The absent owner was constantly complaining that his managers failed to inform him about matters concerning which he had inquired. Hardly a report reached him that did not fail to explain something in which he was interested. This was one of the many disadvantages of farming at long range.
In 1793 Washington described his overseers to Pearce, who was just taking charge, in great detail. Stuart is competent, sober and industrious, but talkative and conceited. "If he stirs early and works late ... his talkativeness and vanity may be humored." Crow is active and possessed of good judgment, but overly fond of "visiting and receiving visits." McKoy is a "sickly, slothful and stupid fellow." Butler, the gardener, may mean well, but "he has no more authority over the Negroes he is placed over than an old woman would have." Ultimately he dismissed Butler on this ground, but as the man could find no other job he was forced to give him assistance. The owner's opinions of Davy, the colored overseer at Muddy Hole Farm, and of Thomas Green, the carpenter, are given elsewhere.
In the same letter he exhorted Pearce to see what time the overseers "turn out of a morning--for I have strong suspicions that this, with some of them, is at a late hour, the consequences of which to the Negroes is not difficult to foretell. All these Overseers as you will perceive by their agreements, which I here with send, are on standing wages; and this with men who are not actuated by the principles of honor or honesty, and not very regardful of their characters, leads naturally to endulgences--as their profits whatever may be mine, are the same whether they are at a horse race or on the farm."
From the above it will appear that he did not believe that the overseers were storing up any large treasury of good works. In the Revolution he wrote that one overseer and a confederate, "I believe, divide the profits of my Estate on the York River, tolerably between them, for the devil of anything do I get." Later he approved the course of George A. Washington in depriving an overseer of the privilege of killing four shoats, as this gave him an excuse when caught killing a pig to say that it was one of those to which he was entitled. Even when honest, the overseers were likely to be careless. They often knew little about the stock under their charge and in making their weekly reports would take the number from old reports instead of actually making the count, with the result that many animals could die or disappear long before those in charge became aware of it.
Washington's carpenters were mostly slaves, but
he usually hired a white man to oversee and direct them. In 1768, for example, he engaged for this purpose a certain Jonathan Palmer, who was to receive forty pounds a year, four hundred pounds of meat, twenty bushels of corn, a house to live in, a garden, and also the right to keep two cows.
The carpenters were required not only to build houses, barns, sheds and other structures, but also boats, and had to hew out or whipsaw many of the timbers and boards used.