George Washington's Teeth: Why the Wooden Dentures Story Is Wrong
Washington's dentures used ivory, metals, and human and animal teeth, never wood. Mount Vernon's records explain the myth and a harder history behind it.
Muninn · Last reviewed October 24, 2026 · 5 min read
Generations of American schoolchildren have heard that George Washington had wooden teeth. It is a vivid image: the stern face on the dollar bill hiding a mouthful of carved wood.
It is also wrong. George Washington's Mount Vernon, which holds the only complete set of his dentures that survives, states it flatly: "Contrary to later legend, none of Washington's false teeth were made of wood."
The real story is more painful, more technical and, in one important respect, more troubling than the myth. Here is what the records show.
What his dentures were actually made of
Washington wore several sets of false teeth over his life, and they were made from a surprising range of materials. According to Mount Vernon, his dentures used human teeth; cow, donkey or horse teeth; hippopotamus, walrus and possibly elephant ivory; lead, tin, copper and silver alloys; and gold.
The one complete set that survives, preserved at Mount Vernon, contains human teeth, probably horse and cow teeth, and lead, tin, copper and silver alloys. Part of another set, made by the New York dentist John Greenwood, is owned by the New York Academy of Medicine, along with the decorative case that held Washington's last tooth.
Mount Vernon adds that wood was never used in Washington's dentures, nor was it commonly employed by dentists in his era.
A lifetime of dental trouble
Washington's teeth gave him trouble for most of his adult life. Mount Vernon notes that beginning in his twenties he experienced regular toothaches, decay and tooth loss, likely due to factors common in his era, including a poorly balanced diet and disease, as well as genetics.
At age 24, he recorded in his diary that he paid 5 shillings to a "Doctr Watson" who removed one of his teeth. Letters and diary entries over the following decades refer again and again to aching teeth, inflamed gums and ill-fitting dentures. He was wearing a full set of dentures by age 57.
He also saved his pulled teeth. In a Christmas Day 1782 letter to his distant cousin Lund Washington, then managing Mount Vernon, he asked for two small front teeth left in a desk drawer to be wrapped up and sent to him in Newburgh, New York, hoping they could be used in new dentures.
When he was inaugurated president in 1789, only one of his own teeth remained.
The dentists behind the dentures
Washington worked with several dentists, and their work reflects the best technology of the time.
- John Baker, the first dentist to make false teeth for Washington, fashioned a partial denture of ivory wired to his remaining real teeth before the Revolutionary War.
- Jean-Pierre Le Mayeur, a French dentist, had been treating British officers in occupied New York before crossing to the American lines in 1781. He became a friend and frequent guest at Mount Vernon in the mid-1780s. Mount Vernon says it is unclear exactly what work he did for Washington, though he probably made a partial set.
- John Greenwood, a New York dentist and Revolutionary War veteran, built a technologically advanced set carved from hippopotamus ivory, with gold wire springs and brass screws holding human teeth. He even left a hole for Washington's last natural tooth. Greenwood eventually pulled that tooth in 1796 and kept it as a memento.
Where the teeth came from, and an uncomfortable record
The human teeth in Washington's dentures raise a hard question: whose were they?
Mount Vernon addresses this directly. Washington's financial records for May 1784 show that Lund Washington paid enslaved people for nine teeth on account of Dr. Le Mayeur. The names of the enslaved people are not recorded, and Mount Vernon says it is not known whether they were forced or pressured to sell their teeth. As it points out, the threat of punishment or retaliation was always present for enslaved people, and they could have felt compelled to provide teeth even if they were not physically forced to do so.
Le Mayeur, staying in the Alexandria area at the time, advertised tooth transplants and offered to buy teeth. Mount Vernon notes there is no definitive evidence that he performed a transplant on Washington. The record does not say whether these particular teeth ended up in Washington's own dentures. What it does show is that teeth were bought from enslaved people at Mount Vernon for the dentist treating him.
So where did the wooden teeth come from?
If the dentures were never wood, why does the story persist? Mount Vernon says the origin of the myth remains unclear, but it gives the explanation most dental scientists and historians favor: the materials in Greenwood's dentures became stained over time, giving them a grained, wooden appearance that misled later observers.
Washington's dentures certainly got dirty. In a 1798 letter, Greenwood told him that a set sent for repair "was very black," blaming port wine for taking off "all the polish." Mount Vernon also notes the story contains a grain of truth in another way: Washington sometimes made his own repairs to Greenwood's dentures, which may echo versions of the myth in which he carved the teeth himself.
The myth had staying power in print, too. Mount Vernon reports that even into the mid-twentieth century, scholars published studies describing Washington's false teeth as wooden.
Pain you can see in the portraits
The dentures were not just a curiosity. They hurt. Mount Vernon says all of them caused him pain and changed the shape of his face. George Washington Parke Custis described "a marked change...in the appearance...more especially in the projection of the under lip," a change visible in Gilbert Stuart's well-known portraits of 1796.
Washington complained about it himself. In a 1797 letter to Greenwood, he wrote that a set was "already too wide, and too projecting for the parts they rest upon; which causes both upper, and under lip to bulge out, as if swelled."
Mount Vernon offers one interpretation of why the wooden-teeth story endures: by imagining him making do with ordinary wood rather than expensive, advanced contraptions, the myth makes Washington seem more like a common person with everyday struggles. That is an interpretation, not a document, but it helps explain why a false story can feel true.
Key takeaways
- Washington's dentures were made of human and animal teeth, ivory and metals, never wood, according to Mount Vernon.
- He began losing teeth in his twenties and had only one natural tooth left when he became president in 1789.
- Records from May 1784 show enslaved people at Mount Vernon were paid for nine teeth on account of his dentist, under conditions that may have been coercive.
- The wooden-teeth myth most likely comes from stained ivory and teeth that looked like wood grain.
- His painful, ill-fitting dentures changed the shape of his mouth, which shows in his later portraits.
Sources
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