Washington Didn’t Have Wooden Teeth, But He Sure Had Boston on a Leash

No, George Washington didn’t have wooden teeth. Yes, he led the Siege of Boston. And if that sentence makes somebody with a clipboard and a feelings-degree flinch, good. History is supposed to have some bite.

The Washington Post (Feb. 16, 2026) walked through two things at once: a sticky myth Americans repeat like it’s gospel, and an early Revolutionary War win that deserves more respect than being shoved behind a Presidents Day mattress sale.

The actual story, not the cartoon

• After Lexington and Concord in April 1775, colonial militias bottled the British up in Boston.
• The Continental Congress picked Washington to command the new Continental Army.
• The Siege of Boston became his first campaign as commander-in-chief.
• The Post notes the siege bottled up as many as 11,000 British troops, plus loyalists.
• It ran nearly a year, driving toward the British evacuation on March 17, 1776, still celebrated in Boston as Evacuation Day.

Cold weather, hot steel: Knox and the Ticonderoga cannons

One of the biggest pushes that helped crack the stalemate came from cannons hauled from Fort Ticonderoga by Henry Knox in the dead of winter. Not magic. Logistics. The kind of grind that wins wars while the myth-factory is busy carving toothpick legends.

Washington ran his headquarters out of what is now Longfellow House in Cambridge, a National Park Service site that still stands. Real rooms. Real maps. Real mud.

Dorchester Heights: high ground does not care about your excuses

The turning point lives at Dorchester Heights, where American fortifications and cannons overlooked Boston and left the British with a nasty choice: take the hit or take the harbor route out. On March 17, 1776, they evacuated by ship. Some reports put it at roughly 11,000 British troops and about 1,000 Loyalists departing for Halifax, Nova Scotia.

And yes, in 2026 the National Park Service is marking the 250th commemoration of Evacuation Day at Dorchester Heights on Tuesday, March 17, with ceremonies and public programming.

About those teeth, and the bigger problem with lazy myths

Mount Vernon’s historical materials are clear: Washington had dentures made from materials like ivory and metal, and even human teeth, but not wood. The myth likely stuck because aged ivory can stain and look grainy.

The Post also doesn’t dodge the hard parts: Washington was a slave owner. His will called for freeing the enslaved people he owned after Martha Washington’s death, while he could not legally free all enslaved people at Mount Vernon because he did not own all of them. That contradiction is exactly why the truth matters.

Stop treating Presidents Day like a clearance rack

Presidents Day started as Washington’s birthday celebration and now gets treated like the Super Bowl of discounts. Meanwhile, Washington’s real resume gets ignored: farmer, land speculator, and after the presidency he built a whiskey distillery at Mount Vernon that became one of the largest in the country.

Remember the real story. Keep the history honest. Live free, grill hard, and don’t apologize.