Is Potatoe the Sign of a Potentate?

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — There’s sobering news for comics, Democrats and others making hay out of Vice President Dan Quayle’s misspelling of potato--George Washington also spelled it “potatoe.”

“It didn’t hurt his chances of being the Father of Our Country,” said Robert R. Siegrist, executive director of the Ferry Farm, site of Washington’s boyhood home near Fredericksburg. “He spelled it that way before he was President, so that may bode well for Dan Quayle.”

Said Quayle spokesman Jeff Nesbit: “We’re delighted to see he’s in such fine company.”

During a visit last week to a Trenton, N.J., elementary school, Quayle told a spelling bee participant he had misspelled potato, sending the boy back to the blackboard to write “potatoe.”

In May, 1787, Washington wrote planting instructions that said: “When the Potatoe vines had risen 6 Inches through this bed of straw . . . “

The accepted spelling has been potato as far back as 1587, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Washington and others of the time had several habits of punctuation and spellings considered peculiar today. Sometimes he spelled Fredericksburg with an “h” on the end, sometimes not. He wrote “rid” instead of “ride,” and “set of” instead of “set off.”