George Washington: Farmer / Being an Account of His Home Life and Agricultural Activities

by Paul Leland Haworth

The cattle were very poor and ordinary, and the sheep the same; nor did I see any thing I liked except the mules, which were very fine ones, and in good condition. Mr. Gough had made a present to General Washington of a bull calf. The animal was shown to me when I first landed at Mount Vernon, and was the first bull I saw in the country. He was large, and very strong-featured; the largest part was his head, the next his legs. The General's steward was a Scotchman, and no judge of animals--a better judge of distilling whiskey.

I saw here a greater number of negroes than I ever saw at one time, either before or since.

The house is a very decent mansion: not large, and something like a gentleman's house in England, with gardens and plantations; and is very prettily situated on the banks of the river Potowmac, with extensive prospects.... The roads are very bad from Alexandria to Mount Vernon.

The General still continuing at Philadelphia, I could not have the pleasure of seeing him; therefore I returned to Alexandria.

I returned [to Mount Vernon some weeks later] ... to see General Washington. I dined with him; and he showed me several presents that had been sent him, viz. swords, china, and among the rest the key of the Bastille. I spent a very pleasant day in the house, as the weather was so severe that there were no farming objects to see, the ground being covered with snow.

Would General Washington have given me the twelve hundred acres I would not have accepted it, to have been confined to live in that country; and to convince the General of the cause of my determination, I was compelled to treat him with a great deal of frankness. The General, who had corresponded with Mr. Arthur Young and others on the subject of English farming and soils, and had been not a little flattered by different gentlemen from England, seemed at first to be not well pleased with my conversation; but I gave him some strong proofs of his mistakes, by making a comparison between the lands in America and those of England in two respects.

First, in the article of sheep. He supposed himself to have fine sheep, and a great quantity of them. At the time of my viewing his five farms, which consisted of about three thousand acres cultivated, he had one hundred sheep, and those in very poor condition. This was in the month of November. To show him his mistake in the value and quality of his land, I compared this with the farm my father occupied, which was less than six hundred acres. He clipped eleven hundred sheep, though some of his land was poor and at two shillings and sixpence per acre--the highest was at twenty shillings; the average weight of the wool was ten pounds per fleece, and the carcases weighed from eighty to one hundred twenty pounds each: while in the General's hundred sheep on three thousand acres, the wool would not weigh on an average more than three pounds and a half the fleece, and the carcases at forty-eight pounds each. Secondly, the proportion of the produce in grain was similar. The General's crops were from two to three[11] bushels of wheat per acre; and my father's farm, although poor clay soil, gave from twenty to thirty bushels.

[11] A misstatement, of course.

During this conversation Colonel Lear, aide-de-camp to the General, was present. When the General left the room, the Colonel told me he had himself been in England, and had seen Arthur Young (who had been frequently named by the General in our conversation); and that Mr. Young having learnt that he was in the mercantile line, and was possessed of much land, had said he thought he was a great fool to be a merchant and yet have so much land; the Colonel replied, that if Mr. Young had the same land to cultivate, it would make a great fool of him. The Colonel did me the honour to say I was the only man he ever knew to treat General Washington with frankness.

The General's cattle at that time were all in poor condition: except his mules (bred from American mares), which were very fine, and the Spanish ass sent to him as a present by the king of Spain. I felt myself much vexed at an expression used at dinner by Mrs. Washington. When the General and the company at table were talking about the fine horses and cattle I had brought from England, Mrs. Washington said, "I am afraid, Mr. Parkinson, you have brought your fine horses and cattle to a bad market; I am of opinion that our horses and cattle are good enough for our land." I thought that if every old woman in the country knew this, my speculation would answer very ill: as I perfectly agreed with Mrs. Washington in sentiment; and wondered much, from the poverty of the land, to see the cattle good as they were.