorated with flags of the British Empire and the United States. As would be expected, the speeches throughout the day celebrated Anglo-American kinship – mother and daughter, or two brothers divided by an ocean - and contributions to the peace and progress of the whole world. Maldon, Essex and Malden, Massachusetts were held up as examples of the small-town communities that made huge nations thrive. As the Mayor put it, ‘the history of Maldon is an epitome of the history of England.’

‘Maldon’s famous son’, Chelmsford Chronicle (6 July 1928), 5.

‘Borough of Maldon, Washington Memorial Window’, Essex Newsman (26 May 1928), 1.

‘Maldon’s coming day’, Chelmsford Chronicle (20^th April 1928), 4.