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Mount Vernon Memorial Highway

The Mount Vernon estate occupies high ground above the Potomac River roughly fifteen miles south of Alexandria. The core of the present mansion was built by Augustine Washington around 1735 and expanded dramatically by George Washington Person George Washington b. 1732 · d. 1799 Planter, military commander, and first President of the United States. Master of Mount Vernon from 1761 until his death in 1799, and a regular presence in Alexandria, which he … after he inherited the estate from his half-brother Lawrence’s widow in 1761 ^[1] Source 1 Powell, History of Old Alexandria, 1928 Book . Over four decades Washington grew Mount Vernon from a modest tobacco plantation into a five-farm, roughly eight-thousand-acre operation that experimented with wheat-and-fisheries agriculture, a distillery, and a gristmill.

The plantation was worked by enslaved people throughout Washington’s ownership. Population records and Washington’s own correspondence document more than three hundred enslaved people resident at Mount Vernon by the end of his life ^[2] Source 2 Miller, Artisans and Merchants, 1991 Book . Washington’s 1799 will directed that the enslaved people he owned outright be manumitted at the death of his widow Martha; Martha Washington Person Martha Washington b. 1731 · d. 1802 Mistress of from her 1759 marriage to until her death in 1802, and first First Lady of the United States. Through her dower Custis estate she brought into the Washington … executed the manumission early, in 1801. The dower enslaved people — held by the Custis estate and not within Washington’s legal authority to free — remained in bondage. West Ford Person West Ford b. 1784 · d. 1863 Man born enslaved on the estate of Bushrod Washington and later freed; a longtime manager at Mount Vernon whose descendants maintain an oral tradition of descent from the … , born enslaved in the extended Washington family and later manumitted under Bushrod Washington’s will, lived and worked at the estate for most of his life.

Bushrod Washington inherited the estate in 1800. A succession of Washington family owners held Mount Vernon into the mid-nineteenth century; the property fell into disrepair and was offered for sale. The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, organized by Ann Pamela Cunningham in 1853, purchased the mansion and 200 surrounding acres in 1858 and has operated the estate as a private non-profit historic site ever since ^[3] Source 3 LOC Prints & Photographs Photograph . Ongoing archaeological and interpretive work at the site has progressively centered the lives of the enslaved people who made Washington’s plantation possible, including through the reconstruction of the slave quarters and the development of the slave memorial dedicated in 1983.