Land Property in Washington's Will

Image: family photo from William L. Swanson taken c. 1920; © William B. Swanson, 2019, all rights reserved.

In the last blog entry, I detailed the elements of George Washington’s will that had to do with manumitting his slaves. This entry presents Washington’s disposal of his investments in land. A warning: there are a plethora of Washingtons in this entry, and it can be hard to keep them all straight. For disambiguation, I use the common name for George Washington: The General.

The General has the reputation of being enormously land hungry. I can’t tell you how many people have spontaneously said to me, on hearing that I was writing a novel about the General, “Oh, the land grabber” or something of the sort. It seems to be the thing most people remember about him other than that he was the first President or that he had wooden teeth (he didn’t, but that’s another blog entry). Or that he owned slaves.

The General’s will gives us great insight into just how much land he owned. It doesn’t take into account land he sold before he died except for the sold lands for which he had not yet received compensation. The will also tells us a lot about how the General thought about both his land and his legacies to his heirs and to the country he had helped to create.

There is a Schedule of Property attached to the will that lists all of the General’s property subject to probate as of July 1799, six months before he died. The Founders Online version of this Schedule of Property details the acquisition of lands in some detail and gives you a complete view of how the General went about becoming one of the largest landholders in Virginia. It is also important to realize that the rents from these lands comprised a great part of the General’s income during the last 10 years of his life.

Here is the set of lands listed in the Schedule of Property:

Tract	State	Acreage	Value
Difficult Run	VA	300	$         6,666.00
Ashbys Bent	VA	2,481	$       24,810.00
Chattins Run	VA	885	$         7,080.00
Bullskin	VA	2,236	$       44,720.00
Mercer	VA	571	$       11,420.00
Potick River	VA	240	$         3,600.00
Gloucester	VA	400	$         3,600.00
Nansemond	VA	373	$         2,984.00
Great Dismal Swamp	VA	shares	$       20,000.00
Ohio River	WV	9,744	$       97,440.00
Great Kanahwah	WV	23,341	$     200,000.00
Charles County	MD	600	$         3,600.00
Mongomery County	MD	519	$         6,228.00
Great Meadows	PA	234	$         1,404.00
Mohawk River	NY	1,000	$         6,000.00
Little Miami	OH	3,051	$       15,251.00
Rough Creek	KY	5,000	$       10,000.00
Washington	DC	lots	$       19,132.00
Alexandria	VA	lots	$         4,000.00
Winchester	VA	lots	$            400.00
Warm Springs	VA	lots	$            800.00
1799 $ Total		50,975	$     489,135.00
2019 $ Total			$10,184,029.30

See below for the Great Dismal Swamp Company setup. The “lots” were various lots in Alexandria, the District of Columbia, Winchester, and Warm Springs. The main thing you should take away from this table is that most of the General’s assets in 1799 were land, and that he was worth about $10-15 million when he died. Note that the above list does not include the Mount Vernon properties.

The first item in the will that relates to land is to a bit of land that had been a problem for some time. The General sold 180 acres of land in Frederick County to a man named Philip Pendleton, whose father promised to pay the General £400 for the land. He never did, but instead Philip Pendleton gave the land to Samuel Washington, the General’s younger brother, in 1773, along with the debt. Samuel in turn gave the land to his son Thornton some time before his death of tuberculosis in 1781. Unfortunately, brother Samuel’s estate was a mess. A man named James Nourse was appointed executor along with the General and handled much of the executorial duties, as The General had his hands full with his own estate right after the Revolution. The General informed Nourse in a letter  dated January 22^nd, 1784, that he had never seen a penny of the money for the land. What to do with it, he did not say. Eventually, Nourse spoke to Thornton about the land. Thornton, taken unawares, wrote to the General in a panic in August 1784. 

Once you get past the really bad spelling, he told the General that he had renovated the house, put up a lot of fencing, and was about to build a barn for his tobacco crop, and wanted to know what the General wanted to do before he put any more effort into the land. Although there is no record of what happened, Thornton did retain the land. He then wrote another letter in June 1786 reporting that a suit in Chancery had emerged that claimed all or part of the land as part of a very messy and long-running land dispute in the Northern Neck of Virginia involving the Fairfax and Hite families. The General wrote back in June 1786 with reassurances about the claim to the land. Thornton Washington then tragically died at the age of 27 in 1787, presumably leaving the land to his heirs. In his will, the General forgave the debt entirely, which he had apparently intended for some time, according to a note on one of the above letters. This all illustrates the difficulty associated with land titles and the law in 18^th century Virginia, but it also illustrates the General’s desire to help his immediate family. He also helped to pay for the education of Samuel Washington’s orphaned children in the 1780s and 1790s and forgave these debts in his will.

