George Washington: Farmer by Paul Leland Haworth

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It was early morning, about the hour when in the long past the master of
the estate used to ride out on his tour of inspection. The day was one
of those delicious days in early autumn when earth and sky and air and
all things in nature seem kindly allied to help the heart of man leap up
in gladness and to enable him to understand how there came to be a poet
called Wordsworth. Meadow-larks were singing in the grass, and once in
an old hedgerow over-grown with sweet-smelling wild honeysuckle I saw a
covey of young quails. These hedgerows of locust and cedar are broken
now, but along the old road to the mill and Pohick Church and between
fields the scattered trees and now and then a bordering ditch are
evidences of the old owner's handiwork.

Then and later I visited all the farms, the site of the old mill, of
which only a few stones remain, the mill stream, the fishery and old
ferry landing. I walked across the gullied fields and examined the soil,
I noted the scanty crops they bear to-day and gained a clearer idea of
what Washington's problem had been than I could have done from a
library of books.

Truly the estate is "pleasantly situated," though even to-day it seems
out of the world and out of the way. One must go far to find so
satisfying a view as that from the old Mansion House porch across the
mile of shining water to the Maryland hills' crowned with trees
glorified by the Midas-touch of frost. The land does lie "high" and
"dry," but we must take exception to the word "healthy." In the summer
and fall the tidal marshes breed a variety of mosquito capable of biting
through armor plate and of infecting the devil himself with malaria. In
the General's day, when screens were unknown, a large part of the
population, both white and black, suffered every August and September
from chills and fever. The master himself was not exempt and once we
find him chronicling that he went a-hunting and caught a fox and
the ague.

What he says as regards the fisheries is all quite true and in general
they seem to have been very productive. Herring and shad were the chief
fish caught and when the run came the seine was carried well out into
the river in a boat and then hauled up on the shelving beach either by
hand or with a windlass operated by horse-power. There were warehouses
and vats for curing the fish, a cooper shop and buildings for sheltering
the men. The fish were salted down for the use of the family and the
slaves, and what surplus remained was sold. Now and then the landing and
outfit was rented out for a money consideration, but this usually
happened only when the owner was away from home.

At the old Posey fishery on Union Farm the industry is still carried on,
though gasoline engines have been substituted for the horse-operated
winch used in drawing the seines. Lately the industry has ceased to be
very productive, and an old man in charge told me that it is because
fishermen down the river and in Chesapeake Bay are so active that
comparatively few fish manage to get up so far.

The Mount Vernon estate in the old days lacked only one quality
necessary to make it extremely productive, namely, rich soil! Only
ignorance of what good land really is, or an owner's blind pride in his
own estate, can justify the phrase "a good loam." On most of the estate
the soil is thin, varying in color from a light gray to a yellow red,
with below a red clay hardpan almost impervious to water. To an observer
brought up on a farm of the rich Middle West, Mount Vernon, except for a
few scattered fields, seems extremely poor land. For farming purposes
most of it would be high at thirty dollars an acre. Much of it is so
broken by steep hills and deep ravines as scarcely to be tillable at
all. Those tracts which are cultivated are very susceptible to erosion.
Deep gullies are quickly worn on the hillsides and slopes. At one time
such a gully on Union Farm extended almost completely across a large
field and was deep enough to hide a horse, but Washington filled it up
with trees, stumps, stones, old rails, brush and dirt, so that scarcely
a trace of it was left. In places one comes upon old fields that have
been allowed to revert to broom sedge, scrub oak and scrub pine. One is
astonished at the amount that has never been cleared at all. Only by the
most careful husbandry could such an estate be kept productive. It never
could be made to yield bumper crops.

The situation confronting "Farmer Washington" was this: He had a great
abundance of land, but most of it on his home estate was mediocre in
quality. Some of that lying at a distance was more fertile, but much of
it was uncleared and that on the Ohio was hopelessly distant from a
market. With the exception of Mount Vernon even those plantations in
Virginia east of the Blue Ridge could not be looked after in person. He
must either rent them, trust them to a manager, or allow them to lie
idle. Even the Mount Vernon land was distant from a good market, and the
cost of transportation was so great that he must produce for selling
purposes articles of little bulk compared with value. Finally, he had an
increasing number of slaves for whom food and clothing must be provided.

