Interesting experiences crowded the next week. George found the wild turkeys of the region a difficult target for his rifle; he had the excitement of a fire in the straw where he and his companions were asleep; the tent was blown down twice. On April 3, some German settlers came to visit the camp, and on the next day the surveyors were followed through the woods by a great company of men, women and children. Young Washington observed these Germans with amazement. Their lack of acquaintance with English seemed to him positively perverse. Said he: “I really think they seemed to be as ignorant a set of people as the Indians. They would never speak English but, when spoken to, they speak all Dutch.”
Fairfax left the party temporarily on April 4, perhaps to arrange for new supplies. His absence deprived George of most of the fun of the expedition; Genn and his assistants were not companionable, nor was the weather of a sort to comfort young Washington. On the sixth the party started back to van Meter’s, only to be caught in so violent a rain that refuge had to be taken. The rain continued until about 1 P.M. on the seventh. A little later, George heard the good news that Fairfax had returned and was at Peter Casey’s, two miles away. Off went Washington to see his friend. That night they spent at Casey’s—”the first night I had slept in a house,” George proudly wrote in his journal, “since I came to the Branch.” He doubtless felt he was getting to be a pioneer.
Although the young gentlemen would do their own cooking where they must, they at least wanted something to cook and did not relish what they had the next day, empty stomachs. The man who was to bring supplies did not appear. While an all-day quest for food was being made, George and Fairfax remained at the camp, under the canvas, and none too happy; novelty and excitement were giving place to hunger and discomfort. They decided they had had enough of the wilderness, or else their designated time was up. In any event, they ate some of the food that reached the camp between 4 and 5 P.M. and then said good-bye and headed for the lower Potomac.
They lost no time on the road. When that journey ended April 13, their expedition to the Valley could not be described as an adventure of frontier hardship unflinchingly borne, but it could be written down as compassing the most useful thirty-three consecutive days that George ever had spent. All the milder, less arduous experiences of the frontier had been crowded one upon another. Some days had been wet and tedious and some nights long and smoky, but George had learned that he could run a line in the wilderness. He had camped out, though neither with skill nor to his satisfaction; he had cooked his food over the flames, and he had slept by a fire in the open; he had been among Indians, and he had observed as much of their ways as he could in two days. He had seen with his own eyes the fine western lands. He had felt the frontier.
The story of George’s half-amusing, half-instructive experiences beyond the mountains was one, of course, that all his kinsmen wished to hear. After telling it at Mount Vernon to Lawrence and Nancy, the young gentleman who had been to the frontier had to repeat his narrative at Ferry Farm, probably at Pope’s Creek and, in June, among the pleasant families of Chotank. After some enjoyable days there, George paid a visit to the Turner plantation, on the north bank of the Rappahannock, opposite Port Royal. Another journey of the summer carried him on his first visit to Yorktown, where he did some shopping for his mother. There was more ready cash in the family that summer because the active executors of Augustine Washington’s estate—Lawrence Washington and Nathaniel Chapman—had sold on George’s account about 165 acres of the Ferry Farm to Anthony Strother.
In August George rode to the falls of the Potomac with Lawrence, whose continuing interest in western lands was evidenced by his purchase during 1748 of more than thirteen hundred acres in the Shenandoah Valley. Promising a profit was a plan in which Lawrence, Austin and others were engaged, to move the Colonial capital from Williamsburg to a more convenient, healthier site in the region where the Washingtons and their friends were large landowners. The plan was an old one but it had a new argument behind it that year: Williamsburg was suffering from an epidemic of dysentery so serious that a postponement of the meeting of the House of Burgesses was advocated.
This proposal to change the seat of government interested George as a young man of business but it did not excite him. He was making occasional surveys and he was reading the Spectator and a little of English history, but, above all, he was enjoying life. Besides billiards, George had learned whist and loo by the autumn of 1748, and he did not object to playing for stakes that were worth winning. George was enjoying other social pleasures, too. His clothes and his appearance became increasingly his concern. Another new acquirement was dancing. In the acquisition of social graces, George’s model and mentor continued to be Lawrence, who was acquainted with the best usages as well as with the best families of the Colony.
