Income, however, had not been his object in loading himself with such a vast property, as Washington believed that he was certain to become rich.  “For proof of” the rise of land, he wrote in 1767, “only look to Frederick, [county] and see what fortunes were made by the ... first taking up of those lands.  Nay, how the greatest estates we have in this colony were made.  Was it not by taking up and purchasing at very low rates the rich back lands, which were thought nothing of in those days, but are now the most valuable land we possess?”

In this he was correct, but in the mean time he was more or less land-poor.  To a friend in 1763 he wrote that the stocking and repairing of his plantations “and other matters ... swallowed up before I well knew where I was, all the moneys I got by marriage, nay more, brought me in debt” In 1775, replying to a request for a loan, he declared that “so far am I from having L200 to lend ...  I would gladly borrow that sum myself for a few months.”  When offered land adjoining Mount Vernon for three thousand pounds in 1778, he could only reply that it was “a sum I have little chance, if I had inclination, to pay; & therefore would not engage it, as I am resolved not to incumber myself with Debt.”  In 1782, to secure a much desired tract he was forced to borrow two thousand pounds York currency at the rate of seven per cent.

In 1788, “the total loss of my crop last year by the drought” “with necessary demands for cash” “have caused me much perplexity and given me more uneasiness than I ever experienced before from want of money,” and a year later, just before setting out to be inaugurated, he tried to borrow five hundred pounds “to discharge what I owe” and to pay the expenses of the journey to New York, but was “unable to obtain more than half of it, (though it was not much I required), and this at an advanced interest with other rigid conditions,” though at this time “could I get in one fourth part of what is due me on Bonds” “without the intervention of suits” there would have been ample funds.  In 1795 the President said, “my friends entertain a very erroneous idea of my particular resources, when they set me down for a money lender, or one who (now) has a command of it.  You may believe me when I assert that the bonds which were due to me before the Revolution, were discharged during the progress of it—­with a few exceptions in depreciated paper (in some instances as low as a shilling in the pound).  That such has been the management of the Estate, for many years past, especially since my absence from home, now six years, as scarcely to support itself.  That my public allowance (whatever the world may think of it) is inadequate to the expence of living in this City; to such an extravagant height has the necessaries as well as the conveniences of life arisen.  And, moreover that to keep myself out of debt; I have found it expedient now and then to sell Lands, or something else to effect this purpose.”