The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, Eds
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The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville The Diaries of GEORGE WASHINGTON Volume IV 1784–June 1786 ASSISTANT EDITORS Beverly H. Runge, Frederick Hall Schmidt, and Philander D. Chase George H. Reese, Consulting Editor Joan Paterson Kerr, Picture Editor THE DIARIES OF GEORGE WASHINGTON Volume IV 1784–June 1786 DONALD JACKSON AND DOROTHY TWOHIG EDITORS UNIVERSITY PRESS OF VIRGINIA CHARLOTTESVILLE This edition has been prepared by the staff of The Papers of George Washington, sponsored by The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union and the University of Virginia with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF VIRGINIA Copyright © 1978 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia First published 1978 Frontispiece: Samuel Vaughan's sketch of Mount Vernon, from his 1787 journal. (Collection of the descendents of Samuel Vaughan) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (Revised) Washington, George, Pres. U.S., 1732–1799. The diaries of George Washington. The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville http://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw.wd04 Includes bibliographies and indexes. 1. Washington, George, Pres. U.S., 1732–1799. 2. Presidents—United States—Biography. I. Jackson, Donald Dean, 1919- II. Twohig, Dorothy. III. Title. E312.8 1976 973.4′1′0924 [B] 75-41365 ISBN 0-8139-0722-5 Printed in the United States of America Administrative Board David A. Shannon, Chairman Mrs. John H. Guy, Jr. W. Walker Cowen Advisory Committee John R. Alden C. Waller Barrett Francis L. Berkeley, Jr. Julian P. Boyd Comte René de Chambrun James Thomas Flexner Merrill Jensen Wilmarth S. Lewis Lewis A. McMurran, Jr. The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville http://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw.wd04 John O. Marsh, Jr. Charles McC. Mathias, Jr. L. Quincy Mumford Merrill D. Peterson Saunders Redding Stephen T. Riley James Thorpe Lawrence W. Towner Nicholas B. Wainwright Charles C. Wall John A. Washington, M.D. Esmond Wright Contents Editorial Procedures and Symbols xiii The Diaries for 1784–June 1786 xvi A Western Journey, 1784 1 At Home at Mount Vernon, 1785 72 Visitors and Planting, January–June 1786 259 Repository Symbols and Abbreviations 359 Bibliography 360 The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville http://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw.wd04 Index 383 Illustrations Vaughan's sketch of Mount Vernon Frontispiece George and Martha Washington 2 Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan 4 James Rumsey's mechanical boat 9 Plan of Warm Springs 10 Rumsey's certificate 11 Bushrod Washington 15 A 1792 map of Pennsylvania 34 Page from Washington's diary 40 Gabriel Jones 55 Scull's map of Pennsylvania 58 Washington's land on the Ohio 61 Fanny Bassett 73 Society of the Cincinnati diploma 83 Benjamin Tasker Dulany 86 Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick 86 Floor plans for the greenhouse 87 Badge of the Society of the Cincinnati 88 The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville http://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw.wd04 Mountain laurel 91 Charles Lee 95 James Madison 105 Thomas Stone 105 Trumpet honeysuckle 110 Elizabeth Parke Custis and George Washington Parke Custis 129 Eleanor Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis 130 Shareholders in Dismal Swamp 133 The Gardeners Dictionary 138 Noah Webster 142 Frontispiece of Catalogus Plantarum 152 Gouverneur Morris and Robert Morris 159 Ferdinando Fairfax 165 “The Great Falls of the Potomac” 171 xii Thomas Johnson and family 174 Harpers Ferry 175 Houdon's bust of Washington 201 William Augustine Washington 209 Honey locust 212 “The Imported and very docile ASS” 213 The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville http://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw.wd04 John Fitch's early steamboat 218 A ram and a bull 225 Garden implements 227 George Mason of Lexington 242 “The Death of the Fox” 248 Plate from The Compleat Horseman 260 Design of a garden 264 Garden house 271 Rev. William Gordon 276 Potomac Company payroll 289 Richard Bland Lee 290 Elizabeth Collins Lee 290 Burnet 300 Drill plow 305 Survey of Four Mile Run land 323 Tobias Lear 337 Frontispiece of Museum Rusticum 342 Robert Hanson Harrison and Tench Tilghman 347 Title page of a book from Washington's library 351 xiii The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville http://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw.wd04 Editorial Procedures and Symbols Transcription of the diaries has remained as faithful as possible to the original manuscript. Because of the nature of GW's diary entries, absolute consistency in punctuation has been