in search of george washington A Sele^ion of His Letters
in s earch of GEORGE WASHINGTON A Sele^ion Of His Letters w. w. abbot
th o rnwillow pre s s 20 06
first edition copyright © 20 06 w. w. abbot
The texts of the letters printed here are all taken from the multi volume the papers of george washington, edited and published in the University of Virginia, or from copies made ready for publication in the edition. The editors of the papers derived the printed texts of these letters from various sources, mostly from manuscripts written in his hand, or signed by him, or in his letterbooks.
w.w. abbot Charlottesville, Virginia
contents John Augustine Washington, May 31, 1754 Mary Ball Washington, June 7, 1755 Robert Dinwiddie, July 18, 1755 Denis McCarty, November 22, 1755 Robert Dinwiddie, January 14, 1756 Robert Dinwiddie, April 22, 1756 John Stanwix, April 10, 1758 Francis Halkett, April 12, 1758 Henry Bouquet, August 6, 1758 Sarah Cary Fairfax, September 12, 1758 John Alton, April 5, 1759 Van Swearingen, May 15, 1761 Robert Cary & Co, May 28, 1762 Burwell Bassett, August 28, 1762 Joseph Thompson, July 2, 1766 Jonathan Boucher, July 31, 1768 Bryan Fairfax, July 4, 1774 John West, January 13, 1775 Martha Washington, June 18, 1775 Lund Washington, November 26, 1775 Joseph Reed, February 1, 1776 Phyllis Wheatley, February 28, 1776 John Parke Custis, January 22, 1777 Charles Lewis, March 21, 1778 Nathanael Green, O^ober 24, 1781
23 26 28 31 33 37 40 43 44 48 53 55 57 64 66 68 73 76 79 83 87 90 92 98 100
Lewis Nicola, May 22, 1782 Lund Washington, September 20, 1783 Rochambeau, February 1, 1784 Clement Biddle, July 28, 1784 Lafayette, December 8, 1784 David Humphreys, July 25, 1785 John Marsden Pintard, November 18, 1785 Arthur Young, August 6, 1786 James Madison, November 5, 1786 Mary Ball Washington, February 15, 1787 Benjamin Harrison, September 24, 1787 Mathew Carey, June 25, 1788 Philip Richard Fendall, O^ober 22, 1788 James Madison, March 30, 1789 Anthony Whitting, February 10, 1793 David Humphreys, June 12, 1796 Landon Carter, O^ober 17, 1796 Elizabeth Willing Powel, March 26, 1797 Tobias Lear, July 31, 1797 George Washington Parke Custis, January 7, 1798 Sally Ball Haynie, February 11, 1798 James McHenry, September 30, 1798 James McAlpin, January 27, 1799 James Anderson, September 10, 1799
102 107 109 111 113 115 119 121 125 128 134 136 138 139 142 146 149 154 158 159 162 164 166 168
facsimiles & illustrations James Sharples, george washington, 1796. Pastel. Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia. Jean-Antoine Houdon, george washington, c. 1785. Bust, terra-cotta. Mount Vernon, Virginia. Photographed by Mark Gulesian, 1999. Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. letter to john alton, april 5, 1759. Mount Vernon, Virginia. Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. letter to robert cary & co., may 28, 1762. Letterbook copy in Washington’s hand. Library of Congress. letter to john parke custis, january 22, 1777. Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia. letter to coloniel lewis nicola, may 22, 1782 Letterbook copy. Library of Congress. letter to landon carter, october 17, 1796. Privately owned. Facsimile, University of Virginia Library. Bookplate, Washington family coat of arms. Mount Vernon, Virginia. Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. view of mount vernon from the northeast, attributed to Edward Savage, oil on canvas, c.1792. Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.
I
n 1749 seventeen-year-old George Washington wrote a letter at Ferry Farm to his half-brother Lawrence Washington in Williamsburg asking him to oppose the establishment of a ferry at his mother’s place on the Rappahannock River. He also wrote to Lawrence’s wife, Ann Fairfax Washington, at Mount Vernon, his brother’s plantation, and to Lord Fairfax in frontier Frederick County about surveys he would make there in the winter. When he was 69, in retirement, he wrote in the final ten months of his life over three hundred letters. The week before he died on 14 December 1799, he wrote (twice) to William Thornton, archite^ of the capitol under construction, to Clement Biddle in Philadelphia about seed he was to import from England for Washington, to John Mercer in Maryland on the matter of the navigation of the Potomac River, to Alexander White about where the residence for the British ambassador should be built in the new capital city, to Alexander Hamilton rea=rming his support for establishing a national military academy, and to his farm manager, James Anderson, enclosing lengthy and detailed instru^ions for the next year’s cultivation of each field on his farms at Mount Vernon. Much of what we do or can know about George Washington and how he came to be is to be found in what he himself wrote between 1749 and 1799, thousands and thousands of pages. The fi…y-odd volumes of The Papers of George Washington (and his colle^ed papers of the last five years of the Revolutionary War and the last four of the presidency, now awaiting publication) o<er access to all of Washington’s surviving letters and to almost anything else he wrote. This vast array of documents does not in itself tell the story of Washington’s life nor does it reveal its meaning: for this the intervention of the
15