George Washington: Patriot, President, Planter and Purveyor of Distilled Spirits

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‘I consent to your commencing a distillery, and approve of your purchasing the Still, and entering of it. And I shall not object to your converting part of the Coopers shop at the Mill to this operation.’ With these words, penned in 1797 to his recently hired farm manager, James Anderson, George Washington took another major step toward improving the financial success and independence of his vast estate.

The Virginia planter had already served his native land as a surveyor, British officer during the French and Indian War, member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Continental Congress delegate, commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and two-term president of the United States. Throughout the trials and tribulations of his public life — its honors and accolades — it appears, however, that Washington’s true passion remained his Mount Vernon home. Even during the long absences imposed by his public duties, he remained in almost constant contact with family and staff about its most mundane operations. From the time of its acquisition until his death, Washington strove to make Mount Vernon the most modern, most diversified, most efficient and most profitable plantation possible. As a result, he acquired new lands, experimented with new crops, tried new techniques in farming and animal husbandry, ran commercially successful fisheries, a gristmill and even a distillery.

Originally known as Little Hunting Creek Plantation, Washington’s holdings were part of a land grant that was given to one of his ancestors by the British crown in 1674. The property eventually passed down to George’s elder half-brother, Lawrence. He renamed the property Mount Vernon to honor British Admiral Edward Vernon, with whom he had served during Britain’s 1739-1741 conflict with Spain known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. (For having introduced a ration of rum to the British sailor’s routine, Admiral Vernon was affectionately known as ‘Old Grog.’) Soon after Lawrence’s death in 1752, 20-year-old George became sole owner of the roughly 2,300-acre plantation.

Almost immediately Washington began expanding his holdings through the selective purchase of nearby properties, and by 1787 had increased his estate to nearly 8,000 acres, organized into five farms. Each provided something unique to his operation — a beautiful spot for home and gardens overlooking the Potomac, deep-water access for ease of shipping raw materials and manufactured goods, lucrative fishing grounds, proper conditions for a commercial gristmill, decent farmland.

Initially Washington tied his fortune to the cultivation of tobacco, but by the early 1760s he began to despair of ever making a real profit from that labor-intensive monoculture. In dealings with British markets, the shipping fees, import and export duties, brokerage charges and other commissions often ate up as much as 80 percent of the total sale. When these high costs were exacerbated by Great Britain’s unilateral imposition on the Colonies of the Sugar and Stamp acts, Washington, for economic and, increasingly, political reasons, sought new sources of revenue. He began by dedicating some of his land to wheat as a cash crop instead of tobacco. Between 1765 and 1770 his annual grain production grew from 257 bushels to 6,241, and this success proved to him that foregoing tobacco and diversifying his crops offered new growth opportunities.

Washington kept abreast of the latest theories and techniques of farming, trying new practices such as crop rotation; expanded compost and fertilizer preparation, storage and application; and erosion control through cross plowing. And he maintained detailed records of his successes and failures. Mount Vernon eventually produced more that 60 different crops, including wheat, corn, buckwheat, barley, oats, clover, pasture grasses, flax, cotton, potatoes and peas. Ever the experimenter, Washington also purchased and tested the latest farm tools and equipment, even making his own modifications to the plow. ‘I am never sparing,’ he wrote in 1793, ‘in furnishing my Farms with any, and every kind of tool and implement that is calculated to do good and neat work…I shall begrudge no reasonable expence that will contribute to the improvement and neatness of my Farms….’

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