Muddy Hole Farm lay across Little Hunting Creek from the River Farm and back of the Mansion House Farm and had no frontal upon the Potomac. It contained four hundred seventy-six acres of tillable soil and had in 1793 a small overlooker's house, "covering for about 30 negroes, and a tolerable good barn, with stables for the work-horses."
Union Farm lay just below the Mansion House Farm and contained nine hundred twenty-eight acres of arable land and meadow. In 1793 it had, in Washington's words, "a newly erected brick barn, equal, perhaps, to any in America, and for conveniences of all sorts, particularly for sheltering and feeding horses, cattle, &c. scarcely to be exceeded any where." A new house of four rooms was building, and there were quarters for fifty odd negroes. On this farm was the old Posey fishery and ferry to Maryland.
Dogue Run Farm, of six hundred fifty acres, lay back of Union Farm and upon it in 1793 stood the grist mill and later a distillery and the famous sixteen-sided "new circular barn, now finishing on a new construction; well calculated, it is conceived, for getting grain out of the straw more expeditiously than the usual mode of threshing." It had a two-room overseer's house, covering for forty odd negroes, and sheds sufficient for thirty work horses and oxen. Washington considered it much the best of all his farms. It was this farm that he bequeathed to Nelly Custis and her husband, Lawrence Lewis, and upon it they erected "Woodlawn," which is shown in the photograph herewith reproduced.
Not long since I rambled on foot over the old estate and had an opportunity to compare the reality, or what remains of it, with Washington's description. I left the Mansion House, often visited before, and strolled down the long winding drive that runs between the stunted evergreens and oaks through the old lodge gate and passed from the domain, kept trim and parklike by the Association, out upon the unkempt and vastly greater part of the old Mount Vernon.
It was early morning, about the hour when in the long past the master of the estate used to ride out on his tour of inspection. The day was one of those delicious days in early autumn when earth and sky and air and all things in nature seem kindly allied to help the heart of man leap up in gladness and to enable him to understand how there came to be a poet called Wordsworth. Meadow-larks were singing in the grass, and once in an old hedgerow over-grown with sweet-smelling wild honeysuckle I saw a covey of young quails. These hedgerows of locust and cedar are broken now, but along the old road to the mill and Pohick Church and between fields the scattered trees and now and then a bordering ditch are evidences of the old owner's handiwork.
Then and later I visited all the farms, the site of the old mill, of which only a few stones remain, the mill stream, the fishery and old ferry landing. I walked across the gullied fields and examined the soil, I noted the scanty crops they bear to-day and gained a clearer idea of what Washington's problem had been than I could have done from a library of books.
Truly the estate is "pleasantly situated," though even to-day it seems out of the world and out of the way. One must go far to find so satisfying a view as that from the old Mansion House porch across the mile of shining water to the Maryland hills' crowned with trees glorified by the Midas-touch of frost. The land does lie "high" and "dry," but we must take exception to the word "healthy." In the summer and fall the tidal marshes breed a variety of mosquito capable of biting through armor plate and of infecting the devil himself with malaria. In the General's day, when screens were unknown, a large part of the population, both white and black, suffered every August and September from chills and fever. The master himself was not exempt and once we find him chronicling that he went a-hunting and caught a fox and the ague.
What he says as regards the fisheries is all quite true and in general they seem to have been very productive. Herring and shad were the chief fish caught and when the run came the seine was carried well out into the river in a boat and then hauled up on the shelving beach either by hand or with a windlass operated by horse-power. There were warehouses and vats for curing the fish, a cooper shop and buildings for sheltering the men. The fish were salted down for the use of the family and the slaves, and what surplus remained was sold. Now and then the landing and outfit was rented out for a money consideration, but this usually happened only when the owner was away from home.
At the old Posey fishery on Union Farm the industry is still carried on, though gasoline engines have been substituted for the horse-operated winch used in drawing the seines. Lately the industry has ceased to be very productive, and an old man in charge told me that it is because fishermen down the river and in Chesapeake Bay are so active that comparatively few fish manage to get up so far.
The Mount Vernon estate in the old days lacked only one quality necessary to make it extremely productive, namely, rich soil! Only ignorance of what good land really is, or an owner's blind pride in his own estate, can justify the phrase "a good loam." On most of the estate the soil is thin, varying in color from a light gray to a yellow red, with below a red clay hardpan almost impervious to water. To an observer brought up on a farm of the rich Middle West, Mount Vernon, except for a few scattered fields, seems extremely poor land. For farming purposes most of it would be high at thirty dollars an acre. Much of it is so broken by steep hills and deep ravines as scarcely to be tillable at all. Those tracts which are cultivated are very susceptible to erosion. Deep gullies are quickly worn on the hillsides and slopes. At one time such a gully on Union Farm extended almost completely across a large field and was deep enough to hide a horse, but Washington filled it up with trees, stumps, stones, old rails, brush and dirt, so that scarcely a trace of it was left. In places one comes upon old fields that have been allowed to revert to broom sedge, scrub oak and scrub pine. One is astonished at the amount that has never been cleared at all. Only by the most careful husbandry could such an estate be kept productive. It never could be made to yield bumper crops.