Mount Vernon

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Mount Vernon, George Washington's home, lies on the south bank of the Potomac River, near Alexandria, Virginia. The Washington family acquired Mount Vernon in 1690. The central part of the house was built about 1743 for Lawrence Washington, George's half-brother. Lawrence died in 1752, and the property passed to George a short time later.

In 1759 Washington and his wife, Martha, established household at Mount Vernon, and George lived as a tobacco planter there until the outbreak of war in 1775. After the revolution he returned to his home and completed improvements that he had begun earlier, including additions to buildings, gardens, and grounds. At the end of his presidency in 1797, Washington returned again to Mount Vernon, where he died in 1799. He and Martha Washington, who died in 1802, are interred there in the family vault.

The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, founded in 1856, assumed responsibility for restoration and maintenance at Mount Vernon. This organization acquired the property from the last private owner, Col. John Augustine Washington, in 1858. The wood mansion and thirteen subsidiary structures have survived, and several others have been reconstructed. Together they constitute one of the best remaining examples of the eighteenth-century plantations that were the center of a highly developed social and economic life.

Bibliography

Dalzell, Robert F. George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionay America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

West, Patricia. Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America's House Museums. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999.

The home of George Washington; a historical landmark in northeastern Virginia overlooking the Potomac River.