MOUNT VERNON 



HE estate of Hunting Creek, situated on the 

 Potomac River between Doque Creek and Little 

 Hunting Creek, was an original grant by Lord 

 Culpeper in 1674, to John Washington, and in 

 1743 was left to Lawrence Washington by his 

 father, Augustine Washington, son of John. 

 On the brow of the gentle slope, which ended at a thickly 

 wooded precipitous river bank, Lawrence built his mansion. This 

 is the nucleus of the present group of buildings. Before it swept 

 the Potomac in a magnificent curve, its broad bosom thronged 

 with graceful gull, wild duck, and other water fowl, while beyond 

 the river lay the green fields and shadowy forests of Maryland. 

 This house he called Mount Vernon, in honor of Admiral Vernon, 

 under whom Lawrence Washington had served in the expedition 

 against Cartagena, in South America. 



Lawrence died in 1752, and left Mount Vernon to his little 

 daughter, Sarah, with the proviso in case of her death that it should 

 go to his half-brother, George, to whom he was tenderly attached. 

 Sarah soon passed to that other land where so many little ones are 

 gathered that it can but be a wonderful place of purity and beauty, 

 and so George Washington came into possession of this beautiful 

 tract of 2,500 acres. James Mcintosh said of his visit to Mount 

 Vernon: 



"The combination of what is grandest in nature with 

 whatever is pure and sublime in human conduct affects me 

 more powerfully than any scene I have ever seen." 



To think of Mount Vernon and not of its owner, George Wash- 

 ington, would be impossible (so any article on his home must first 

 give us the characteristics of its possessor). Pictures that we see 



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