The next land-related item deals with lands the General had sold but for which he had not received “consideration”: Difficult Run in Loudon County, New York State lands owned with George Clinton, lands in the Great Dismal Swamp, and land in Gloucester County. 

The Difficult Run land illustrates an interesting practice: selling lands conditional on some complicated scheme of payment because the buyer didn’t have the funds to pay for the land. For example, the Difficult Run land was sold to John Gill, who would pay it off in installments paid as rent over 10 years, or sooner if Gill was able to save the money. Gill failed to pay after 2 years and requested cancellation of the agreement in October, 1799, after the entry in the Schedule of Property, and the General complied. Thus, he actually owned this property outright at the time of his death, so it was presumably sold with the rest of the residual properties.

The New York property was a speculation engineered by George Clinton, the Governor of New York, who bought the land in 1784. The General paid for his half by 1787. Clinton in turn sold the property over time and paid the General his half (a “moiety” in legal language) over time. At the time of the General’s death, there was some money owing, but I can’t find any exact number.

The Great Dismal Swamp land was also a speculation, this one done as a property company, the Great Dismal Swamp Company organized in 1763. The General was a founder and manager in this company for several years. In 1795, Governor Henry Lee bought out the General (“in a frenzy of land speculation” according to a note) for $20,000, to be paid in 3 annual payments. Lee failed to make the payments by 1798, so the sale was conditionally outstanding at the time of the General’s death.

The General acquired the Gloucester County land as payment for a debt by relatives of his wife Martha. He sold the land to George Ball, a young lawyer, in 1797, but never received the money. His letter to Ball in March 1799 is worth quoting in its entirety as an example of his approach to debt collection:

Sir 

It is somewhat singular, that instead of receiving Three hundred and three pounds in April of the last year, as per agreement for the land I sold you (lying in Gloucester County of this State) that I should never have seen, nor heard a tittle from you, respecting this payment, at the time it became due, nor since for near a year.

The first Instalment of the residue will become due the 10th of next month, & I beg you to be assured that I am in real want of the money; and that it was the want of money alone, which had induced me to part with this, and other landed property, which I have always considered as the most secure, and ultimately the most valuable, of any in this Country.I shall expect to see, or hear from you to good effect, by the day abovementioned.  

I am—Sir Your Hble Servant

Go: Washington

The General later followed up with a threat: “I must no longer be trifled with in the payment of what is due from you to me; for this will compel me to resort to means which cannot fail to be disagreeable to us both.” As far as I can tell, Ball never paid for the land.

The General willed the primary Mount Vernon lands to his nephew Bushrod Washington. The General had intended to leave Mount Vernon to his favorite nephew, George Augustine Washington, but George Augustine died of tuberculosis in 1792. The General’s brother John Augustine had been the General’s favorite companion in his youth and had taken care of Mount Vernon during the French and Indian War, so the General decided his son Bushrod deserved to inherit it. Bushrod Washington (the name comes from the family name of his mother’s family) was an associate justice of the Supreme Court at the time of the General’s death. The General willed the River Farm across Little Hunting Creek from Mount Vernon to two nephews of his wife (through Fanny Bassett, the deceased wife of Tobias Lear, his secretary). 

The General willed the residue of the Mount Vernon estate to his nephew Lawrence Lewis and his wife Nelly (Martha Washington’s granddaughter who the Washingtons had raised at Mount Vernon).

Martha Washington’s grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, was raised from a young age at Mount Vernon by the Washingtons along with his sister Nelly; they called him “Wash.” The General left a piece of land along the Potomac across from Georgetown to Wash. Wash, being a primary Custis family heir, inherited much of Martha Washington’s estate through the dower inheritance, including many of the slaves of Mount Vernon. The land the General willed to Wash became the hub of the latter’s plantation on the Potomac across from the new District of Columbia, called Arlington. After Wash’s death in 1857, a little-known general named Robert E. Lee moved in with his Custis bride Mary. Due to a slight misunderstanding, the Union confiscated the estate at the outbreak of the Civil War, but the estate was restored to its rightful heirs by the Supreme Court in 1882 (United States v. Lee Kaufman, 106 US 196). The heirs then sold it back to the United States for $180,000. It is now Arlington National Cemetery and the Robert E. Lee memorial.