Sickness now was interfering with Lawrence’s service to the public. From the time Fairfax had separate representation in 1744, George’s older half-brother had been a Burgess and a member of the important committee on propositions and grievances. Seniority and influence were rising when, in December 1748, he had to ask leave of absence because of ill-health. He returned to Mount Vernon, where George remained with him for part of the cold season.
If this was a time of solicitude on account of Lawrence, it was a time of pleasurable excitement, also, because of a shining event at Belvoir. George William Fairfax had wooed and won Sarah Cary, daughter of Col. Wilson Cary of Ceelys, an excellent estate on James River about three miles from Hampton. The marriage had been solemnized December 17; the proud young Fairfax had brought his bride immediately to his father’s house and had introduced neighbors who, of course, were eager to see her. As George observed her that winter of 1748-49, Sally was an altogether charming and somewhat tantalizing person. She was eighteen, not two years older than George, and she had much grace. Belvoir, indeed the whole sweep of that part of the Potomac, was the brighter for her presence. Having met her, it was difficult for George to go back to Ferry Farm, even for a brief period, or to find full pleasure in visits elsewhere.
The spring of 1749 found Lawrence plagued with so stubborn a cough that he talked of leaving Virginia. He took up his duties when the House of Burgesses was convened, but in May he had again to be excused from attendance. The distress created by this illness was deepened by loss of one after another of Nancy’s children by Lawrence. Three times the mother had seen the body of her only child carried to the grave. There was the unhappy prospect that if Lawrence yielded to his malady, which looked more and more like consumption, he would have no heir of the body. Augustine had provided that in this event, the land and mill left to Lawrence should pass to George unless Austin desired the Hunting Creek property. Should Austin wish to own Hunting Creek, if Lawrence died without issue, then, Augustine had stipulated that his second son must transfer the Mattox-Pope Creek estate to George.
Lawrence’s illness and loss of his children were the saddest but not the only concerns of the family in 1749. Mary Washington had abandoned her plan for building a house on her lower farm. Mrs. Washington simply “stayed on” at Ferry Farm as if the property were her own and was not to pass to George when he became twenty-one. Besides there was a threat that a ferry might be authorized across the Rappahannock at her lower tract—in George’s indignant words, “right through the very heart and best of the land.”
George explained this to Lawrence in May 1749, at a time when the younger brother was busy as a surveyor and was planning still larger things in that profession. The long-desired town at Belhaven, on the Potomac, was about to become a reality. The General Assembly had authorized the establishment of the town on sixty acres of land that belonged to Philip and John Alexander and to Hugh West. The place was to be “called by the name of Alexandria,” in honor of the owners of the greater part of the tract. The trustees, all three of the Fairfaxes among them, were resolved to establish the town at once. On May 27 the Maryland Gazette announced that lots would be sold to the highest bidders July 13
. To have all the parcels laid off by that time, the regular surveyor, John West, Jr., used young Mr. Washington as an assistant. George worked fast. By approximately July 17, he had finished his part of the survey and had drawn a plan of the town.
Lawrence was in bad condition physically. His cough defied local doctors and home treatment. In growing concern, he determined to consult physicians in London and while there to advance a business enterprise that was exciting him and some of his neighbors. With toasts for a pleasant voyage and prayers for a sure and swift recovery, he was bidden farewell shortly before the vendue at Alexandria.
