When George went from Ferry Farm or from Lawrence’s home to his brother Austin’s plantation on Pope’s Creek, he found the chief interests of that household to be farming and horses and the life of the river. Austin, like Lawrence, had found himself a bride of birth and station. This new mistress of the older Washington home on the Potomac was Anne Aylett, a daughter of Col. William Aylett of Westmoreland. In the household of Anne and her husband, George doubtless spent many pleasant weeks, though his mother probably kept him at Ferry Farm during the months of his schooling. He was developing fast, both physically and in knowledge of “ciphering” which soon became his absorbing interest.
West of the fall line, near which George had his home, the settlements fringed towards the frontier of the Blue Ridge and the Valley of the Shenandoah. Democracy was real there where life was raw, but in the Tidewater, the flat country east of the fall line, there were no less than eight strata of society. The uppermost and the lowliest, the great proprietors and the Negro slaves were supposed to be of immutable station. The others were small farmers, merchants, sailors, frontier folk, servants and convicts. Each of these constituted a distinct class at a given time, but individuals and families often shifted materially in station during a single generation. Titles hedged the ranks of the notables. Members of the Council of State were termed both “Colonel” and “Esquire,” Large planters who did not bear arms almost always were given the courtesy title of “Gentlemen.” So were church wardens, vestrymen, sheriffs and trustees of towns. The full honors of a man of station were those of vestryman, Justice and Burgess. Such an individual normally looked to England and especially to London and sought to live by the social standards of the mother country. Men of this level of society were fortunate and were not unmindful of it.
The wealth of such men assured Virginians the reputation of living nobly. One of their own historians wrote of “the families” as if all of them flourished opulently on great plantations. In reality, owners of expansive estates dominated completely the political life of the Colony in 1750 and gave its society a certain glamour, but these men were a minority. The majority of the white population was composed of farmers whose holdings of land were small in comparison with those of the great planters. Racially, in background and in native intelligence no line could be drawn between the owners of the larger and the lesser properties.
Economically the gradation was downward from great estates to self-dependent farms and then to small holdings. Almost 40 per cent of the 5066 known farms in the older Tidewater counties of the Colony, outside the Northern Neck, contained 200 acres or less in 1704. Farms of 100 acres or less represented 13 per cent of the total. The mean of all farms at that time was about 250 acres. Those agricultural properties with an acreage between 1000 and 5000 numbered only 448. Again with the exception of the Northern Neck, Tidewater plantations of more than 5000 acres are believed to have numbered eighteen. Later acquisitions swelled the holdings of the rich planters who speculated in western lands, but these additions did not affect greatly the size of farms east of the fall line. Where change occurred there between 1704 and 1750, it involved a substantial reduction in the mean.
The houses of Virginia exhibited the emergence of the wealthy and the lag of the poor in a Colony now almost 150 years old. Habitations, like their residents, were, so to say, in their second or third generation. The settlers’ first homes had been succeeded by stouter buildings. Some of these—notably William Byrd’s Westover and Thomas Lee’s first home in Westmoreland—had been burned. Newer and still finer structures were rising. Most of the “great houses” erected after 1710 were of brick without portico and contained large but not numerous rooms. The favored design was a rectangular building, two storeys high, with a central hall from front to rear. On either side were two rooms. The same arrangement usually was made on the second floor. One chamber was that of the master and mistress. Another usually was described as “the boys’.” A third was “the girls’.” In the fourth guests or parents might be accommodated. If a dwelling of this size and type was outgrown, wings were added, but not to the satisfaction of the aesthetically minded. Opposite the angles of some of the more imposing residences, four smaller brick houses were constructed. If four were too many or too expensive, there might be two outbuildings at the same angle to the front or rear of the main structure. Often these corner buildings served to set off the “great house.” Behind it were wooden sheds, barns and workshops so numerous that a stranger might think, from a distance, he was approaching a village. Such places always were few.
In almost every item of lighting, furniture and equipment, George’s own home at Ferry Farm was typical of the second order of Virginia houses: it was far below the level of luxury that prevailed on the greatest estates, but it was adequate. The hall, which had a bedroom in rear of it, was painted and was not adorned with pictures. A mirror hung on one wall. Most of the eleven leather-bottomed chairs probably were arranged around the larger of two tables. The arm chair doubtless was that in which Augustine Washington had rested near a fireplace supplied with screen and fire-irons. This hall served, also, as dining room. Its china, modest in value, was ample in quantity. The linen was in keeping with the china. Glasses were few, because of breakage. There was no plate, but the silver spoons numbered twenty-six. The room intended for a parlor had been made to serve as a chamber in which were three beds. Four other bedrooms contained a total of eight beds, two of which were old. The dairy was well equipped and was used, also, for washing clothes. Ironing was done in the kitchen. Numerous old tubs were kept in the storehouse. There, too, were the reserve pots and pans and cloth for making garments for the Negroes. To George’s eyes, doubtless, none of these things was comparable in interest to a tripod and certain boxes that Augustine Washington himself had put carefully away in their appointed place. These were the surveying instruments which, with the rifle and the axe, were the symbol of the extending frontier.
