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.