Bookable
A house above the Potomac
The Washington family acquired land on the Potomac River in 1674. Augustine Washington, George’s father, began the house in about 1734, and George, who leased the estate from 1754 and owned it outright from 1761, enlarged it in stages between 1758 and 1778 into a 21-room mansion in a loose Palladian style.
Built and run by enslaved people
Mount Vernon was a plantation, and its farms, workshops and house depended on enslaved labour. Washington inherited ten enslaved people in 1743, at the age of 11, and by 1799 317 enslaved men, women and children lived on the estate. Most worked in the fields of its five farms from sunrise to sunset, six days a week; others were artisans, such as carpenters, or household servants. People were whipped as punishment, and at least 47 escaped between 1760 and 1799.
Freedom, and a house saved
Washington died at Mount Vernon on 14 December 1799. His will freed the people he owned after Martha Washington’s death; she freed them on 1 January 1801. The 153 enslaved people of the Custis estate were not freed and passed to her heirs. In 1858 the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, led by Ann Pamela Cunningham, bought the mansion, and it opened to the public in 1860.
