There can be no question that the fortune he acquired by the Custis alliance proved of great advantage to him in his future career, for it helped to make him independent as regards money considerations.  He might never have become the Father of His Country without it.  Some of his contemporaries, including jealous-hearted John Adams, seem to have realized this, and tradition says that old David Burnes, the crusty Scotsman who owned part of the land on which the Federal City was laid out, once ventured to growl to the President:  “Now what would ye ha’ been had ye not married the widow Custis?” But this was a narrow view of the matter, for Washington was known throughout the Colonies before he married the Custis pounds sterling and was a man of too much natural ability not to have made a mark in later life, though possibly not so high a one.  Besides, as will be explained in detail later, much of the Custis money was lost during the Revolution as a result of the depreciation in the currency.

Following his marriage Washington added largely to his estate, both in the neighborhood of Mount Vernon and elsewhere.  In 1759 he bought of his friend Bryan Fairfax two hundred and seventy-five acres on Difficult Run, and about the same time from his neighbor, the celebrated George Mason of Gunston Hall, he acquired one hundred acres next that already bought of Darrell.  Negotiations entered into with a certain Clifton for the purchase of a tract of one thousand eight hundred six acres called Brents was productive of much annoyance.  Clifton agreed in February, 1760, to sell the ground for one thousand one hundred fifty pounds, but later, “under pretence of his wife not consenting to acknowledge her right of dower wanted to disengage himself ... and by his shuffling behavior convinced me of his being the trifling body represented.”  Washington heard presently that Clifton had sold the land to another man for one thousand two hundred pounds, which fully “unravelled his conduct ... and convinced me that he was nothing less than a thorough paced rascal.”  Ultimately Washington acquired Brents, but had to pay one thousand two hundred ten pounds for it.

During the next few years he acquired other tracts, notably the Posey plantation just below Mount Vernon and later often called by him the Ferry Farm.  With it he acquired a ferry to the Maryland shore and a fishery, both of which industries he continued.

By 1771 he paid quit rents upon an estate of five thousand five hundred eighteen acres in Fairfax County; on two thousand four hundred ninety-eight acres in Frederick County; on one thousand two hundred fifty acres in King George; on two hundred forty in Hampshire; on two hundred seventy-five in Loudoun; on two thousand six hundred eighty-two in Loudoun Faquier—­in all, twelve thousand four hundred sixty-three acres.  The quit rent was two shillings and sixpence per hundred acres and amounted to L15.11.7.