George Washington: Farmer Part 15

The depreciation of the paper currency during the Revolution proved disastrous to him in several ways. When the war broke out much of the money he had obtained by marriage was loaned out on bond, or, as we would say to-day, on mortgage. "I am now receiving," he soon wrote, "a s.h.i.+lling in the pound in discharge of Bonds which ought to have been paid me, & would have been realized before I left Virginia, but for my indulgences to the debtors." In 1778 he said that six or seven thousand pounds that he had in bonds upon interest had been paid in depreciated paper, so that the real value was now reduced to as many hundreds. Some of the paper money that came into his hands he invested in government securities, and at least ten thousand pounds of these in Virginia money were ultimately funded by the federal government for six thousand two hundred and forty-six dollars in three and six per cent. bonds.

And yet, by examining Was.h.i.+ngton's accounts, one is able to estimate in a rough way the returns he received from his estate, landed and otherwise. We find that in ten months of 1759 he took in 1,839; from January 1, 1760, to January 10, 1761, about 2,535; in 1772, 3,213; from August 3, 1775, to August 30, 1776, 2,119; in 1786, 2,025; in 1791, about 2,025. Included in some of these entries, particularly the earlier ones, are payments of interest and princ.i.p.al on his wife's share of the Custis estate. Of the later ones, that for 1786--a bad farming year--includes rentals on more than a score of parcels of land amounting to 282.15, 25 rental on his fishery, payments for flour, stud fees, etc.

Upon the average, therefore, I am inclined to believe that his annual receipts were roughly in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars to fifteen thousand dollars a year from his estate.

As regards Mount Vernon alone, he sometimes made estimates of what the crop returns ought to be; in other words, counted his chickens before they were hatched. Thus in 1789 he drew up alternative plans and estimated that one of these, if adopted, ought to produce crops worth a gross of 3,091, another 3,831, and a third 4,449, but that from these sums 1,357, 1,394 and 1,445 respectively would have to be deducted for seed, food for man and beasts, and other expenses.

A much better idea of the financial returns from his home estate can be obtained from his actual balances of gain and loss. One of these, namely for 1798, which was a poor year, was as follows:

BALANCE OF GAIN AND LOSS, 1798

DR. GAINED CR. LOST

Dogue Run Farm 397.11.2 Mansion House .. 466.18. 2-1/2 Union Farm .... 529.10.11-1/2 Muddy Hole Farm 60. 1. 3-1/2 River Farm .... 234. 4.11 Spinning ....... 51. 2. 0 Smith's Shop .. 34.12.09-1/2 Hire of Head Distillery .... 83.13. 1 overseer ..... 140. 0. 0 Jacks ......... 56.1 Traveler ...... 9.17 (stud horse) Shoemaker ..... 28.17. 1 Fishery ....... 165.12. 0-1/4 By clear gain on Dairy ......... 30.12. 3 the Estate.....898.16. 4-1/4

Mr. Paul Leicester Ford considered this "a pretty poor showing for an estate and negroes which had certainly cost him over fifty thousand dollars, and on which there was live stock which at the lowest estimation was worth fifteen thousand dollars more." In some respects it was a poor showing. Yet the profit Was.h.i.+ngton sets down is about seven per cent. upon sixty-five thousand dollars, and seven per cent. is more than the average farmer makes off his farm to-day except through the appreciation in the value of the land. The truth is, however, that Mount Vernon, including the live stock and slaves, was really worth in 1798 nearer two hundred thousand dollars than sixty-five thousand, so that the actual return would only be about two and a fourth per cent.

But Was.h.i.+ngton failed to include in his receipts many items, such as the use of a fine mansion for himself and family, the use of horses and vehicles, and the added value of slaves and live stock by natural increase.

Besides in some other years the profits were much larger.

And lastly, in judging a man's success or failure as a farmer, allowance must be made for the kind of land that he has to farm. The Mount Vernon land was undoubtedly poor in quality, and it is probable that Was.h.i.+ngton got more out of it than has ever been got out of it by any other person either before or since. Much of it to-day must not pay taxes.