The final item relating to land in the will directs that the remaining lands be sold and the proceeds divided into 23 equal parts going to various family members. He also included a paragraph of advice to the executors and legatees:

And by way of advice, I recommend it to my Executors not to be precipitate in disposing of the landed property (herein directed to be sold) if from temporary causes the Sale thereof should be dull; experience having fully evinced, that the price of land (especially above the Falls of the Rivers, & on the Western Waters) have been progressively rising, and cannot be long checked in its increasing value. And I particularly recommend it to such of the Legatees (under this clause of my Will) as can make it convenient, to take each a share of my Stock in the Potomac Company in preference to the amount of what it might sell for; being thoroughly convinced myself, that no uses to which the money can be applied will be so productive as the Tolls arising from this navigation when in full operation (and this from the nature of things it must be ’ere long) and more especially if that of the Shanondoah is added thereto.

The General retained his optimism on the value of land, and on the value of the Potomac River to commerce, to the end of his life. It is probably just as well that the executors and legatees ignored the advice on the Potomac Company shares, which were eventually lost by the succeeding company; the canals in question were never built. As to the remaining estate, the executors left its settlement to Bushrod Washington and Lawrence Lewis (nephews of the General). The last note to the will states that by the time all the executors had died in 1846, no final settlement of the estate had been reached. I’m sure it would be a good PhD dissertation to research exactly what became of Washington’s land legacy, and I will leave that to future generations of scholars.

Eugene E. Prussing’s great 1927 book, The Estate of George Washington, Deceased, contains a lot of detail on the General’s estate and its disposition.

Washington's Last Will and Testament and His Slaves

Image: Washington's Deathbed By Junius Brutus Stearns - Wikimedia Commons

George Washington wrote at least two wills, and on his deathbed in December 1799, he had his wife bring him the two wills from the desk in his study. He then gave her one and told her to throw it into the fire, leaving the other one as his official last will and testament. No one knows what was in the burned will. You can find Tobias Lear’s account of Washington’s illness and death, including the story about the wills, at Founders Online.

The will itself makes fascinating reading, as it expresses Washington’s intentions and feelings at the time of his death quite well. You can find a complete, annotated text of the will at Founders Online as well.

Aside from minor bequests, there are two major parts to the will: what to do with the slaves belonging to Washington, and what to do with his land and company shares. This blog entry will explain the part of the will that had to do with his slaves.

First, a little background. Washington’s views on slavery evolved a lot over his lifetime. Before the Revolution, he was a fully committed slave owner and member of the Virginia plantation aristocracy. During his exposure to black soldiers and white abolitionists during the War, his attitudes underwent a shift. By 1789, when he became President, Washington was already trying to find ways to free his slaves. He trained many slaves in crafts and professions such as smithing and carpentry, and he had some enslaved overseers taught to read and write, primarily so they could write reports to him about farm operations.

But there was a big catch. The slaves of Mount Vernon came in three variations of ownership: outright, dower, and leased. He owned less than half of the slaves outright, meaning he could free them or sell them at will. The dower slaves were his wife’s dower estate property, meaning she had inherited them for her lifetime only from her dead husband, who died intestate. At her death, the slaves or their monetary value would go to other heirs of the Custis estate. Washington could not free the dower slaves without paying their value to the estate, a very large amount of money that he did not have. The third kind of ownership was lease—he paid rent for the use of several dozen slaves on a farm he had bought, French’s Farm. They actually belonged to Mrs. Penelope French. He had no power to free or sell leased slaves.

Another big catch was Virginia law. In 1782, the House of Delegates passed a new law on manumission that replaced the earlier law that made it illegal to manumit slaves except under very specific circumstances. The new law permitted manumission but required the owner to support any slave “not being in the judgment of the court, of sound mind and body, or being above the age of forty-five years, or being males under the age of twenty-one, or females under the age of eighteen years.” That would again force Washington to pay, on an ongoing basis, a very large amount of money that he did not have.