This was the grief of the summer of 1749. The gratification was the success of George in his application for the surveyorship of Culpeper. On the last day of July, he completed the long ride to the temporary quarters of the Court and received his commission from the President and Masters of the College of William and Mary. George proceeded immediately to exercise his new authority. He surveyed four hundred acres in Culpeper for Richard Barnes of Richmond County on July 22 and received promptly his fee of £2 3s. Soon, too, George was copying for customers deeds already recorded. Of other work in the proprietary, there was little during the summer. The principal reason was controversy regarding the title of Jost Hite to certain lands he had acquired in the Shenandoah Valley and then had resold in part. Because of Hite’s threat, Lord Fairfax closed the land books of Frederick County to most applicants in 1749. This action denied George any surveying of new tracts in Frederick, where business Otherwise would have been brisk. He scarcely could have undertaken to ride over the mountains, even had the land office been open, because of an attack of malaria, which, said he, “I have had to extremity.”
With the return of Lawrence, a short time prior to November 7, interest shifted. As a student of the art of making money, George now had a new lesson. Although Lawrence had not improved in health and had not even learned the nature of his malady, he displayed the energy of renewed interest in a project that had been shaping itself ever since the completion of the Treaty of Lancaster. Thomas Lee, Lawrence Washington, and some of their speculating friends planned a bold project for an “Ohio Company.” With the help of the Duke of Bedford and of John Hanbury, a wealthy London merchant, the company received a grant of 200,000 acres from King George on February 23, 1749. If the terms attached to that grant were executed, an additional 300,000 acres were to be allotted.
Lawrence and his associates were convinced they could attract settlers and secure the frontier against the possibility of occupation by French who might come down from Canada. Lawrence reasoned that a fort and an Indian trading post in the western country could be supplied from the upper Potomac far more readily and regularly than would be possible for the French from the St. Lawrence River and the Lakes. Thus a larger part of the fur trade might be captured. The Indians, getting the goods they wanted, might be more firmly the friends of England. Nor could Lawrence overlook the fact that if the upper Potomac became the base for this new trade, land owners in that region might profit handsomely. The immediate task was to establish the trading post. All advice to the stockholders of the company from frontiersmen indicated that the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers would be the ideal site for the post. Until it could be established, a warehouse was to be maintained on Wills Creek, forty-five miles northwest of Frederick Town.
The prospect had appeared bright early in 1749, but it had been clouded somewhat by the time of Lawrence’s return from England. “Those very Indians that had encouraged [the company] at first,” wrote Thomas Lee in disgust, “had been persuaded that our design was to ruin, not to trade with them.” In addition, on the day that the Governor and Council had confirmed the grant to the Ohio Company, they had allotted 800,000 acres to a somewhat similar enterprise, that of the Loyal Company. The lines of the two companies were far enough apart to avoid direct conflict, but rivalry was stirred. Neither company was willing to trust the other or to withhold a blow that could be delivered secretly.
These matters were vexing to Lawrence and exciting to George. As a qualified County Surveyor, he could work anywhere he was engaged, and he accepted gladly an invitation from Fairfax to meet the Proprietor in Frederick at the November term of Court. The ground Fairfax now wished surveyed was to be similar, in general, to that George had seen in 1748, but there was a most material difference: On this new expedition Washington was to be responsible for surveys, not merely a volunteer assistant.
Work began November 2, 1749. For a few evenings, George was close enough to Frederick Town to go to the ordinary and sleep in a bed. The other nights he spent by a fire on straw or bearskin. The dwellers in the Valley he disliked as acutely as on his previous visit. “A parcel of barbarians . . . an uncouth set of people,” he termed them. He said of his life among them, “There’s nothing would make it pass off tolerably but a good reward.” He confided with pride: “A doubloon is my constant gain every day that the weather will permit my going out, and sometimes six pistoles.” This was fine compensation for a young man not yet eighteen but it could not be earned for long. His last surveys for the season were made November 11.
When George came back to Mount Vernon, he continued to hear discussion of business ventures and speculative enterprises. Contact with Lawrence and the Fairfaxes was itself a business education for the younger Washington. Although the health of Lawrence was no better, he discharged patiently his duties as one of the trustees of Alexandria, engaged in additional land transactions, and sought to hasten the dispatch of goods to the frontier for the Ohio Company. Its affairs were not developing as rapidly or as favorably as the Virginia promoters had hoped. The suspicions on the part of the Redmen were unrelieved. In addition to the threat presented vaguely by the French, moving from Lake Erie southward, there was nearer rivalry by Pennsylvanians who showed every intention of competing for the fur trade and asserted title to part of the territory given the Ohio Company.
