Who Named Mount Washington?

Abstract

JT seems incredible, but date and occasion of naming of Mount Washington, Hampshire, have not been established. Nor is first use of this place name on a map definitely known. The Reverend Jeremy Belknap asserted in 1792 that peak in question lately been distinguished by name of Mount WASHINGTON.'l But this was not first use of name Mount Washington, since, as is well known, Belknap quotes, in a footnote on pages 43 and 44 of this same volume of his history, an earlier statement by Reverend Manasseh Cutler containing words the base of summit of Mount Washington. No one has yet found out when Cutler wrote these words. There is no serious question that Cutler used name Mount Washington before Belknap did, since Belknap limited himself to phrases the great Mountain, the Mountain, the highest mountain, Sugar loaf, and the Mountain in accounts of his trip to Mount Washington in 1784.2 Neither manuscript of Belknap's New Map of New-Hampshire, which is in Boston Public Library, nor engraved map, which was printed in I79I and on which Cutler's R. is added, gives name Mount Washington.3 The Whipple map that Belknap copied in 1784 suggests that White mountains was only name used locally before that year. Although it is well known that Cutler and Belknap were together on trip that included complete ascent of Mount Washington in 1784 by Cutler but not by Belknap, there is no direct evidence that Cutler wrote in 1784 statement quoted in second paragraph of this paper. In his diary for July 19 to 26, 1784, he refers only to the mountain and the Sugar-loaf. This may signify little, however, since in his diary for July 23 to August 2, I804, when he made his second ascent, he likewise leaves peak nameless. In extensive correspondence Cutler had with Belknap between August 9, 1784, and June 26, 1792, neither one of them ever referred to Mount Washington by that name.4