His answer to the problem of a money crop was for some years the old
Virginia answer--tobacco. His far western lands he left for the most
part untenanted. Those plantations in settled regions but remote from
his home he generally rented for a share of the crop or for cash. The
staple articles that he produced to feed the slaves were pork and corn,
eked out by herring from the fishery.

From his accounts we find that in 1759 he made thirty-four thousand one
hundred sixty pounds of tobacco; the next year sixty-five thousand
thirty-seven pounds; in 1763, eighty-nine thousand seventy-nine pounds,
which appears to have been his banner tobacco crop. In 1765 the quantity
fell to forty-one thousand seven hundred ninety-nine pounds; in 1771, to
twenty-nine thousand nine hundred eighty-six pounds, and in 1773 to only
about five thousand pounds. Thereafter his crop of the weed was
negligible, though we still find occasional references to it even as
late as 1794, when he states that he has twenty-five hogsheads in the
warehouses of Alexandria, where he has held it for five or six years
because of low prices.

[Illustration: Looking across part of Dogue Run Farm to "Woodlawn," the
Home of Nelly Custis Lewis]

[Illustration: Gully on a Field of Union Farm, Showing Susceptibility to
Erosion]

He tried to raise a good quality and seems to have concentrated on
what he calls the "sweet scented" variety, but for some reason, perhaps
because his soil was not capable of producing the best, he obtained
lower prices than did some of the other Virginia planters, and grumbled
at his agents accordingly.

He early realized the ruinous effects of tobacco on his land and sought
to free himself from its clutches by turning to the production of wheat
and flour for the West India market. Ultimately he was so prejudiced
against the weed that in 1789 we find him in a contract with a tenant
named Gray, to whom he leased a tract of land for ten pounds,
stipulating that Gray should make no more tobacco than he needed for
"chewing and smoaking in his own family."

Late in life he decided that his land was not congenial to corn, in
which he was undoubtedly right, for the average yield was only about
fifteen bushels per acre. In the corn country farmers now often produce
a hundred. He continued to raise corn only because it was essential for
his negroes and hogs. In 1798 he contracted with William A. Washington
to supply him with five hundred barrels annually to eke out his own
crop. Even this quantity did not prove sufficient, for we find him next
year trying to engage one hundred barrels more.

Before this time his main concern had come to be to conserve his soil
and he had turned his attention largely to grass and live stock. Of
these matters more hereafter.

CHAPTER V

THE STUDENT OF AGRICULTURE

Washington took great pains to inform himself concerning any subject in
which he was interested and hardly was he settled down to serious
farming before he was ordering from England "the best System now extant
of Agriculture," Shortly afterward he expressed a desire for a book
"lately published, done by various hands, but chiefly collected from the
papers of Mr. Hale. If this is known to be the best, pray send it, but
not if any other is in high esteem." Another time he inquires for a
small piece in octavo, "a new system of Agriculture, or a speedy way to
grow rich."

Among his papers are preserved long and detailed notes laboriously taken
from such works as Tull's _Horse-Hoeing Husbandry_, Duhamel's _A
Practical Treatise of Husbandry, The Farmer's Compleat Guide,_ Home's
_The Gentleman Farmer_, and volumes of Young's _Annals of Agriculture_.

The abstracts from the _Annals_ were taken after the Revolution and
probably before he became President, for the first volume did not appear
until 1784. From the handwriting it is evident that the digests of
Tull's and Duhamel's books were made before the Revolution and probably
about 1760. In the midst of the notes on chapter eight of the _Compleat
Guide_ there are evidences of a long hiatus in time--Mr. Fitzpatrick of
the manuscript division of the Library of Congress thinks perhaps as
much as eight or ten years. A vivid imagination can readily conceive
Washington's laying aside the task for the more important one of
vindicating the liberties of his countrymen and taking it up again only
when he had sheathed the sword. But all we can say is that for some
reason he dropped the work for a considerable time, the evidence being
that the later handwriting differs perceptibly from that which
precedes it.

As most of Washington's agricultural ideas were drawn from these books,
it is worth while for us to examine them. I have not been able to put my
hands on Washington's own copies, but in the library of the Department
of Agriculture I have examined the works of Tull, Duhamel and Young.

