FARMER AND PROPRIETOR

The earliest known Washington coat of arms had blazoned upon it “3 Cinque foiles,” which was the herald’s way of saying that the bearer was a landholder and cultivator, and when Washington had a book-plate made for himself he added to the conventional design of the arms spears of wheat and other plants, as an indication of his favorite labor.  During his career he acted several parts, but in none did he find such pleasure as in farming, and late in life he said, “I think with you, that the life of a husbandman of all others is the most delectable.  It is honorable, it is amusing, and, with judicious management, it is profitable.  To see plants rise from the earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty of the laborer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy to be conceived than expressed.”  “Agriculture has ever been the most favorite amusement of my life,” he wrote after the Revolution, and he informed another correspondent that “the more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs, the better pleased I am with them; insomuch, that I can no where find so great satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits:  In indulging these feelings, I am led to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task of making improvements on the earth, than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it, by the most uninterrupted career of conquests.”  A visitor to Mount Vernon in 1785 states that his host’s “greatest pride is, to be thought the first farmer in America.  He is quite a Cincinnatus.”

Undoubtedly a part of this liking flowed from his strong affection for Mount Vernon.  Such was his feeling for the place that he never seems to have been entirely happy away from it, and over and over again, during his various and enforced absences, he “sighs” or “pants” for his “own vine and fig tree.”  In writing to an English correspondent, he shows his feeling for the place by saying, “No estate in United America, is more pleasantly situated than this.  It lies in a high, dry and healthy country, three hundred miles by water from the sea, and, as you will see by the plan, on one of the finest rivers in the world.”

The history of the Mount Vernon estate begins in 1674, when Lord Culpepper conveyed to Nicholas Spencer and Lieutenant-Colonel John Washington five thousand acres of land “scytuate Lying and being within the said terrytory in the County of Stafford in the ffreshes of the Pottomocke River and ... bounded betwixt two Creeks.”  Colonel John’s half was bequeathed to his son Lawrence, and by Lawrence’s will it was left to his daughter Mildred.  She sold it to the father of George, who by his will left it to his son Lawrence, with a reversion to George should Lawrence die without issue.  The original house was built about 1740, and the place was named Mount Vernon by Lawrence, in honor of Admiral Vernon, under whom he had served at Carthagena.  After the death of Lawrence, the estate of twenty-five hundred acres came under Washington’s management, and from 1754 it was his home, as it had been practically even in his brother’s life.