Was.h.i.+ngton died possessed of property worth about three-quarters of a million, although he began life glad to earn a doubloon a day surveying.

The main sources of this wealth have already been indicated, but when all allowance is made in these respects, the fact remains that he was compelled to make a living and to keep expenses paid during the forty years in which the fortune was acc.u.mulating, and the main source he drew from was his farms. Not much of that living came from the Custis estate, for, as we have seen, a large part of the money thus acquired was lost.

During his eight years as Commander-in-Chief he had his expenses--no more. Of the eight years of his presidency much the same can be said, for all authorities agree that he expended all of his salary in maintaining his position and some say that he spent more. Yet at the end of his life we find him with much more land than he had in 1760, with valuable stocks and bonds, a house and furniture infinitely superior to the eight-room house he first owned, two houses in the Federal City that had cost him about $15,000, several times as many negroes, and live stock estimated by himself at $15,653 and by his manager at upward of twice that sum.

Such being the case--and as no one has ever ventured even to hint that he made money corruptly out of his official position--the conclusion is irresistible that he was a good business man and that he made farming pay, particularly when he was at home.

It is true that only three months before his death he wrote: "The expense at which I live, and the unproductiveness of my estate, will not allow me to lessen my income while I remain in my present situation. On the contrary, were it not for occasional supplies of money in payment for lands sold within the last four or five years, to the amount of upwards of fifty thousand dollars, I should not be able to support the former without involving myself in debt and difficulties," This must be taken, however, to apply to a single period of heavy expense when foreign complications and other causes rendered farming unprofitable, rather than to his whole career. Furthermore, his landed investments from which he could draw no returns were so heavy that he had approached the condition of being land poor and it was only proper that he should cut loose from some of them.

CHAPTER XVII

ODDS AND ENDS

In an age when organized charity was almost unknown the burden of such work fell mainly upon individuals. Being a man of great prominence and known to be wealthy, the proprietor of Mount Vernon was the recipient of many requests for a.s.sistance. Ministers wrote to beg money to rebuild churches or to convert the heathen; old soldiers wrote to ask for money to relieve family distresses or to use in business; from all cla.s.ses and sections poured in requests for aid, financial and otherwise.

It was inevitable that among these requests there should be some that were unusual. Perhaps the most amusing that I have discovered is one written by a young man named Thomas Bruff, from the Fountain Inn, Georgetown. He states that this is his second letter, but I have not found the first. In the letter we have he sets forth that he has lost all his property and desires a loan of five hundred pounds. His need is urgent, for he is engaged to a beautiful and "amiable" young lady, possessed of an "Estate that will render me Independent. Whom I cannot Marry in my present situation.... All my Happyness is now depending upon your Goodness and without your kind a.s.sistance I must be forever miserable--I should have never thought of making application to you for this favor had it not been in Consequence of a vision by Night since my Fathers Death who appeared to me in a Dream in my Misfortunes three times in one Night telling me to make applycation to you for Money and that you would relieve me from my distresses. He appeared the other night again and asked me if I had obeyed his commands I informed him that I had Wrote to you some time ago but had Received no answer nor no information Relative to the Business he then observed that he expected my letter had not come to hand and toald me to Write again I made some Objections at first and toald him I thought it presumption in me to trouble your Excellency again on the subject he then in a Rage drew his Small Sword and toald me if I did not he would run me through. I immediately in a fright consented."

One might suppose that so ingenious a request, picturing the deadly danger in which a young man stood from the shade of his progenitor, especially a young man who was thereby forced to keep a young lady waiting, would have aroused Was.h.i.+ngton's most generous impulses and caused him to send perhaps double the amount desired. Possibly he was hard up at the time. At all events he indorsed the letter thus:

"Without date and without success."