Tull's _Horse-Hoeing Husbandry_ was an epoch-making book in the history
of English agriculture. It was first published in 1731 and the third
edition, the one I have seen and probably the one that Washington
possessed, appeared in 1751. Possibly it was the small piece in octavo,
"a new system of Agriculture, or a speedy way to grow rich" concerning
which he wrote to his agent. It deals with a great variety of subjects,
such as of roots and leaves, of food of plants, of pasture, of plants,
of weeds, of turnips, of wheat, of smut, of blight, of St. Foin, of
lucerne, of ridges, of plows, of drill boxes, but its one great thesis
was the careful cultivation by plowing of such annuals as potatoes,
turnips, and wheat, crops which hitherto had been tended by hand or left
to fight their battle unaided after having once been planted.

Duhamel's book was the work of a Frenchman whose last name was Monceau.
It was based in part upon Tull's book, but contained many reflections
suggested by French experience as well as some additions made by the
English translator. The English translation appeared in 1759, the year
of Washington's marriage. It dealt with almost every aspect of
agriculture and stock raising, advocated horse-hoeing, had much to say
in favor of turnips, lucerne, clover and such crops, and contained
plates and descriptions of various plows, drills and other kinds of
implements. It also contained a detailed table of weather observations
for a considerable time, which may have given Washington the idea of
keeping his meteorological records.

Young's _Annals_ was an elaborate agricultural periodical not unlike in
some respects publications of this sort to-day except for its lack of
advertising. It contains records of a great variety of experiments in
both agriculture and stock raising, pictures and descriptions of plows,
machines for rooting up trees, and other implements and machines, plans
for the rotation of crops, and articles and essays by experimental
farmers of the day. Among its contributors were men of much eminence,
and we come upon articles by Mr. William Pitt on storing turnips, Mr.
William Pitt on deep plowing; George III himself contributed under the
pen name of "Ralph Robinson." The man who should follow its directions
even to-day would not in most matters go far wrong.

As one looks over these publications he realizes that the scientific
farmers of that day were discussing many problems and subjects that
still interest those of the present. The language is occasionally
quaint, but the principles set down are less often wrong than might be
supposed. To be sure, Tull denied that different plants require
different sorts of food and, notes Washington, "gives many unanswerable
Reasons to prove it," but he combats the notion that the soil ever
causes wheat to degenerate into rye. This he declares "as ridiculous as
it would be to say that an horse by feeding in a certain pasture will
degenerate into a Bull." And yet it is not difficult to discover farmers
to-day who will stubbornly argue that "wheat makes cheat." Tull also
advocated the idea that manure should be put on green and plowed under
in order to obtain anything like its full benefit, as well as many other
sound ideas that are still disregarded by many American farmers.

Washington eagerly studied the works that have been mentioned, and much
of his time when at Mount Vernon was devoted to experiments designed to
ascertain to what extent the principles that were sound in England could
be successfully applied in an American environment.

CHAPTER VI

A FARMER'S RECORDS AND OTHER PAPERS

Washington was the most methodical man that ever lived. He had a place
for everything and insisted that everything should be kept in its place.
There was nothing haphazard about his methods of business. He kept exact
accounts of financial dealings.

His habit of setting things down on paper was one that developed early.
He kept a journal of his surveying experiences beyond the Blue Ridge in
1748, another of his trip to Barbadoes with his brother Lawrence in
1751-52, another of his trip to Fort Le Boeuf to warn out the French,
and yet another of his Fort Necessity campaign. The words are often
misspelled, many expressions are ungrammatical, but the handwriting is
good and the judgments expressed, even those set down when he was only
sixteen, are the mature judgments of a man.

A year after his marriage he began a formal diary, which he continued
until June 19, 1775, the time of his appointment to command the army of
the Revolution. He called it his _Diary_ and later _Where, & how my time
is Spent_. In it he entered the happenings of the day, his agricultural
and other experiments, a record of his guests and also a detailed
account of the weather.

