13. Wiencek, Imperfect God, 129–30; Bontempo, Fairfax County Order Book 2:90 (21 February 1769). Washington may have been familiar with a similar case in 1751 involving his older brother Austin. Austin told the Westmoreland County Court that his indentured servant Mary gave birth to a mixed-race child, Martha. The court ordered that the child Martha be indentured to Austin until her thirty-first birthday (she was four at the time). Mary ran away, but Austin recaptured her, which lengthened her servitude. She ran away again and was hauled back again, adding another four years to her contract. The daughter, Martha, was indentured, and when she had a daughter named Delphia, her daughter was bound for thirty years. Wiencek, Imperfect God, 55–56.
14. Bontempo, Fairfax County Order Book 2:25–27 (19 July 1769); Washington missed plenty of court days, but could never match Mason’s absenteeism. Mason attended 3 out of 57 court days during his first term on the court; in a later term, he attended for 4 full days and fourteen partial days out of 183 court days. “No other justice,” one scholar has written of Mason, “surpassed his record of nonattendance.” Joseph Horrell, “George Mason and the Fairfax Court,” VMHB 91:418, 421 (1983).
23. THE MASTER OF MOUNT VERNON
1. Diary, 30 December 1769; 2 February 1770; 1 and 22 (note) March 1770; 16, 18, 23, and 26 April 1770; 1, 2, 7, and 17 May 1770; 30 June 1770; 31 July 1770; 4 September 1770; 13 and 14 September 1770; 19 and 22 December 1770; 25, 27, and 31 January 1771; 4–6 April 1771, GWP. Flexner 1:242; Nan Netherton et al., Fairfax County, Virginia: A History, 80; Fairfax County Court Order Book, 1772–74, 158 (Microfilm Reel 39A, Fairfax City Regional Public Library).
2. E.g., Diary, 17 October 1768 (£31); 3 February1770 (£102); 25 April 1771 (£146); 12 May 1771; 6 and 12 June 1771 (£60), GWP. “Cash Accounts,” October 1771, October 20 (£41), October 21 (£100); 21 October 1771 (£100), GWP; Diary, 23 November 1771 (£60), GWP; “Cash Accounts,” November 1768, 5 November (£94); “Cash Accounts,” April 1768, 5 April (£121), GWP.
3. Diary, 18 September 1767 and note, GWP; Bryan, Martha Washington, 155–56; to John Armstrong, 21 September 1767, GWP.
4. Lord Fairfax is sometimes credited with introducing the fox hunt to America. J.N.P. Watson, The Book of Foxhunting, New York: Arco Publishing Co. (1978), 31; Kitty Slater, The Hunt Country of America, Then and Now, Upperville: Virginia Reel (1997), 19; J. Cage to Lawrence Washington, undated, in Conway, The Barons of the Potomac and the Rappahannock, 245 (proposing a hunt with Lord Fairfax).
5. Watson, The Book of Foxhunting, 16 (quoting Plato and Xenophon); Roger Longrigg, The History of Foxhunting, London: Macmillan London Ltd. (1975), 14; Alexander McKay-Smith, Foxhunting in North America: A Comprehensive Guide to Organized Foxhunting in the United States and Canada, Millwood, VA: American Foxhound Club (1985), 4; Zagarri, Humphreys, 7.
6. Diary, 3 May 1768, 6 August 1768, 24, 26, and 27 March 1769, GWP; from Bryan Fairfax, 15 July 1772, GWP.
7. Hayes, A Life in Books, 122–24; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 218.
8. Hayes, A Life in Books, 145, 57; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 221–23.
9. Ford, Washington and the Theatre, 24.
10. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 219; John Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797–1811, New York: Harper (1886), 92.
11. John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 21 June 1811, in AP.
12. Ford, Washington and the Theatre, 1, 26; Hayes, A Life in Books, 114–15; Twohig, “The Making of George Washington,” in Hofstra, George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry, 11; “List of Books at Mount Vernon, 1764,” GWP; from John Hancock, 8 October 1777, GWP; from Captain Henry Lee Jr., 31 March 1778, GWP; to Chastellux, 1 February 1784, GWP; from John Church, 22 February 1792, quoted in note 2, from Samuel and Sheppard Church, 20 April 1792, GWP; to Timothy Pickering, 27 July 1795, GWP.
13. T. H. Breen, “Horses and Gentlemen,” WMQ 34:239, 247 (April 1977); “Card Playing Expenses 1772–1774,” 1 January 1775, GWP. Washington’s diaries show him attending horse races in May 1760, October 1767, August, September, and November 1768, May and September 1769, September 1771, October 1772, and May and October 1773.