Many times, however, our Farmer was open-handed to persons who had no personal claim on him. For example, he loaned three hundred and two pounds to his old comrade of the French War--Robert Stewart--the purpose being to buy a commission in the British army. So far as I can discover it was never repaid; in fact, I am not sure but that he intended it as a gift. Another advance was that made to Charles L. Carter, probably the young man who later married a daughter of Was.h.i.+ngton's sister, Betty Lewis. Most of the story is told in the following extract from a letter written by Carter from Fredericksburg, June 2, 1797:

"With diffidence I now address you in consequence of having failed after my first voyage from China, to return the two hundred Dollars you favored me with the Loan of. Be a.s.sured Dr. Sir that I left goods unsold at the time of my Departure from Philadelphia on the second voyage, & directed that the money arising therefrom should be paid to you, but the integrity of my agent did not prove to be so uncorrupted as I had flattered myself. I have, at this late period, sent by Mr. G. Tevis the sum of two hundred Dollars with interest therefrom from the 15th of March 1795 to the 1st June, 1797. That sum has laid the foundation of a pretty fortune, for which I shall ever feel myself indebted to you."

He added that he had been refused the loan by a near relation before Was.h.i.+ngton had so kindly obliged him and that his mother, who was evidently acquainted with Was.h.i.+ngton, joined in hearty thanks for the benefit received.

Was.h.i.+ngton had experienced enough instances of ingrat.i.tude to be much pleased with the outcome of this affair. He replied in the kindest terms, but declined to receive the interest, saying that he had not made the loan as an investment and that he did not desire a profit from it.

Another recipient of Was.h.i.+ngton's bounty was his old neighbor, Captain John Posey. Posey sold Was.h.i.+ngton not only his Ferry Farm but also his claim to western lands. He became financially embarra.s.sed, in fact, ruined; his family was scattered, and he made frequent applications to Was.h.i.+ngton for advice and a.s.sistance. Was.h.i.+ngton helped to educate a son, St. Lawrence, who had been reduced to the hard expedient of tending bar in a tavern, and he also kept a daughter, Milly, at Mount Vernon, perhaps as a sort of companion to Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton. The Captain once wrote:

"I could [have] been able to [have] Satisfied all my old Arrears, some months AGoe, by marrying [an] old widow woman in this County. She has large soms [of] cash by her, and Prittey good Est.--She is as thick as she is high---And gits drunk at Least three or foure [times] a weak---which is Disagreable to me--has Viliant Sperrit when Drunk--its been [a] great Dispute in my mind what to Doe,--I beleave I shu'd Run all Resks--if my Last wife, had been [an] Even temper'd woman, but her Sperrit, has Given me such [a] Shock--that I am afraid to Run the Resk again."

Evidently the Captain did not find a way out of his troubles by the matrimonial route, for somewhat later he was in jail at Queenstown, presumably for debt, and we find in one of Was.h.i.+ngton's cash memorandum books under date of October 15, 1773: "By Charity--given Captn. Posey,"

four pounds. One of the sons later settled in Indiana, and the "Pocket"

county is named after him.

Another boy toward whose education Was.h.i.+ngton contributed was the son of Doctor James Craik--the boy being a namesake. Doctor Craik was one of Was.h.i.+ngton's oldest and dearest friends. He was born in Scotland two years before Was.h.i.+ngton saw the light at Wakefield, graduated from Edinburgh University, practised medicine in the West Indies for a short time and then came to Virginia. He was Was.h.i.+ngton's comrade in arms in the Fort Necessity campaign, was subsequently surgeon general in the Continental Army, and accompanied Was.h.i.+ngton to the Ohio both in 1770 and 1784. He married Mariane Ewell, a relative of Was.h.i.+ngton's mother, and resided many years in Alexandria. He was a frequent visitor at Mount Vernon both as a friend and in a professional capacity, and Was.h.i.+ngton declared that he would rather trust him than a dozen other doctors. Few men were so close to the great man as he, and he was one of the few who in his letters ventured to tell chatty matters of gossip. Thus, in August, 1791, he wrote a letter apropos of the bad health of George A.

Was.h.i.+ngton and added: "My daughter Nancy is there [Mt. Vernon] by way of Amus.e.m.e.nt awhile. She begins to be tired of her Fathers house and I believe intends taking an old Batchelor Mr. Hn. for a mate shortly."