His attention to this last matter was most particular. Often when away
from home he would have a record kept and on his return would
incorporate it into his book. Exactly what advantages he expected to
derive therefrom are not apparent, though I presume that he hoped to
draw conclusions as to the best time for planting crops. In reading it I
was many times reminded of a Cleveland octogenarian who for fifty-seven
years kept a record twice a day of the thermometer and barometer. Near
the end of his life he brought the big ledgers to the Western Reserve
Historical Society, and I happened to be present on the occasion. "You
have studied the subject for a long time," I said to him. "Are there any
conclusions you have been able to reach as a result of your
investigation?" He thought a minute and passed a wrinkled hand across a
wrinkled brow. "Nothing but this," he made answer, "that Cleveland
weather is only constant in its inconstancy."

We would gladly exchange some of these meteorological details for
further information about Washington's own personal doings and feelings.
Of the latter the diaries reveal little. Washington was an objective
man, above all in his papers. He sets down what happens and says little
about causes, motives or mental impressions. When on his way to Yorktown
to capture Cornwallis he visited his home for the first time in six
weary years, yet merely recorded: "I reached my own Seat at Mount Vernon
(distant 120 Miles from the Hd. of Elk) where I staid till the 12th."

Not a word of the emotions which that visit must have roused!

For almost six years after 1775 there is a gap in the diary, though for
some months of 1780 he sets down the weather. On May I, 1781, he begins
a new record, which he calls a _Journal_, and he expresses regret that
he has not had time to keep one all the time. The subjects now
considered are almost wholly military and the entries reveal a different
man from that of 1775. The grammar is better, the vocabulary larger, the
tone more elevated, the man himself is bigger and broader with an
infinitely wider viewpoint.

From November 5, 1781, for more than three years there is another
blank, except for the journal of his trip to his western lands already
referred to. But on January 1, 1785, he begins a new _Diary_ and
thenceforward continues it, with short intermissions, until the day of
his last ride over his estate.

A few of the diaries and journals have been lost, but most are still in
existence. Some are in the Congressional Library and there also is the
Toner transcript of these records. The transcript makes thirty-seven
large volumes. The diary is one of the main sources from which the
material for this book is drawn.

The original of the record of events for 1760 is a small book, perhaps
eight or ten inches long by four inches wide and much yellowed by age.
Part of the first entry stands thus:

"January 1, Tuesday

"Visited my Plantations and received an Instance of Mr. French's great
Love of Money in disappointing me of some Pork because the price had
risen to 22.6 after he had engaged to let me have it at 20 s."

On his return from his winter ride he found Mrs. Washington "broke out
with the Meazles." Next day he states with evident disgust that he has
taken the pork on French's own terms.

The weather record for 1760 was kept on blank pages of _The Virginia
Almanac_, a compendium that contains directions for making "Indico," for
curing bloody flux, for making "Physick as pleasant as a Dish of
Chocolate," for making a striking sun-dial, also "A Receipt to keep
one's self warm a whole Winter with a single Billet of Wood." To do this
last "Take a Billet of Wood of a competent Size, fling it out of the
Garret-Window into the Yard, run down Stairs as hard as ever you can
drive; and when you have got it, run up again with it at the same
Measure of Speed; and thus keep throwing down, and fetching up, till the
Exercise shall have sufficiently heated you. This renew as often as
Occasion shall require. _Probatum est_."

This receipt would seem worth preserving in this day of dear fuel. As
Washington had great abundance of wood and plenty of negroes to cut it,
he probably did not try the experiment--at least such a conclusion is
what writers on historical method would call "a safe inference."

[Illustration: First Page of Washington's Digest of Duhamel's Husbandry]

There is in the almanac a rhyme ridiculing physicians and above the
March calendar are printed the touching verses:

"Thus of all Joy and happiness bereft,
And with the Charge of Ten poor Children left:
A greater Grief no Woman sure can know,
Who,--with Ten Children--who will have me now."

Also there are some other verses, very broad and "not quite the proper
thing," as Kipling has it. But it must not be inferred that Washington
approved of them.

Washington also kept cash memorandum books, general account books, mill
books and a special book in which he recorded his accounts with the
estate of the Custis children. These old books, written in his neat
legible hand, are not only one of our chief sources of information
concerning his agricultural and financial affairs, but contain many
sidelights upon historical events. It is extremely interesting, for
example, to discover in one of the account books that in 1775 at Mount
Vernon he lent General Charles Lee--of Monmouth fame--L15, and "to Ditto
lent him on the Road from Phila to Cambridge at different times" L9.12
more, a total of L24.12. In later years Lee intrigued against Washington
and said many spiteful things about him, but he never returned the loan.
The account stood until 1786, when it was settled by Alexander White,
Lee's executor.

