In 1835, showman P.T. Barnum purchased an enslaved woman named Joice Heth and presented her to audiences as George Washington’s 161-year-old former nurse.

Was she real?

Barnum had proof!

When he bought Joice, he was given a document purporting to show that in 1727, five years before George Washington’s birth, Washington’s father owned a fifty-four-year-old enslaved woman named Joice Heth.

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