Another young lady, Miss Muir, who had recently gone to Long Island for the benefit of the sea baths was "pursued" by a Mr. Donaldson and the latter now writes that "he shall bring back a wife with him." Craik was a thorough believer in Was.h.i.+ngton's destiny, and in the dark days of the Revolution would hearten up his comrades by the story of the Indian chieftain met upon the Ohio in 1770 who had vainly tried to kill Was.h.i.+ngton in the battle of the Monongahela and had finally desisted in the belief that he was invulnerable.

To friends, family, church, education and strangers our Farmer was open-handed beyond most men of his time. His manager had orders to fill a corn-house every year for the sole use of the poor in the neighborhood and this saved numbers of poor women and children from extreme want. He also allowed the honest poor to make use of his fis.h.i.+ng stations, furnis.h.i.+ng them with all necessary apparatus for taking herring, and if they were unequal to the task of hauling the seine, a.s.sistance was rendered them by the General's servants.

To Lund Was.h.i.+ngton he wrote from the camp at Cambridge: "Let the hospitality of the house, with respect to the poor, be kept up. Let no one go hungry away. If any of this kind of people should be in want of corn, supply their necessaries, provided that it does not encourage them to idleness; and I have no objection to you giving my money in charity to the amount of forty or fifty pounds a year, when you think it well bestowed. What I mean by having no objection is, that it is my desire it should be done. You are to consider that neither _myself nor wife_ is now in the way to do these good offices."

His relations with his own kindred were patriarchal in character. His care of Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton's children and grandchildren has already been described. He gave a phaeton and money to the extent of two thousand five hundred dollars to his mother and did not claim possession of some of the land left him by his father's will. To his sister Betty Lewis he gave a mule and many other presents, as well as employment to several of her sons. He loaned his brother Samuel (five times married) considerable sums, which he forgave in his will, spent "near five thousand dollars" on the education of two of his sons, and cared for several years for a daughter Harriot, notwithstanding the fact that she had "no disposition ... to be careful of her cloaths." To his nephew, Bushrod Was.h.i.+ngton, he gave money and helped him to obtain a legal education, and he a.s.sisted another nephew, George A. Was.h.i.+ngton, and his widow and children, in ways already mentioned. Over forty relatives were remembered in his will, many of them in a most substantial manner.

In the matter of eating and drinking Was.h.i.+ngton was abstemious. For breakfast he ordinarily had tea and Indian cakes with b.u.t.ter and perhaps honey, of which he was very fond. His supper was equally light, consisting of perhaps tea and toast, with wine, and he usually retired promptly at nine o'clock. Dinner was the main meal of the day at Mount Vernon, and was served punctually at two o'clock. One such meal is thus described by a guest:

"He thanked us, desired us to be seated, and to excuse him a few moments.... The President came and desired us to walk in to dinner and directed us where to sit, (no grace was said).... The dinner was very good, a small roasted pigg, boiled leg of lamb, roasted fowls, beef, peas, lettice, cuc.u.mbers, artichokes, etc., puddings, tarts, etc. etc.

We were desired to call for what drink we chose. He took a gla.s.s of wine with Mrs. Law first, which example was followed by Dr. Croker Crakes and Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton, myself and Mrs. Peters, Mr. Fayette and the young lady whose name is Custis. When the cloth was taken away the President gave 'all our Friends.'"

The General ordinarily confined himself to a few courses and if offered anything very rich would reply, "That is too good for me." He often drank beer with the meal, with one or two gla.s.ses of wine and perhaps as many more afterward, often eating nuts, another delicacy with him, as he sipped the wine.

