Three hundred and seventeen people
In 1799, 317 enslaved people lived at Mount Vernon, 143 of them children. Washington owned about 124 of them and leased 40. The other 153 belonged to the Custis estate, the property of Martha Washington’s first husband, and were held for her heirs.
Work and resistance
Nearly three-quarters of the enslaved population worked in the fields, and more than half of the field workers were women. Overseers whipped people as punishment, and Washington threatened to sell those he considered troublesome to the West Indies. People resisted: at least 47 ran away between 1760 and 1799, among them Ona Judge in 1796 and Hercules Posey in 1797, neither of whom was recaptured.
Freedom for some
Washington’s will freed his valet, William Lee, at once and the other people he owned after Martha’s death. She signed a deed of manumission, and they became free on 1 January 1801. The Custis estate’s enslaved people remained in slavery.