virtually impossible. Where feasible, the punctuation has generally been retained as written. However, in cases where sentences are separated by dashes, a common device in the eighteenth century, the dash has been changed to a period and following word capitalized. Dashes which appear after periods have been dropped. Periods have been inserted at points which are clearly the ends of sentences. In many of the diaries, particularly those dealing with planting and the weather, entries consist of phrases separated by dashes rather than sentences. Generally if the phrase appears to stand alone, a period has been substituted for the dash. Spelling of all words is retained as it appears in the manuscript. Errors in spelling of geographic locations and proper names have been corrected in notes or in brackets only if the spelling in the text makes the word incomprehensible. Washington occasionally, especially in the diaries, placed above an incorrectly written word a symbol sometimes resembling a tilde, sometimes an infinity sign, to indicate an error in orthography. When this device is used the editors have silently corrected the word. The ampersand has been retained. The thorn has been transcribed as “th.” The symbol for per has been written out. When a tilde is used to indicate either a double letter or missing letters, the correction has been made silently or the word has been transcribed as an abbreviation. Capitalization is retained as it appears in the manuscript; if the writer's intention is not clear, modern usage is followed. Contractions and abbreviations are retained as written; a period is inserted after abbreviations. When an apostrophe has been used in contractions it is retained. Superscripts have been xiv lowered, and if the word is an abbreviation a period has been added. When the meaning of an abbreviation is not obvious, it has been expanded in square brackets: H[unting] C[reek]; so[uther]ly. Other editorial insertions or corrections in the text also appear in square brackets. Missing dates are supplied in square brackets in diary entries. Angle brackets (< >) are used to indicate mutilated material. If it is clear from the context what word or words are missing, or missing material has been filled in from other sources, the words are inserted between the angle brackets. The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville http://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw.wd04 A space left blank by Washington in the manuscript of the diaries is indicated by a square bracketed gap in the text. In cases where Washington has crossed out words or phrases, the deletions have not been noted. If a deletion contains substantive material it appears in a footnote. Words inadvertently repeated or repeated at the bottom of a page of manuscript have been dropped. If the intended location of marginal notations is clear, they have been inserted in the proper place without comment; otherwise, insertions appear in footnotes. In cases where the date is repeated for several entries on the same day, the repetitive date has been omitted and the succeeding entries have been paragraphed. Because Washington used the blank pages of the Virginia Almanack or occasionally small notebooks to keep his diaries, lack of space sometimes forced him to make entries and memoranda out of order in the volume. The correct position of such entries is often open to question, and the editors have not always agreed with earlier editors of the diaries on this matter. Such divergence of opinion, however, has not been annotated. Bibliographical references are cited by one or two words, usually the author's last name, in small capitals. If two or more works by authors with the same surname have been used, numbers are assigned: HARRISON [2]. Full publication information is included in the bibliography for each volume. The symbols used to identify repositories in the footnotes precede the bibliography. Surveying notes and dated memoranda kept in diary form have not been included in this edition of Washington's diaries, although the information contained in them has often been used in annotation. xv Individuals and places mentioned for the first time in this volume have been identified in the footnotes; those which have been identified in the first three volumes may be located by consulting the indexes of those volumes. A cumulative index will be included in the last volume of the Diaries. The Diaries of GEORGE WASHINGTON Volume IV 1784–June 1786 1 The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 4. Donald Jackson, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville http://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw.wd04 A Western Journey 1784 September 1784 Having found it indispensably necessary to visit my Landed property west of the Apalacheon Mountains, and more especially that part of it which I held in Co-partnership with Mr.