The first thing Washington says in the item about his slaves is that he frees them “upon the decease of my wife.” He then explains why: the slaves he owned outright had intermarried with the dower slaves, and thus freeing them would either break apart families or force the freed slaves to stay with their enslaved loved ones. He makes no mention of any inconvenience to his widow from the absence of the freed slaves or to any issue with the plantation work, just to breaking up families. He stresses that this logic applies only while the slaves belong to the same person (meaning his widow); after her decease, all bets are off because the dower slaves will be distributed to the different Custis heirs. In other words, when Martha Washington dies, the slave families will break up as a consequence of the Custis estate disposition, over which neither Washington nor his wife has any control.

He then takes the 1782 Act into account. He states that his heirs must supply food and clothing to any slaves freed who are too old or too infirm or too young to earn their living. Young slaves without parents able to take care of them are to be “bound by the Court” (in other words, given a court-appointed guardian or put under direct supervision by the court) until the age of 25. Washington willed that hese young freemen “be be taught to read & write; and to be brought up to some useful occupation” subject to the laws applying to orphans.

Washington then shows he harbors few illusions about his executors and heirs:

I do hereby expressly forbid the Sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth, of any Slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. And I do moreover most pointedly, and most solemnly enjoin it upon my Executors hereafter named, or the Survivors of them, to see that th⟨is cla⟩use respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay, after the Crops which may then be on the ground are harvested, particularly as it respects the aged and infirm; seeing that a regular and permanent fund be established for their support so long as there are subjects requiring it; not trusting to the ⟨u⟩ncertain provision to be made by individuals.

Washington clearly anticipated that his heirs might choose to ignore his will and keep the slaves despite his wishes, so he did everything in his power to make clear those wishes. His priorities, though, show up in the clause “after the Crops which may then be on the ground are harvested”—the farm and its income always come first.

A common occurrence in 18^th century Virginia was the freeing of slaves in a will for their exceptional service, which was permitted under the old Virginia statute. Washington adhered to this tradition by freeing William (Billy) Lee, his old valet, who had served him long and well as a personal servant.

And to my Mulatto man William (calling himself William Lee) I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which ha⟨v⟩e befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so: In either case however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his natural life, whic⟨h⟩ shall be independent of the victuals and cloaths he has been accustomed to receive, if he chuses the last alternative; but in full, with his freedom, if he prefers the first; & this I give him as a test⟨im⟩ony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.

Lee chose to stay at Mount Vernon until his own death in 1810 or 1828, history isn’t clear. Lee had broken both kneecaps in separate accidents in 1785 and 1788, rendering him a cripple. He went with Tobias Lear to New York in 1789 to serve as the new President’s valet but collapsed on the way and was fitted with braces before being sent on to the President’s home. He lasted there only a few months before being sent back to Mount Vernon, where he was tasked with making shoes. His injuries prompted a drinking habit as well, according to reports of visitors to Mount Vernon.

How did all this play out after Washington’s death? Edna Greene Medford’s article “Beyond Mount Vernon: George Washington’s Emancipated Laborers and Their Descendants”, in the collection Slavery at the Home of George Washington, edited by Philip J. Schwarz, details as much as is known about the disposition of the Mount Vernon slaves.

There were 317 enslaved people at Mount Vernon when Washington died. He owned 124 outright, leased 40 from Penelope French, and had the use of 153 dower slaves. Martha Washington did not wait for her own death to free her husband’s slaves; she did so on January 1, 1801, a year after his death. Various sources document Mrs. Washington’s concern that the only thing between the slaves and their freedom was her death, and that others advised her to rid herself of the problem sooner rather than later. The account in the book Never Caught: The Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, summarizes the known facts well (pages 175-176), with references.

The meticulous efforts in the Medford article document what is known about the fate of the freed and dower slaves, which is quite varied. The details of the search for information in that article reveal quite a lot about the way the antebellum South documented slaves and freemen and why it is very difficult to develop genealogies for the descendants of slaves. Some of the freed slaves chose to stay at Mount Vernon or the nearby areas. By 1833, the total expense for taking care of them had reached over $10,000.

All this seems quite complicated, but the complications come from the intricacies of British and Virginian slavery and estate laws, not from Washington’s intentions. Of all the founding fathers that owned slaves, Washington was the only one that considered or accomplished their manumission. It was, simultaneously, the least he could do for them and the most.