14. Bryan, Martha Washington, 146–61; Diary, 31 July and 6 August 1769, GWP; to John Armstrong, 18 August 1769, GWP.
15. From Jonathan Boucher, 9 May 1770, 18 December 1770, GWP; to Jonathan Boucher, 9 July 1771, GWP.
16. Galke, “The Mother of the Father of Our Country,” Northeast Historical Archaeology 38:29, 32 (2009).
17. Diary, 10–14 September 1771 and notes, GWP; Freeman 3:280–81.
18. Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew, 83.
19. From Hugh Mercer, 6 April 1774, GWP; to Benjamin Harrison, 21 March 1781, note; Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew, 84; to Betty Lewis, 13 September 1789, GWP.
24. NEVER ENOUGH LAND
1. Early Sketches of George Washington, 32. Washington’s schemes for large land acquisitions were (i) the soldiers’ bounty lands under the Dinwiddie Proclamation of 1754, (ii) the Mississippi Land Company project, (iii) efforts on Washington’s behalf by William Crawford in Pennsylvania, (iv) claims he purchased to soldier lands under the 1763 Proclamation, and (v) the Great Dismal Swamp Company project. Washington’s other two land strategies were the purchase of lands adjoining Mount Vernon, and his 1767 acquisition of lands in Fauquier and Loudoun Counties.
2. To John Posey, 24 June 1767, GWP; to John Parke Custis, 1 February 1778, GWP.
3. Kenneth R. Bowling, “George Washington’s Vision for the United States,” in Robert McDonald and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Revolutionary Prophecies: The Founders on America’s Future, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (2020), 86–87.
4. Griffith, Virginia House of Burgesses, 175–78; Hall, Executive Journals 6:271 (12 October 1764), 6:274 (6 November 1764); Taylor, American Revolutions, 79. Griffith estimated that one-third of the men who served as Virginia burgesses were active land speculators.
5. From Robert Stewart, 28 September 1759, GWP; from George Mercer, 16 September 1759, GWP; Diary, 23 February 1760, GWP.
6. “Mississippi Land Company, Articles of Agreement,” 3 June 1763, GWP; Diary, 30 June 1763, Note, GWP; Diary, 9 September 1763, GWP; “Mississippi Land Company’s Memorial to the King,” 9 September 1763, GWP; “Mississippi Land Company, Minutes of Meeting,” 22 May 1767, GWP; Diary, 1 July 1768, GWP; “Mississippi Land Company’s Petition to the King,” December 1768, GWP; George Croghan to Sir William Johnson, 30 March 1764, quoted in Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier, New York: Hill and Wang (2007), 57; Charles Royster, The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company: A Story of George Washington’s Times, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1999), 69–71.
7. Henry Bouquet to Colonel Cresap, 12 September 1760, in Douglas Brymner, Report on Canadian Archives, 1889 (Ottawa, 1890), 72; Proclamation, in Brymner, Canadian Archives, 73; Francis Fauquier to Henry Bouquet, 17 January 1762, in Brymner, Canadian Archives, 73–74; Hall, Executive Journals 6:205–6 (16 and 21 January 1762), 6:208 (11 March 1762).
8. Hall, Executive Journals 6:257 (25 May 1763); Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 102; Eugene L. Del Papa, “The Royal Proclamation of 1763: Its Effect upon Virginia Land Companies,” VMHB 83:406 (1975); Fauquier to Board of Trade, 1 December 1759, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 1:275–77; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 13 March 1760, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 1:331–332; Fauquier to James Hamilton, 7 May 1760, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 1:353; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 12 May 1760, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 1:359; Board of Trade to Fauquier, 13 June 1760, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 1:376–77; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 1 September 1760, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 1:405–6; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 6 December 1760, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 1:439–40; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 10 July 1762, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 2:771; “Memorial of George Washington and Others,” in Reese, Fauquier Papers 1:775–76; Woody H
olton, “The Ohio Indians and the Coming of the American Revolution in Virginia,” J. Southern Hist. 60:453 (1994).
9. Freeman 3:93–94, 3:101; Hall, Executive Journals 6:257–58 (25 May 1763); “Cash Accounts,” April 1764 (30 April), GWP; “Appraisement of Dismal Swamp Slaves,” 4 July 1764, GWP; “Cash Accounts,” November and December 1764, GWP. Royster, Fabulous History, 81–84, 96–99.
10. To William Crawford, 17 September 1767, GWP; from William Crawford, 29 September 1767, GWP; from John Armstrong, 3 November–20 December 1767, GWP; Pennsylvania Packet, September 20, 1773.
11. “Cash Accounts,” November 1767, note 26, GWP; Diary, 12–17 March 1769, GWP.
12. To Charles West, 6 June 1769, GWP; to John Posey, 11 June 1769, GWP; from George Mason, 14 October 1769, GWP; Diary, 22 September 1772, GWP; from George William Fairfax, 19 December 1772, GWP.
13. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 102; Freeman 3:101; “Cash Accounts,” December 1765, note 5, GWP; “Cash Accounts,” May 1768, GWP; to Governor Botetourt, 9 September 1770 and 5 October 1770, GWP.
14. Freeman 3:315; Parmenter, “The Iroquois and the Native American Struggle for the Ohio Valley,” in Skaggs and Nelson, The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814, 111–14; Knollenberg, The Virginia Period, 91–92; McGaughy, Richard Henry Lee, 95–97; to Botetourt, 9 December 1769, GWP. To justify reopening western settlement, Britain pointed to treaties that canceled Cherokee and Iroquois claims to acres that Washington coveted. But neither tribe actually occupied the lands they purported to relinquish, while other tribes had not yielded their far stronger claims to those lands.
15. Hall, Executive Council Journals 6:337 (15 December 1769), 6:333–34 (9 November 1769); Advertisement, 16 December 1769, GWP; Diary, 7 January 1770, GWP. Washington coached his brother Charles to approach possible sellers of the claims by raising the subject “in a joking manner” and never to disclose that he was acting on behalf of his elder brother. To Charles Washington, 31 January 1770.
16. To John Armstrong, 10 October 1773, GWP; petition to Botetourt, 15 December 1769, GWP; Hall, Executive Journals 6:337 (15 December 1769); from James Horrocks, 21 December 1769, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), June 21, 1770; Agreement with George Muse, 3 August 1770, GWP. Washington, always fearful of the Walpole Company’s tentacles, pressed the governor to complete the soldier grants. To Governor Botetourt, 9 September 1770, 5 October 1770, GWP.
17. Diary, 19, 21, and 25–28 October, 2–3, 17, 19, and 21 November and note, GWP. Upon his return to Mount Vernon, he closed a land purchase that likely resonated for him: It included Great Meadows, where he lost the Fort Necessity battle in 1754. From William Crawford, 6 December 1770, 15 April 1771 and note 2, GWP.
18. To the Officers of the Virginia Regiment, 20 January 1771, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), January 31, 1771; Diary, 4–5 March 1771, GWP; “Minutes of the meeting of the officers of the Virginia Regiment of 1754,” 5 March 1771, GWP; Diary, 10–17 and 31 October 1771, GWP; Memorial to Governor and Council, 1–4 November 1771, GWP; Hall, Executive Journals 6:438 (4 November 1771); Hall, Executive Journals 6:439 (6 November 1771); to George Mercer, 7 November 1771, GWP.
19. Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington, 194, 200–1; James A. Hagemann, Lord Dunmore: Last Royal Governor of Virginia, 1771–1776, Hampton, VA: Wayfarer (1974), 3; to Lord Dunmore, 15 June 1772, GWP; from William Crawford, 15 March 1772, GWP; Royster, Fabulous History, 156–57; Hall, Executive Journals 6:461 (8 May 1772); Diary, 3 November 1772, GWP; Petition to Lord Dunmore and the Virginia Council, 4 November 1772, GWP; Hall, Executive Journals 6:510 (4 November 1772).
20. “Resolutions of Officers Regarding the Royal Proclamation of 1763,” 15 September 1772, GWP; “Cash Accounts,” October 1772 (October 14), GWP (buying John Posey’s claim for 3,000 acres under 1763 Proclamation); to Lord Dunmore, 2 November 1773, GWP; Hall, Executive Journals 6:549 (4 November 1773); Knollenberg, The Virginia Period, 99; to James Wood, 13 and 30 March 1773, GWP.
21. From William Crawford, 12 November 1773, GWP; Hall, Executive Journals 6:541 (11 October 1773), 6:548–49 (4 November 1773); to Lord Dunmore and Executive Council, 3 November 1773, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Rind’s), November 25, 1773. Based on a misreading of the 1754 Proclamation, Knollenberg concluded that Washington had no right to claim lands under the 1754 Proclamation, which Knollenberg asserted were intended for enlisted men, not officers. Knollenberg, The Virginia Period, 91–99. The title to the 1754 Proclamation states that it aims at “encouraging men to enlist in his Majesty’s service.” Knollenberg argued that Washington did not enlist, but accepted an officer’s commission. Yet Washington voluntarily joined the service, like any enlistee. Moreover, the proclamation grants lands “over and above their pay” to “all who shall voluntarily enter into the said service,” which Washington did. Knollenberg also pointed to Dinwiddie’s grant of lands to those whose service “shall be represented to me by their officers.” (Emphasis added.) Because Washington commanded the regiment, Knollenberg contended, his officers could not so report to the governor. This is pettifoggery. Any officer might comment to the governor on Washington’s merits. Knollenberg also stressed that when Washington complained about pay, he never mentioned the soldiers’ right to land grants, which Knollenberg trumpeted as tacit recognition that Washington was not entitled to land. But the proclamation states that the bounty lands were “over and above” soldiers’ pay. Washington could not reverse that pledge by complaining about pay without mentioning land grants. Moreover, no royal or Virginia official ever suggested that the officers could not claim under the 1754 Proclamation.