In the Cash Memorandum books we can trace Washington's military
preparations at the beginning of the Revolution. Thus on June 2, 1775,
being then at Philadelphia, he enters: "By Expences bringing my Horses
from Baltimore," L2.5. Next day he pays thirty pounds for "Cartouch
Boxes &c. for Prince Wm. Comp." June 6, "By Covering my Holsters,"
L0.7.6; "By a Cersingle," L0.7.6; "By 5 Books--Military," L1.12.0. He
was preparing for Gage and Howe and Cornwallis and whether the knowledge
contained in the books was of value or not he somehow managed for eight
years to hold his opponents at bay and ultimately to win. At Cambridge,
July tenth, he spends three shillings and four pence for a "Ribbon to
distinguish myself," that is to show his position as commander; also
L1.2.6 for "a pair of Breeches for Will," his colored body servant.

A vast number of papers bear witness to his interest in agriculture and
with these we are particularly concerned. He preserved most of the
letters written to him and many of these deal with farming matters.
During part of his career he had a copying press and kept copies of his
own important letters, while many of the originals have been preserved,
though widely scattered. When away from home he required his manager to
send him elaborate weekly reports containing a meteorological table of
each day's weather, the work done on each farm, what each person did,
who was sick, losses and increases in stock, and other matters of
interest. Scores of these reports are still in existence and are
invaluable. He himself wrote--generally on Sunday--lengthy weekly
letters of inquiry, direction, admonition and reproof, and if the
manager failed in the minutest matter to give an account of some phase
of the farm work, he would be sure to hear of it in the proprietor's
next letter.

Washington's correspondence on agricultural matters with Arthur Young
and Sir John Sinclair, eminent English agriculturists, was collected
soon after his death in a volume that is now rare. In it are a number of
letters written by other American farmers, including Thomas Jefferson,
relative to agriculture in their localities. These letters were the
result of inquiries made of Washington by Young in 1791. In order to
obtain the facts desired Washington sent out a circular letter to some
of the most intelligent farmers in the Middle States, and the replies
form perhaps our best source of information regarding agricultural
conditions in that period.

Because of this service and of his general interest in agricultural
matters Washington was elected a foreign honorary member of the English
Board of Agriculture and received a diploma, which is still preserved
among his papers.

Some of Washington's other agricultural papers have been printed in one
form and another, but a great number, and some the most interesting, can
still be consulted only in manuscript.

Washington bequeathed his books and papers, along with his Mansion
House, to his nephew, Bushrod Washington, an associate justice of the
Federal Supreme Court. Judge Washington failed to appreciate fully the
seriousness of the obligation thus incurred and instead of safeguarding
the papers with the utmost jealousy gave many, including volumes of the
diary, to visitors and friends who expressed a desire to possess
mementoes of the illustrious patriot. In particular he permitted
Reverend William Buel Sprague, who had been a tutor in the family of
Nelly Custis Lewis, to take about fifteen hundred papers on condition
that he leave copies in their places. The judge also intrusted a
considerable portion to the historian Jared Sparks, who issued the first
considerable edition of Washington's writings. Sparks likewise was
guilty of giving away souvenirs.

Bushrod Washington died in 1829 and left the papers and letter books for
the most part to his nephew John Corbin Washington. In 1834 the nation
purchased of this gentleman the papers of a public character, paying
twenty-five thousand dollars. The owner reserved the private papers,
including invoices, ciphering book, rules of civility, etc., but in 1849
sold these also to the same purchaser for twenty thousand dollars. The
papers were kept for many years in the Department of State, but in the
administration of Theodore Roosevelt most of them were transferred to
the Library of Congress, where they could be better cared for and would
be more accessible.

Bushrod Washington gave to another nephew, John Augustine Washington,
the books and relics in the dining-room of the Mansion House. In course
of time these were scattered, some being bought for the Boston
Athenaeum, which has decidedly the larger part of Washington's library;
others were purchased by the state of New York, and yet others were
exhibited at the Centennial Exposition and were later sold at auction.
Among the relics bought by New York was a sword wrongly said to have
been sent to the General by Frederick the Great.

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