Did you know?
George Washington wrote a number of letters on Sept, 16, 1787.
At least two of those letters dealt with properties he owned in Fayette County.
“For the Land in Fayette County, I have been offered the price I had fixed on it, viz Forty Shillings pr. (per) Acre,” he wrote in one letter.
He was, as he had over the years, endeavoring to sell his land holdings in Fayette County.
In another letter he wrote that day, Washington, in a matter having to do with Redstone old Fort in the county, claimed he hadn’t had the time before that day to focus his attention on certain legal matters involving that property.
“The variety of matters which have occurred and pressed upon me, have, in some measure, put it out of my power to do it at an earlier period than now,” he wrote.
In other words, he was consumed by some much weightier issues.
That day, after signing several letters, he put down his quill.
The very next day, and the next time he picked up that quill to sign his signature, Washington signed the most important document in the nation’s history – The U.S. Constitution.
That’s right. Even while “The Father of Our Country” was helping to chart a wonderful new course for our democracy, as the elected president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, (and consequently the first signer of the Constitution) he had Fayette County on his mind.
I had not learned that fact in any textbook. I’ve actually seen those letters he wrote as a Fayette County landowner.
About 10 days ago, I was searching the internet for nothing-in-particular, and I stumbled onto thousands of the original documents, handwritten by Washington.
(There are an estimated 17,000 of them online, and on a variety of web sites)
I found myself on the Library of Congress web site – (http://loc.gov) – where scanned copies of Washington’s original manuscripts are readily available, and more importantly, easily searchable.
The fact that Washington split his interests between the upstart United States of America, and, Fayette County, Pennsylvania is, indeed, a revelation.
I mean, I always knew Fayette County was important. But I never dreamed it was THAT important.
Regrettably, though, Washington’s interest in Fayette County wasn’t always because he saw the place in a favorable light.
Aside from his famous defeat in what he would later call the “unsuccessful Engagement” at what we now call Fort Necessity in 1854, he found his land in the western parts of Pennsylvania to be burdensome.
And as a result, he seemed to be obsessed with unburdening himself from the land that had been “unproductive,” but not only that, as he wrote in a letter in a letter to a certain James Ross in January of 1795, “Having from long experience found, that landed property at a distance from the proprietor, who is not able to pay attention to it, is more productive of plague than profit.”
Washington would eventually amass a fortune estimated at more than $525 million.
He was a shrewd businessman, as well as being a statesman and a plantation owner.
But he must have found it the source of some consternation that he had so many problems trying to unload his Fayette and Washington County properties.
“I am ready, and willing, to dispose of my lands in Fayette County at the price, and on the terms conditionally offered by the man from Cumberland County, whensoever he, or any other is disposed to close the matter, agreeably thereto. And I would dispose of my other tract in Washington County,” he wrote in a letter in September of 1794.
There apparently were no takers. He did have caretakers and renters whom he thought were neglect in paying rent and reporting to him about the conditions of their agreements.
His letters about them (and to them) carried an almost comical hint of desperation.
On Sept. 15th, 1788, he wrote to his “Excise Collector,” John Cannon. “Sir: As I have not received a line from you for more than fifteen months, and am altogether in the dark respecting the business which was committed to your care. I would thank you for information respecting the tenements, the Rents &ca. of my Lands in Fayette and Washington Counties.”
Just over a year later, and while he was the nation’s first president, Washington wrote another letter of John Cannon. Cannon had assured him that the matter would be taken care of. He apparently reneged on that assurance. Washington hadn’t received the proceeds of any of the rent on his property.
“I expected to have received remittance from you before this time, or, at least to have heard from you,” Washington wrote with words drenched in exasperation.
In 1794, while Pennsylvania became embroiled in “The Whiskey Rebellion,” Washington’s attentions were, once again, focused on his tracts of land in Fayette County.
By then, he’d grown wearing of John Cannon, and the neglect of the responsibilities he had to his property.
“Sir: The continual disappointments I meet with in the receipt of my rents under your collection, in the Counties of Fayette and Washington, lays me under the painful necessity of placing this business in other hands,” Washington wrote just days before the end of the Whiskey Rebellion on June 16, 1694.
I’ll have more on the “Washington Letters,” next week.