Shakespeare, William. Expanding the Mount Vernon Estate - photo 1
Shakespeare, William. Expanding the Mount Vernon Estate - photo 2
Shakespeare, William. Expanding the Mount Vernon Estate - photo 3
Shakespeare, William. Expanding the Mount Vernon Estate - photo 1

Expanding the Mount Vernon Estate

Lot 186
15.10.2021 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
$ 56 250
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
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ID 627676
Lot 186 | Expanding the Mount Vernon Estate
Estimate value
$ 7 000 – 10 000
WASHINGTON, George (1732-1799). Document signed ("Go:Washington"), Fairfax County, Virginia, 18 October 1786.

Three pages, bifolium, 370 x 235mm (lightly silked, minor losses to first leaf affects a few words of text and repaired with laid paper). With an additional 18 lines in Washington's hand on the third page and an additional 70 words of emendations to the text of the second page. Additionally signed by P[enelope] FRENCH, and witnessed by Lund WASHINGTON (1737-1796), George Augustine WASHINGTON (c. 1758-1793) and William TRIPLETT.

Completing the Mount Vernon estate: George Washington leases Dogue Run Farm and the services of its enslaved workers. The lengthy indenture was the final act in Washington's multi-decade enlargement of his land holdings around Mount Vernon. Washington had been purchasing tracts in the vicinity since at least 1757, and this complex lease agreement helped secure his control over the last of the five farms that composed his Mount Vernon estate. Besides the land and buildings that had been controlled by Penelope French who had been granted lifetime use of the property, the lease also made arrangements for Washington to have the use of 21 named enslaved persons including "Will, Paschal, Paul, Abraham, Sabine, Rosanna, Daphne, Lucy, Delia, Grace, Tom, Isaac, Robert, Moses, Julius, Spencer, Nancy, Celia, Nell, Mitty, and Lett, and three young children whose names are unknown…" The agreement stipulated that Washington was bound to be sure the aforementioned enslaved persons would be "clothed and fed in the same manner as slaves usually are within this commonwealth and shall not be removed and worked out of the said county of fairfax…" The agreement further stipulates that if the enslaved persons "were not cloathed and fed as negroes usually are within the commonwealth aforesaid or are unreasonably worked or neglected in sickness or treated within humanity," Penelope French cause them to be returned to her. An important document concerning the history the estate's development and a key record in the history of slavery at Mount Vernon.
Artist:William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Applied technique:Pencil
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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01.10.2021 – 15.10.2021
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
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