The food of Ferry Farm, as of every plantation, was supplied almost entirely from its own acres. To some visitors the consumption of bread and meat seemed incredible. A large family, servants included, disposed daily of fifty pounds of fine flour and a like weight of “seconds” at the master’s house alone. On a plantation with approximately 250 slaves, the consumption of food and drink in a year was estimated by one owner at 27,000 pounds of pork, 20 beeves, 4 hogsheads of rum, 150 gallons of brandy, 550 bushels of wheat and an unreckoned quantity of corn, which was the principal food of the field-hands.
In dress, as in almost all else, London was the model for the wealthy. The wives and daughters of the great planters were forever sending to England orders that must have been in complexity and particularity the despair of the merchants. Men’s dress was elaborate on high occasions. Fortunately, for persons not of exalted social station, dress did not have to be formal except on the King’s birthday and then only in Williamsburg where every Englishman—of office or of station—was supposed then to put on “handsome, full-dress silk clothes” and call on the Governor. At other times the individual could dress much as he pleased. Fashions did not change rapidly. A male might “wear the same coat three years.” Men shaved almost universally and much esteemed their collections of razors. The dress sword was the main appurtenance of the gentleman’s attire when, for example, he called at the Governor’s Palace. A Virginian of station was content to have one such sword or to borrow one; a landed lord as careful in such matters as was King Carter might own several swords and might protest he had “never a belt that’s fit to wear.” Jewelry was frequently but not generally used. Women often wore rings but they seldom had necklaces. Men had gold shirt studs, carried seals or snuff boxes, or wore wedding or mourning rings.
The pride of the Colony was its capital, Williamsburg, the seat of the Governor and the meeting place of the General Assembly, Council, and General Court. Rivaling any of these was the College of William and Mary, chartered by the Crown in 1693. The town took on the dignity of a city by royal
letters patent of July 28, 1722. By 1759, Williamsburg consisted of about two hundred houses, ten or twelve of which were rated as permanent residences of gentlemen’s families. The principal, though often dusty, street was proclaimed one of the most spacious in America; the appearance of the town was handsome; its population was about one thousand.
Most of the other important towns of the Colony were close to Williamsburg. Across the narrow Peninsula between the York and the James was Yorktown. Its rise had been due to the depth of the York at that point and to the proximity of Chesapeake Bay. Many vessels made it their destination. Merchants built large stores there. No town in all Virginia had a fairer site or an appearance more picturesque. Above the masts and yards of the ships in the sparkling river, houses were perched along the hill-mounting road as if they merely were resting in their climb. On the flat and cheerful cliff were the homes of the merchants, the Court House and the better ordinaries.
Farther down the Peninsula, almost at its tip was Hampton. This was next to Jamestown in age among the Virginia outposts and, after the abandonment of Jamestown, it was to be the oldest English settlement of continuous existence in America. Across Hampton Roads, and a few miles up the tolerant and hospitable river that bore the name of Queen Elizabeth, the town of Norfolk was thriving in the 1750’s. It enjoyed a brisk trade with the West Indies from which it imported more of throat-searing rum than was good for the Colony.
Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Norfolk were within a circle of twenty-five miles from Hampton. The Colony’s next town of rising dignity was Richmond, more than fifty miles up the James from Williamsburg and at the falls of the river. It was laid out in 1737. Five years later, it was incorporated as a town and in 1751 was chosen as the site for the Court House of Henrico County. The population of Richmond at the middle of the century probably did not exceed 250 or perhaps 300.
The magnitude of the domain inhabited by the Virginians was their pride, the basis of much of their hope and speculation. The Tidewater was well settled, the Piedmont was being occupied, the realm beyond the mountains lured and excited. In 1744-45, precisely when George was beginning to understand something of the life around him, two events widened the frontier of Virginia. After the signing of the Treaty of Albany in 1722, there had been doubt whether the Five Nations had relinquished title as far westward as the crest of the Blue Ridge or the higher saddle of the Alleghenies. The preamble of the Virginia ratification of the preliminary treaty had mentioned only the “great ridge of mountains.” The “greater” ridge was that west of the Shenandoah, but the term “ridge” was used primarily for what previously had been called the “Blew Mountains,” east of the rich Valley of the Shenandoah. The Colonials interpreted the treaty to cover everything as far westward as the crest of the Allegheny Mountains; the Indians were not willing to allow this extended claim otherwise than for solid gifts.
Patient maneuvering finally brought together at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the representatives of the Five Nations and the emissaries of Virginia and of Maryland. From June 22 until July 4, 1744, the negotiations continued. Final agreement, stoutly compensated by gifts from the white men, gave the Colonials the land they sought and more. The Shenandoah Valley was not to be entered by Indians. Settlers could open in peace its fat lands and those beyond it.