George went to Fredericksburg in January 1749-50 and spent some time at Ferry Farm. Conditions there had not changed greatly. Death had taken none of the family, though Catherine Washington Lewis, wife of Fielding Lewis, was near the end of her brief years. George’s mother continued busy with many small things and was charged with three young sons as well as with Betty, who was now sixteen and, naturally, would soon be marrying.
He went back to the Potomac early in the year. George now had to be regarded as a serious young man of business. Pleasure had its place; making a fortune came first. Pistoles and doubloons were to be sought in strict accordance with the code of honorable conduct that George was developing steadily, but within the limits that character and honesty imposed, gold was to be pursued and caught. Settlers were increasing rapidly on the lower stretches of the Shenandoah; there was work enough there for George, highly profitable work that would reconcile him to sojourning among the “barbarians.” He rode over the mountains to the Valley, made on March 30, 1750, his first survey of the spring and continued to use his compass and Jacob’s staff, with scant interruption, until April 28. Before George had gone to the Valley, he had bought himself a handsome set of pole-chair harness at £10 15s. On his return, he had money for the enjoyment of his equipage, and he likewise had the consciousness that when he came upon a particularly good piece of unpatented land, he could afford to pay the quit rents on it.
Much had happened on the well-settled part of the Northern Neck while George was in the Valley. Catherine Washington Lewis had died February 19 and had left a son, John, about three years of age. Her husband, Fielding Lewis, turned at once to George’s sister Betty. The siege was brief; on May 7 Betty was married to him. That event was pleasant, if somewhat precipitate; but at Mount Vernon and at Belvoir, there were troubles. Sally Fairfax Carlyle, Nancy’s sister and the wife of the rich merchant and shipmaster, John Cariyle, was pregnant and had symptoms that suggested cancer of the breast. Col. William Fairfax had gone to England. Most of these clouds were swept from the sky in the spring and summer of
1750. Betty’s venture in matrimony was manifestly a happy one; Sally Carlyle improved in health; George made some remunerative surveys in Culpeper and had a round of visits that extended from Yorktown to Pope’s Creek.
The continuing distress of the Washington-Fairfax circle was Lawrence’s physical condition. Warm weather brought him no relief. Another change of climate seemed desirable. As the springs of Berkeley, which George had visited in 1748, were gaining in reputation, it was thought that a visit there might invigorate Lawrence. George gladly agreed to go as companion and, if need be, as nurse. By July 25 the brothers were en route to the primitive resort. With a great bend of the Potomac lying to the north, the approaches to the baths were interesting, but the immediate surroundings were commonplace or worse. While the benefit to Lawrence was transitory if perceptible at all, the sight of much good land in the region of the Shenandoah revived his speculative impulse. Either on the basis of patents already issued to him, or else in the knowledge that his father-in-law would approve grants for any unoccupied land he desired, Lawrence had George survey three tracts.
George’s departure from the Shenandoah Valley was not earlier than the afternoon of August 26, but he lost no time in getting home and in picking up a few honest pounds. Work alternated with play. Late in September or early in October there was an excursion to Yorktown. From October 11 to October 24, he ran the lines of approximately sixteen tracts. Then, on October 25, George had a new and delightful experience. He had saved much the greater part of his earnings as a surveyor while cherishing ambition to buy good land when he found a tract that appealed to him in price and quality. The time now came. On October 17 he had the satisfaction of asking transfer of patent for a tract of 453 acres which he bought of Capt. John Rutherford—the first spread of friendly Shenandoah land to become his. This was not all: on the twenty-fifth he submitted to record a deed from Lord Fairfax for 550 acres of land in Frederick.
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