22. Virginia Gazette (Rind’s), January 14, 1773. When the first grants were issued, Washington told the Executive Council that if other claimants thought the allocation was unequal, and if the council agreed, he would relinquish his lands. The gesture proved unnecessary. At a meeting in Fredericksburg, seven other major claimants affirmed that there was “no great inequality” in the land allocations. They adopted another resolution acknowledging that the grants were secured “principally through [Colonel Washington’s] constant care and attention to the business.” Hall, Executive Journals 6:513–14 (6 November 1772); Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon) November 12, 1772; Diary, 23–25 November 1772, GWP; Resolutions of the Officers of the Virginia Regiment of 1754 and note 3, 23 November 1772, GWP; Hall, Executive Journals 6:516 (9 December 1772); to the officers and soldiers of the Virginia Regiment of 1754, 23 December 1772, GWP. Some scholars have argued that Washington used his knowledge of the backcountry to grab the best land, plus more riverfront land than Virginia law permitted. Knollenberg, The Virginia Period, 95–97. Washington’s response was, essentially, that he would be an idiot not to acquire good parcels. Only he and Dr. Craik spent nine weeks in the wilderness examining the land, and another week closeted with the surveyor; then he steered the claims past numerous political obstacles. He felt entirely entitled to acquire good acreage. In response to a complaint from one former soldier, Washington exploded, regretting, “I ever engaged in behalf of so ungrateful and dirty a fellow as you are.” From William Crawford, 12 November 1773, GWP; to Charles Mynn Thruston, 12 March 1773, GWP; to George Muse, 29 January 1774, GWP.
23. “Advertisement of Western lands,”15 July 1773, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Rind’s), August 5, 1773; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), July 29, 1773; Pennsylvania Packet, June 6, 1774, July 11, 1774, August 1 and 20, 1774, September 20, 1774, October 2, 1774; Knollenberg, The Virginia Years, 110; from Daniel Carroll, 1 September 1773, GWP (Irishmen); Diary and note, 24 August 1773, GWP (Scots); Draft from Robert Adam, 14 September 1774, GWP (Germans); to James Tilghman Jr., 17 February 1774, GWP (Germans); from James Tilghman Sr., 7 April 1774, GWP; to Henry Riddell, 22 and 24 February 1774, 2, 5, and 18 March, GWP (Germans); from Richard Thompson, 30 September 1773, GWP. Washington offered to pay the settlers’ relocation expenses in return for indenture agreements for three
to four years with land leases; or the settlers could choose to pay their own expenses and sign a simple lease for the land. From Robert Hanson Harrison, 8 September 1773, GWP.
24. To James Wood, 20 February 1774, GWP; to Lord Dunmore, 3 April 1775, GWP; from Lord Dunmore, 18 April 1775, GWP; Knollenberg, The Virginia Years, 96–97.
25. To Presley Nevill, 16 June 1794, GWP.
25. WASHINGTON’S ASSOCIATION
1. The new treasurer was Robert Carter Nicholas. Both Randolph and Nicholas had been close to the disgraced late Speaker Robinson, and likely had known of his misdeeds; the pace of change in colonial Virginia could be slow. Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), July 25, 1766; Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1766–1769, 11:66–68 (12 December 1766). The House also appointed an eleven-man committee to investigate the financial carnage left by Robinson. The administrators of Robinson’s estate blithely (and incorrectly) announced that Robinson’s assets would cover the purloined funds, but admitted that selling his assets might be difficult because currency remained scarce.
2. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1766–1769, 11:12–13 (6 November 1766), 11:23 (12 November 1766), 11:30 (18 November 1766), 11:50 (3 December 1766), 11:54 (4 December 1766), 11:58 (8 December 1766), 11:75 (16 December 1766).
3. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1766–1769, 11:116–17 (7 April 1767), 11:125–28 (11 April 1767).
4. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1766–1769, 11:125–28 (11 April 1767).
5. Statutes at Large, London (1811), chapter 46, 12:672–79 Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 88.
6. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1766–1769, 11:165–69 (14 April 1768) and 11:172–73 (15 April 1768).
7. Newspapers carried essays trumpeting the colonists’ rights by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Arthur Lee, one of the six Lee brothers, but Washington remained silent about the Townshend duties. Lee’s essays appeared in Rind’s Virginia Gazette on February 28, 1768, and in five more issues in March and four more in April. Dickinson’s pieces appeared in all four January issues of Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, in two of the February issues, and in five March issues. Glenn Curtis Smith, “An Era of Non-Importation Associations, 1768–73,” WMQ 20:84–87 (1940); Diary, 1–14 April 1768, GWP.
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