He was, in fact, no prohibitionist, but he was a strong believer in temperance. He and the public men of his time, being aristocrats, were wine drinkers and few of them were drunkards. The political revolution of 1830, ushered in by Jackson, brought in a different type--Westerners who drank whisky and brandy, with the result that drunkenness in public station was much more common. Many of the Virginia gentlemen of Was.h.i.+ngton's day spent a fourth or even a third of their income upon their cellars. He was no exception to the rule, and from his papers we discover many purchases of wine. One of the last bills of lading I have noticed among his papers is a bill for "Two pipes of fine old London particular Madeira Wine," s.h.i.+pped to him from the island of Madeira, September 20, 1799. One wonders whether he got to toast "All our Friends" out of it before he died.

[Ill.u.s.tration: One of Was.h.i.+ngton's Tavern Bills]

His sideboard and table were well equipped with gla.s.ses and silver wine coolers of the most expensive construction. As in many other matters, his inventive bent turned in this direction. Having noticed the confusion that often arose from the pa.s.sing of the bottles about the table he designed when President a sort of silver caster capable of holding four bottles. They were used with great success on state occasions and were so convenient that other people adopted the invention, so that wine _coasters_, after the Was.h.i.+ngton design, became a part of the furniture of every fas.h.i.+onable sideboard.

To cool wine, meat and other articles, Was.h.i.+ngton early adopted the practice of putting up ice, a thing then unusual. In January, 1785, he prepared a dry well under the summer house and also one in his new cellar and in due time had both filled. June fifth he "Opened the well in my Cellar in which I had laid up a store of Ice, but there was not the smallest particle remaining.--I then opened the other Repository (call the dry Well) in which I found a large store." Later he erected an ice house to the eastward of the flower garden.

His experience with the cellar well was hardly less successful than that of his friend, James Madison, on a like occasion. Madison had an ice house filled with ice, and a skeptical overseer wagered a turkey against a mint julep that by the fourth of July the ice would all have disappeared. The day came, they opened the house, and behold there was enough ice for exactly _one_ julep! Truly a sad situation when there were _two_ Virginia gentlemen.

Mention of Madison in this connection calls to mind the popular notion that it was his wife Dolly who invented ice-cream. I believe that her biographers claim for her the credit of the discovery. The role of the iconoclast is a thankless one and I confess to a liking for Dolly, but I have discovered in Was.h.i.+ngton's cash memorandum book under date of May 17, 1784, the entry: "By a Cream Machine for Ice," 1.13.4--that is an ice-cream freezer. The immortal Dolly was then not quite twelve years old.

Was.h.i.+ngton seems to have owned three coaches. The first he ordered in London in 1758 in preparation for his marriage. It was to be fas.h.i.+onable, genteel and of seasoned wood; the body preferably green, with a light gilding on the mouldings, with other suitable ornaments including the Was.h.i.+ngton arms. It was sent with high recommendations, but proved to be of badly seasoned material, so that the panels shrunk and slipped out of the mouldings within two months and split from end to end, much to his disgust. Such a chariot was driven not with lines from a driver's box, but by liveried postillions riding on horseback, one horseman to each span.

The second coach he had made in Philadelphia in 1780 at a cost of two hundred and ten pounds in specie. It was decidedly better built.

The last was a coach, called "the White Chariot," bought second hand soon after he became President. It was built by Clarke, of Philadelphia, and was a fine vehicle, with a cream-colored body and wheels, green Venetian blinds and the Was.h.i.+ngton arms painted upon the doors. In this coach, drawn by six horses, he drove out in state at Philadelphia and rode to and from Mount Vernon, occasionally suffering an upset on the wretched roads. It was strong and of good workmans.h.i.+p and its maker heard with pride that it had made the long southern tour of 1791 without starting a nail or a screw. This coach was purchased at the sale of the General's effects by George Was.h.i.+ngton Parke Custis and later in a curious manner fell into the possession of Bishop Meade, who ultimately made it up into walking sticks, picture frames, snuff boxes and such mementoes.

At Mount Vernon to-day the visitor is shown a coach which the official Handbook states is vouched for as the original "White Chariot." In reality it seems to be the coach once owned by the Powell family of Philadelphia. It is said to have been built by the same maker and on the same lines, and Was.h.i.+ngton may have ridden in it, but it never belonged to him.