WASHINGTON'S PROBLEM
"No estate in United America," wrote Washington to Arthur Young in 1793,
"is more pleasantly situated than this. It lies in a high, dry, and
healthy country, 300 miles by water from the sea, and, as you will see
by the plan, on one of the finest rivers in the world. Its margin is
washed by more than ten miles of tide water; from the beds of which and
the innumerable coves, inlets, and small marshes, with which it abounds,
an inexhaustible fund of mud may be drawn as a manure, either to be used
separately or in a compost....
"The soil of the tract of which I am speaking is a good loam, more
inclined, however, to clay than sand. From use, and I might add, abuse,
it is become more and more consolidated, and of course heavier
to work....
"This river, which encompasses the land the distance above mentioned, is
well supplied with various kinds of fish at all seasons of the year;
and, in the spring, with great profusion of shad, herring, bass, carp,
perch, sturgeon, etc. Several fisheries appertain to the estate; the
whole shore, in short, is one entire fishery."
The Mount Vernon estate, amounting in the end to over eight thousand
acres, was, with the exception of a few outlying tracts, subdivided into
five farms, namely, the Mansion House Farm, the Union Farm, the Dogue
Run Farm, Muddy Hole Farm and the River Farm.
On the Mansion House Farm stood the owner's residence, quarters for the
negroes and other servants engaged upon that particular estate, and
other buildings. The land in general was badly broken and poor in
quality; much of it was still in woodland.
The River Farm lay farthest up the Potomac, being separated from the
others by the stream known as Little Hunting Creek. Visitors to Mount
Vernon to-day, traveling by trolley, cross this farm and stream. It
contained more tillable ground than any other, about twelve hundred
acres. In 1793 it had an "overlooker's" house of one large and two small
rooms below and one or two rooms above, quarters for fifty or sixty
negroes, a large barn and stables gone much to decay.
Muddy Hole Farm lay across Little Hunting Creek from the River Farm and
back of the Mansion House Farm and had no frontal upon the Potomac. It
contained four hundred seventy-six acres of tillable soil and had in
1793 a small overlooker's house, "covering for about 30 negroes, and a
tolerable good barn, with stables for the work-horses."
Union Farm lay just below the Mansion House Farm and contained nine
hundred twenty-eight acres of arable land and meadow. In 1793 it had, in
Washington's words, "a newly erected brick barn, equal, perhaps, to any
in America, and for conveniences of all sorts, particularly for
sheltering and feeding horses, cattle, &c. scarcely to be exceeded any
where." A new house of four rooms was building, and there were quarters
for fifty odd negroes. On this farm was the old Posey fishery and ferry
to Maryland.
Dogue Run Farm, of six hundred fifty acres, lay back of Union Farm and
upon it in 1793 stood the grist mill and later a distillery and the
famous sixteen-sided "new circular barn, now finishing on a new
construction; well calculated, it is conceived, for getting grain out
of the straw more expeditiously than the usual mode of threshing." It
had a two-room overseer's house, covering for forty odd negroes, and
sheds sufficient for thirty work horses and oxen. Washington considered
it much the best of all his farms. It was this farm that he bequeathed
to Nelly Custis and her husband, Lawrence Lewis, and upon it they
erected "Woodlawn," which is shown in the photograph herewith
reproduced.
Not long since I rambled on foot over the old estate and had an
opportunity to compare the reality, or what remains of it, with
Washington's description. I left the Mansion House, often visited
before, and strolled down the long winding drive that runs between the
stunted evergreens and oaks through the old lodge gate and passed from
the domain, kept trim and parklike by the Association, out upon the
unkempt and vastly greater part of the old Mount Vernon.
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.