By 1770 Alexandria's tobacco trade had largely given way to wheat, and the local shipping merchants were finding their supplies farther and farther west in the valley of the Shenandoah. George Washington was one of the first planters on the upper Potomac to change his money crop from tobacco to wheat. He enlarged his mill and took advantage of the latest mechanical advances of his time. However successful he became as a wheat farmer, he never escaped the trials and grief caused by those middlemen, his agents. In 1767 he wrote a nine-page letter roundly berating Carlyle and Adam for the destruction of his bags and for delay in paying him for his wheat.
A list of merchants and factors doing business in Alexandria in 1775 emphasizes the transition from tobacco to wheat. Of twenty-one firms enumerated, fourteen were purchasers of wheat:
1. Hooe and Harrison—wheat purchasers.
2. Steward and Hubard—wheat purchasers.
3. Fitzgerald and Reis—wheat purchasers.
4. Harper and Hartshorne—wheat purchasers.
5. John Allison—wheat purchaser.
6. William Sadler—wheat purchaser.
7. Robert Adam and Co.—wheat purchasers.
8. Henby and Calder—wheat purchasers.
9. William Hayburne—wheat purchaser.
10. James Kirk—wheat purchaser.
11. George Gilpin—wheat purchaser, inspector of flour.
12. Thomas Kilpatrick—wheat purchaser, inspector of flour.
13. McCawlay and Mayes—import British goods which they sell wholesale.
14. William Wilson—seller of British goods who buys tobacco.
15. John Locke—seller of British goods who buys tobacco.
16. John Muir—seller of British goods who buys tobacco.
17. Brown and Finley—they import goods from Philadelphia and purchase tobacco and wheat.
18. Josiah Watson—he imports goods from Philadelphia and purchases tobacco and wheat.
19. Robert Dove and Co.—distillers.
20. Carlyle and Dalton—import Rum and Sugar.
21. Andrew Wales—brewer.[42]
It is said that Virginia wheat was the best to be procured and all Europe was a market for Alexandria flour. It was not long before the great wagons that had formerly carried wheat from Tidewater to Philadelphia and the Delaware found the Potomac port as good a market and a shorter journey. Numerous bakehouses appeared and Alexandria packed and shipped large quantities of bread and crackers along with flour to Europe and the Indies.
Alexandria had been a port of entry since 1779 and time was when the Potomac from mouth to port was so crowded with vessels that navigation was difficult. The early gazettes constantly referred to the crowded condition of the river. The water front seethed with activity. One finds the notice in a newspaper of 1786 of the arrival from St. Petersburg, Russia, of the ship Hunter of Alexandria. She was advertised to ply her trade between these two places. This ship was built, owned, and sailed by an Alexandrian, and was but one of many claiming Alexandria as home port. Far corners of the earth were united in this ancient harbor for a hundred years or more. "Commerce and Shipping" columns in the local journals were as well read then as are our "classifieds" today. Ships from China lay beside ships from Spain; flags from Holland, Jamaica, Portugal, Germany, France and Russia flaunted their gay colors. Private as well as public wharves were built. Large and rich shipping firms were numerous. Great warehouses of brick lined the river front. A kinsman of President Washington wrote him in 1792 that the "port of Alexandria has seldom less than 20 square-rigged vessels in it and often many more. The streets are crowded with wagons and the people all seem busy."[43]
Sloops, brigs, barques and schooners unloaded osnaburgs, wild boars, moreens, brocades and damasks, bombazines, Russian and Belgian linens, Scottish wools, French and Italian silk, caster hats, morocco leather slippers, pipes of Madeira wine, casks of rum and port from Spain, spices, fruits, and muscovado sugar from the West Indies, chests of Hyson tea from China, neat sofas, bureaus, sideboards, harpsichords and spinets from London, along with other things "too tedious to mention."
By 1816 decline in the importance of the port had set in, but no less than 992 vessels entered and cleared the customs that year. This number did not include the "vast number of inland packets, coal traders, lumber vessells, wood do, grain do, etc." Of these 992 vessels, 195 were foreign—ships, brigs, schooners, sloops—while coastwise entrances and clearances reached 797. On January 22, 1817, the account of vessels in the port of Alexandria stood:
| Ships | 9 |
| Barques | 1 |
| Brigs | 11 |
| Schooners | 30 |
| Sloops | 15 |
| —— | |
| Total | 66 |
These figures do not include a number of small craft in the port or the steamboats Washington and Camdon.
