The Washington Plantation

The Washington plantation consisted of two farms: the Home House Farm, where the family lived, and a quarter, an outlying farm located to the east. Its main crops were corn, wheat, and tobacco, and the plantation complex included the Washington house, a kitchen dependency, dairy, storehouses, barns, and slave quarters. When Augustine Washington died there in 1743, twenty slaves were living at the Home House Farm and six at the quarter. The inventory of his estate listed twenty-seven head of cattle, twenty-one sheep, twenty-one pigs, and four horses at Home House Farm, and eighteen head of cattle, nineteen pigs, eleven sheep, and two horses at the quarter. By the terms of Augustine Washington's will, George Washington was to inherit all of this land, ten slaves, and other property when he reached twenty-one. In his 1771 survey of the Home House Farm, George Washington identified a garden and henyard near the house; if the fabled cherry tree grew on the plantation, it may have been in this area. After moving to Mount Vernon, he left his mother in possession of the plantation but returned for visits, and in 1771 he surveyed the Home House Farm, recording the boundaries of the fields and pastures he had known since childhood. This survey is the most important surviving record of the layout of the Washington plantation.

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States