Your favour of the 6th Augt. I have had the pleasure of receiving, and acknowledge myself particularly obliged to you for your polite Congratulations on my Marriage, as I likewise am for your Dispatch of my Goods.
I am Gentn.[35]
A Suffer to Pass of the ship Polly and Nancy of Alexandria; John McKnight, Master. Signed by George Washington.
(Courtesy Mount Vernon Ladies' Association)
An invoice of goods of earlier date sent by the same firm for the use of George Washington contained 194 items. Wearing garments, ornaments for the chimney place, busts, drugs, sugar, carpenter's and plowman's tools, candy, a case of pickles containing anchovies, capers, olives, "salid oyl" and a bottle of India mangoes; tea, harness, saddles, corks, six pounds of perfumed powder, three pounds of the best Scotch snuff, ribbons, gloves, sword belt, nine dozen packages of playing cards, paint and brushes, one and one-half dozen bell glasses for the garden; one mahogany closet stool case in the newest taste, with place for chamber pot, etc.; soap, garden seeds, nuts and condiments, locks and two dozen H&L hinges and three pounds of bird lime, were but a few of the items listed.
In addition to his own orders, the General supervised the shopping for the two Custis children and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Dandridge. Not only were clothes and materials ordered, fine ivory combs, stockings, etc., but toys. Here is a selection made by the Cary firm—a child's fiddle, a coach and six in a box, a stable with six horses, a toy whip, a filigree watch, a neat enameled watch box, a corner cupboard and a child's huzzit [housewife].
General Washington was a Virginia gentleman who lived in a fashion similar to his neighbors; like orders, we may be sure, went from Alexandria, and like articles were bought and received into its homes. Perhaps the system was not always so direct, for the average townsman doubtless relied more upon local merchants as agents. Washington followed this course at various times, but until the American Revolution he rather steadfastly depended upon Robert Cary & Company of London.
With the growth of trade and population came the necessity for expansion of the town, and we see the Assembly approving the petition of the trustees and sundry inhabitants of the town of Alexandria in 1762, "Praying that an Act may pass to enlarge the Bounds of the said Town."[36] All lots save those in the marsh were then built upon.
On May 9, 1763, the trustees proceeded to sell the new lots, which had been added by act of Assembly. The town property was enhancing in value and for that reason the lots were sold with a twelve-month credit, hoping to increase the sale value. Forty-six lots were disposed of, among the purchasers being George Johnston, Robert Adam, Francis Lee, John Dalton, John Carlyle, and George Washington, who at thirty-one years of age became a bona fide citizen of Alexandria. The town which he had honored returned the compliment four years later when the city fathers meeting on December 16, 1766, "proceeded to elect as Trustee in the room of George Johnston, decd, and have unanimously chosen George Washington, Esq., as Trustee for the town aforesaid."[37]
Fifteen years after the laying out of the town, at a session of the House of Burgesses, November 5, 1764, in the fifth year of the reign of George III it was "Resolved, That it is the Opinion of this Committee that the Petition of divers Proprietors of Lots, and other Inhabitants of the Town of Alexandria, in the County of Fairfax, praying that so much of the Act of Assembly for establishing the said Town as obliges the Purchasers of Lots therein to build and improve the same in a limited Time, may be repealed, and the Purchasers left at Liberty to build thereon when convenient to them, is reasonable."[38] George Washington found it convenient to build a house on one of his lots in 1769; the other was not built upon until almost thirty years later.