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Tracing Washington’s steps

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Threatening skies and a biting wind could do nothing to chill Boston’s patriotic spirit. Paying no mind to the raw weather, residents leaned out of open windows and stood shoulder-to-shoulder on rooftops. Below them, excited crowds craned their necks to steal a fleeting glimpse of their newly inaugurated president.

Typecast as the perfect American action hero, George Washington literally rode into town on a white horse on Oct. 24, 1789. In his brilliant blue military uniform crested with golden epaulets, the president appeared as a Technicolor wonder on such a gray day. Lacking a Secret Service detail or a traveling press corps, Washington’s simple entourage consisted of his prized white steed, a presidential coach and baggage wagon, his two personal secretaries on horseback, and six servants, some of them slaves.

The American experiment remained untested as George said goodbye to Martha and embarked from the country’s capital, New York, on a monthlong tour of the three New England states that had ratified the Constitution — Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Washington, 57, did not travel to the region in autumn to leaf-peep but rather, as he wrote in his diary, “to acquire knowledge of the face of the country, the growth and agriculture thereof — and the disposition of the inhabitants toward the new government.”

As the reception in Boston testified, the disposition of the fledgling nation was pretty ecstatic, and the presidential honeymoon that Washington enjoyed six months after his inauguration has never really ended. The byway over which he rode into Boston would eventually be renamed in his honor — Washington Street — and it’s not the only reminder of his grand tour of New England 225 years ago.

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Washington ate breakfast at the Folsom Tavern in Exeter, N.H.Christopher Klein for The Boston Globe

Presidential pilgrims can explore the Old State House, where Washington dismounted after riding under a triumphal arch designed for the occasion by the city’s famed architect Charles Bulfinch. Visitors can enter the second-floor House of Representatives chambers through which Washington strode onto a carpeted reviewing stand erected on the building’s west side to watch a parade of workers grouped in alphabetical order of their 46 given trades, from bakers and blacksmiths to wharfingers and wheelwrights. Downstairs, an exhibit on the presidential visit includes reproductions of a broadside with the complete parade lineup and the painted silk banners carried by journeymen tailors, mast-makers, and cordwainers on 7-foot-high flagstaffs.

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In order to “avoid giving trouble to private families,” Washington decided from the outset of his trip to overnight in public taverns and inns. Most of the humble lodgings where he slept in 1789 have been lost to time, including his quarters in Boston. The only remnant of Ingersoll’s Inn is a small historical marker affixed to the entrance of 10 Tremont St. that notes it was the scene of a notable constitutional showdown between Washington and another Founding Father — Massachusetts Governor John Hancock.

The table and chair in which Washington dined at Lexington’s historic Munroe Tavern.Christopher Klein for The Boston Globe/Christopher Klein

Proving as audacious as his famed signature, Hancock believed protocol dictated that a president arriving in his jurisdiction should pay him the first visit, so he did not welcome Washington to the state capital. When Hancock learned that Washington was irate at the snub, he quickly concocted an excuse — gout. Going all in on the alibi, he wrapped his legs in red flannel and made his servants carry him from his coach into Ingersoll’s Inn to pay his respects to the president. The governor’s acquiescence proved a symbolic watershed in the acceptance of federal sovereignty over states in the new nation.

Washington’s itinerary in the Boston area mirrored those of many modern-day tourists. He cruised Boston Harbor, toured Harvard College, and visited a pair of (now) Freedom Trail landmarks. He was the guest of honor at a “large and elegant dinner” at Faneuil Hall, where Gilbert Stuart’s painting of Washington at Dorchester Heights now flanks the stage in the upstairs Great Hall. The president also attended a performance of sacred music at King’s Chapel, referred to as the Stone Chapel in the afterglow of the Revolution, where he sat in what once was a seat of British power: the pew reserved for the royal governor.

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After four days in Boston, the president continued north on the rough roads that gave his dentures a teeth-chattering workout. His version of Air Force One may have been a presidential coach drawn by four bay horses, but portions of his tour through the North Shore echo modern-day White House photo opportunities. Washington toured a Beverly cotton mill and purchased black silk lace for Martha in Ipswich in order to give the town’s industry a publicity boost.