Announcement of this treaty was news to whet the appetite of every land-hungry Virginian, but the extent to which princely patents could be issued through the King’s office in Williamsburg depended, in part, on the outcome of the contest over the boundaries between Virginia and her sister Colonies. The argument with North Carolina could wait because most of the disputed lands were far from navigable streams. With Maryland, the issue was narrow. A doubt of a singular nature existed concerning the line between Virginia and Pennsylvania. West of the boundary of Maryland, the contention of the authorities of the Old Dominion was that “Virginia resumes its ancient breadth and has no other limits . . . than what its first royal charter assigned it, and that is to the South Sea, including the island of California.” Part of this domain manifestly was taken from Virginia by the charter given William Penn in 1681, but subsequently there was dispute whether the western boundary of Pennsylvania, which was to be five degrees west of the Delaware River, conformed to the windings of that stream or was a straight line drawn directly north and south at a distance of five degrees from some fixed point on the Delaware. This rendered doubtful a district small in area but valuable for its streams, even though the wealth of its minerals was not then realized.
Controversy over the boundary of Lord Fairfax’s proprietary, the Northern Neck, was on a vast scale. If his contention were denied by the Privy Council, then almost the whole of the new country acquired from the Five Nations would be royal domain; but if Fairfax prevailed, all the finest land close to the Potomac and as far west as the South Branch of that river would be his, to patent or to withhold, to sell to all comers or to parcel to his family and among his friends. The case was a close one. The Governor and Council maintained that the Northern Neck extended from the forks of the Rappahannock, above Fredericksburg, to the junction of the Shenandoah and the Potomac. With this western limit, the estimated area between the Rappahannock and the Potomac was 1,470,000 acres. By assuming the northern fork of the Rappahannock to be the base of the western line, acceptance of the same northern limit, where the Shenandoah entered the Potomac, would make the proprietary consist of 2,053,000 acres, as nearly as the Governor could compute. If Fairfax’s contention were upheld in full, his boundary would run from the headwaters of the Rapidan, the southern fork of the Rappahannock, all the way to the “head springs” of the Potomac, far in the mountains west of the Alleghenies. The proprietary then would include approximately 5,282,000 acres, or as much land as that on which quit rents were paid the Crown in the remainder of the Colony.
An order in Council for the determination of the boundaries had been issued in November 1733; the report of Fairfax’s surveyors and that of boundary commissioners named by the Colony had been completed in August 1737. Thereafter, year on year, the peer had attended the meetings of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations and had sought to get favorable action on his plea for the widest boundaries of the Northern Neck. Finally, in the winter of 1744-45, he received permission to appear before the Privy Council and offer a compromise: If his contention regarding boundaries was allowed and quit rents for lands within those limits were paid him in the future, he would confirm all royal patents issued in the disputed area, would waive all accumulated quit rents on his own account there, and would pay to the Crown all arrearages he collected of rents due under the King’s patents. In the early summer of 1745 word reached Belvoir that on April 11 the Privy Council had taken final action in the case of Fairfax vs Virginia. The Proprietor’s compromise was accepted; his title was recognized in toto.
MAP / 1
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
George was then thirteen and, though he was precocious in all that related to business, he still was too young to understand the full meaning of Fairfax’s victory and of the vast speculative movement that began as soon as the Colonials knew where the Proprietor would set his stakes. Around young George whenever he was at Mount Vernon, the talk was of patents, of surveys, of trails, of settlements and of the profits that might be made by organizing land enterprises beyond the farthest bounds of Fairfax’s grant. Much of this was dream, much was speculation, though a few bold men already had penetrated from Virginia to the Mississippi and had descended it. There was admiration for the explorers, but there was envy of the speculators where their plans were known. Rivalry was stirred among different patentees; ugliness showed itself; but Fairfax’s following, which included the Washingtons, had both content and ambition. Under the decision of the Privy Council, lands taken out by them within the western reaches of the proprietary would have secure title. Beyond those lands was the unclaimed Valley of the Ohio—with the promise of a fortune for young men of enterprise and courage.
George appeared to have in 1746 small prospect of any part in exploring the domain the decision of the Privy Council awarded Fairfax. In fact, Lawrence did not believe it was to George’s best interest to become in time another of the young speculators who were looking to the Shenandoah Valley and beyond. Aboard Vernon’s flagship in the Cartagena expedition Lawrence had seen something of the better side of life at sea, and he could think of no finer career for his tall young brother. George was not averse to this, but he was dependent on his mother’s will, whim and judgment. As his guardian, she could approve or she could veto. Short of running off, there was no way of starting a sailor’s life otherwise than with the acquiescence of a lady who seemed to have little of the Balls’ ancestral interest in shipping and the sea.
Mary Ball Washington was positive. A thousand trifles were her daily care to the neglect of larger interests, but mistress of much or of little, mistress she was resolved to be, and in nothing more certainly than in deciding what should be done by her first-born, her pride and her weakness. Lawrence might counsel and plan, but she would decide. This must have been plain to her elder stepson. He realized that any dealings with her and any effort by him to persuade her to permit George to go to sea had to be conducted with high caution and superlative diplomacy.
Washington Page 5