Washington’s ‘Lost Apron’ Found In West Virginia

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. (AP) – George Washington’s “lost apron” was hiding in plain sight at a Masonic lodge in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.

The Marquis de Lafayette gave the apron to Washington in 1784. Historians and curators at Mount Vernon in Virginia thought for decades that the apron was lost.

But it wasn’t. The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Md., says the apron decorated a wall at the Mount Nebo Lodge No. 91 in Shepherdstown since 1820.

In 2009, the lodge sent the apron to curators at Mount Vernon, who verified it.

The apron was returned Sunday for the lodge’s 200th birthday. But it will be kept at Mount Vernon in an environmentally appropriate case.

Mount Nebo lodge master George Alwin says the lodge still owns the apron. But it’s no longer safe there.