For an oratorio at Boston’s King’s Chapel, Washington sat in the box of the former royal governor.Christopher Klein for The Boston Globe/Christopher Klein

Following overnights in Salem and Newburyport, Washington crossed into New Hampshire on Oct. 31 and arrived in Portsmouth, the state’s capital then. The seaport city offers the best place to follow in Washington’s sizable footsteps. Historic New England’s seasonal “Walk With Washington” tours take visitors through the city’s commercial center and narrow lanes to churches, homes, and other locations visited by the president as guides read excerpts from his diary, including his observation that Portsmouth’s women had “much blacker hair than are usually seen in the Southern states.”

Washington wrote that the city’s homes were generally “indifferent,” but that certainly couldn’t have been said of the Georgian mansion owned by John Langdon, a senator and signer of the Constitution, where the president dined and took tea with state leaders. Visitors to the Governor John Langdon House today can tour the fine house and the double parlor that Langdon built to the exact specifications of Washington’s at Mount Vernon, even though it required lifting the second-level floor on one side of the house.

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Washington did more than hobnob with Portsmouth’s elite. He took a fishing trip on Portsmouth Harbor, which included a brief stop in the province of Maine at Kittery, but the cod weren’t biting, even for the president. After meeting with Governor John Sullivan at the Pitt Tavern, now part of the Strawbery Banke Museum, he also paid a social call on the mother of his faithful private secretary, Tobias Lear, at her home in the working-class South End. As a gawking crowd gathered outside, the president met in the sunny front parlor with Mary Lear and other family members.

Charles Bulfinch designed the triumphal arch that welcomed Washington to Boston.Christopher Klein for The Boston Globe

Much like the Shakespearean king with the same surname, Lear became a tortured soul after Washington’s death in 1799 and eventually took his own life. Time has also taken a toll on Lear’s birthplace, which is suffering from peeling paint and water damage but is open to visitors along with the neighboring Wentworth-Gardner House, built by New Hampshire’s foremost Loyalist clan.

Washington, eager to return to the capital, departed Portsmouth particularly early on the morning of Nov. 4. The president threw the citizens of Exeter, who were organizing a welcoming parade and a grand evening ball in his honor, into a panic when his coach rumbled into town. Local women scrambled to serve him a light breakfast at the Folsom Tavern before he continued south to Haverhill.

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Since Washington’s days, the tavern has housed a greasy spoon, a train station waiting room, and even a palm reader. Today, the Folsom Tavern, restored to its Colonial appearance, is part of the American Independence Museum and sits down Water Street from its original location. While the historical houses visited by Washington in Portsmouth have closed for the season, the Folsom Tavern remains open through November, giving visitors on the 225th anniversary of Washington’s visit a chance to stand in the parlor where he dined and the assembly room where Exeter staged its presidential ball without the guest of honor.

The street on which George Washington paraded into Boston in 1789 remains his namesake.Christopher Klein for The Boston Globe/Christopher Klein

After the president traveled through the Merrimack Valley, which he noted was “a beautiful part of the country,” he paid his respects at Lexington’s Battle Green, where, he wrote in an understated way, “the first blood in the dispute with Great Britain was drawn.” That evening he ate at Munroe Tavern, which served as a makeshift hospital for British soldiers on the day the Revolution’s first shots were fired.

Washington didn’t encounter any Redcoats at the tavern, but visitors today are greeted by guides dressed as British soldiers as they are led to the second-floor room where the president dined privately. The three Munroe sisters who served Washington at first thought the silverware and plates he used were “too holy to touch,” but they soon saved them for posterity. They are now on display in the tavern along with the fraying “Washington chair” in which generations of Munroe parents placed their children and instructed them to “never tell a lie after sitting in that chair.”

After 29 days on the road, Washington finally returned on Nov. 13 to the Presidential Mansion in Manhattan. Dozens of presidents have followed his lead in visiting and vacationing in New England in the ensuing years, but none has enjoyed the grand reception Washington received 225 years ago.

Washington visited the Portsmouth, N.H., house of John Langdon, senator and signer of the Constitution.Christopher Klein for The Boston Globe/Christopher Klein

Christopher Klein can be reached at chris@christopherklein.com.