Mount Vernon (plantation)

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Back of the main house.

Front of the main house.

Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon

Map of the estate, drawn by Washington

Mount Vernon, Virginia, was the plantation home of the first President of the United States, George Washington. Built of wood in a neoclassical Georgian architectural style, the estate is located near Mount Vernon, Virginia in Fairfax County, on the banks of the Potomac River.

[edit] History

The early history of the estate at Little Hunting Creek is separate from that of the home, which was not erected until 1741-42 and occupied for the first time in 1743. In 1674, John Washington and Nicholas Spencer came into possession of the land from which Mount Vernon plantation would be carved. When John Washington died in 1677, his son Lawrence, George Washington's grandfather, inherited his father's stake in the property. In 1690, he agreed to formally divide the estimated 5,000 acre (20 km²) estate with the heirs of Nicholas Spencer. The Spencers took the southern half bordering Dogue Creek (originally called "Epsewasson" in the September 1674 land grant from Lord Culpeper, after the former name of the creek) leaving the Washingtons the portion along Little Hunting Creek.

Upon Lawrence Washington's death, he left the property to his daughter, Mildred. In 1726, at the urging of her brother Augustine Washington (George Washington's father) Mildred sold him the Potomac River estate. In 1735, Augustine Washington moved his young, second family to the estate, settling into a 'Quarter' alongside Little Hunting Creek. In 1738, Augustine recalled his eldest son Lawrence (George's half-brother) home from The Appleby School in England and set him up on the family's Little Hunting Creek tobacco plantation, thereby allowing Augustine to move his family back to Fredericksburg at the end of 1738.

In 1739, Lawrence, having reached his 'majority' (age 21) began buying up parcels of land from the adjoining Spencer tract, beginning with the land around the Grist Mill on Dogue Creek. In the summer of 1740, Lawrence received a coveted officer's commission in the Regular British Army, and made preparations to go off to war in the Caribbean with the newly formed American Regiment. Part of his preparations included ensuring his father had legal control over the tracts Lawrence had purchased from Spencer. While he was away at war (the War of Jenkin's Ear, 1739-1743), Lawrence wrote to his father from Jamaica in May 1741, that, should he survive the war, he intended to make his home in the town of Fredericksburg, building a town home on one of the three lots he owned there.

At this same time, the Spencer family was in a legal dispute over additional land sales to Lawrence's neighbors. To adjudicate the boundary line dispute, a general court for Prince William County ordered a new survey of the entire 5,000 acre (20 km²) Washington-Spencer land grant. The surviving map of that 1741 survey, a plat, by County Surveyor Robert Brooke, revealed the estate had been grossly mis-measured back in April 1669, and it contained only about 4,200 acres (17 km²), not the 5,000 acres conveyed in the 1674 land grant. The gross mis-measurement can be attributed to the fact that the property was bounded on three sides by water, and that neither the River nor the two creeks ran straight. Pursuant to the Culpeper land grant, the original 1669 surveyor was charged with estimating an area of 5,000 acres (20 km²) and then blazing a straight-line "back" boundary along a tree line between the winding courses of Dogue Run and Little Hunting Creek. More importantly, this surviving May 1741 property survey by Brooke reveals that the location of the present-day mansion house was then vacant, with the Washingtons depicted as having their Quarter alongside Little Hunting Creek (as was shown on a similar, larger-scale Potomac River survey of 1738).

Upon receiving the news of his son's intention to live in Fredericksburg, Augustine Washington appears to have undertaken to erect a modest farm house on the vacant bluff overlooking the Potomac River (where the mansion house now sits) in 1741-42. It is estimated Lawrence received the news of his father's plans in late 1741, while at Jamaica, and presumably wrote back instructing his father to call the new home "Mount Vernon" in honor of Captain Lawrence Washington's commanding officer, Vice Admiral Edward Vernon (then regarded as the greatest military hero of the age in England.) In early August 1742, the place name "Mount Vernon" first appears in a surviving letter, penned by Lawrence's Potomac River neighbor, William Fairfax, of Belvoir. Lawrence Washington returned from the war in late 1742, burying his father in April 1743, married into the Fairfax family and took up residence at his "Mount Vernon" in July 1743. By the late 1740s Lawrence undertook an expansion of the home their father Augustine had built for him.

Upon Lawrence's untimely death in July 1752, George Washington was already living at Mount Vernon and probably managing the plantation. Lawrence's widow, Anne Fairfax, promptly remarried into the Lee family and moved out. Upon the death of Anne and Lawrence's only surviving child in 1754, George, as executor of his brother's estate, arranged to lease "Mount Vernon" that December. In 1757, George began the first of two major additions and improvements to the home. The second expansion was begun shortly before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. On those occasions he entirely rebuilt the main house atop the original foundations, doubling its size each time. The great majority of the work was performed by slaves and artisans. It is important to note that while he twice rebuilt the home, George never changed its patriotic British name.

Upon Anne Fairfax Washington Lee's death in 1761, George legally inherited the Mount Vernon estate. From 1759 until the American Revolutionary War, Washington, who at the time aspired to become a prominent agriculturist, operated the estate as five separate farms. Washington took a scientific approach to farming and kept extensive and meticulous records of both labor and results. One of his most successful ventures was the establishment of a distillery; he became one of the new nation's largest, if not the largest, distillers of whiskey.[1]

Following his service in the war, Washington returned to Mount Vernon and in 1785-1786 spent a great deal of effort in improving the landscaping of the estate. It is estimated that during his two terms as president of the United States (1789-1797) Washington spent 434 days in residence at Mount Vernon. After his presidency, Washington tended to repairs to the buildings, socializing, and further gardening. The remains of George and Martha Washington, as well as other family members, are entombed on the grounds.

Mt. Vernon depicted on a 1936 U.S. postage stamp

After Washington's death in 1799, plantation ownership passed through a series of descendants who lacked either the will or the means to maintain the property. After trying unsuccessfully for five years to restore the estate, John Augustine Washington offered it for sale in 1848. The Virginia and United States governments declined to buy the home and estate.

In 1860, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, under the leadership of Ann Pamela Cunningham, acquired the mansion and a portion of the land for $200,000, rescuing it from a state of disrepair and neglect. The estate served as neutral ground for both sides during the American Civil War, although fighting raged across the nearby countryside. Mount Vernon was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1960 and later administratively listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The mansion has been restored by the Association (without accepting any state or Federal funds), complete with period furniture and fixings, and today serves as a popular tourist attraction. The estate is also well known for its exceptional landscaping and ancillary buildings. In 2006, the distillery was reconstructed, with plans to demonstrate historic production methods and market the whiskey.^[1] It is on the American Whiskey Trail.

I have no objection to any sober or orderly person's gratifying their curiosity in viewing the buildings, Gardens, &ca. about Mount Vernon.
—George Washington, letter to William Pearce (November 23, 1794)

[edit] References

George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America by Robert F. Dalzell, Jr. and Lee Baldwin Dalzell. New York, Oxford University Press, 1998.
Mount Vernon: Washington's Home and the Nation's Shrine by Paul Wilstach. Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1918, 1930.
Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion. New York, Oxford University Press, 1940. pp. 338-342.