{"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=John+Augustine+Washington+III+and+Mount+Vernon+Ladies%27+Association+%28MVLA%29+collection%2C+1834%2F1957\u0026f%5Blevel%5D%5B%5D=Item\u0026view=list","next":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=John+Augustine+Washington+III+and+Mount+Vernon+Ladies%27+Association+%28MVLA%29+collection%2C+1834%2F1957\u0026f%5Blevel%5D%5B%5D=Item\u0026page=2\u0026view=list","last":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=John+Augustine+Washington+III+and+Mount+Vernon+Ladies%27+Association+%28MVLA%29+collection%2C+1834%2F1957\u0026f%5Blevel%5D%5B%5D=Item\u0026page=14\u0026view=list"},"meta":{"pages":{"current_page":1,"next_page":2,"prev_page":null,"total_pages":14,"limit_value":10,"offset_value":0,"total_count":139,"first_page?":true,"last_page?":false}},"data":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c21","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"A Condensed Statement of the Executorial and Legatee Accounts, 1845","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c21#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003eLists names of executors and legatees and their shares and values.\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c21#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c21","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c21"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c21","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"A Condensed Statement of the Executorial and Legatee Accounts","title_ssm":["A Condensed Statement of the Executorial and Legatee Accounts"],"title_tesim":["A Condensed Statement of the Executorial and Legatee Accounts"],"normalized_title_ssm":["A Condensed Statement of the Executorial and Legatee Accounts, 1845"],"text":["A Condensed Statement of the Executorial and Legatee Accounts, 1845","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 1","Lists (document genres)","Estate records","English.","Lists names of executors and legatees and their shares and values."],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1845"],"unitdate_other_ssim":["1845 May 26"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":21,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 1"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"access_subjects_ssim":["Lists (document genres)","Estate records"],"access_subjects_ssm":["Lists (document genres)","Estate records"],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1845],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eLists names of executors and legatees and their shares and values.\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["Lists names of executors and legatees and their shares and values."],"_nest_path_":"/components#20","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. 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(William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. 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(William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"language_ssim":["English\n."],"descrules_ssm":["Describing Archives: A Content Standard"],"total_component_count_is":251,"online_item_count_is":12,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c21"}},{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c115","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"Agreement between John Augustine Washington III and William F. Alexander regarding Mount Vernon property (draft copy), 1858","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c115#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e(Agreement ends with reference to the 10th of February) Deals with payment of $6,000 to heirs of W.F. Alexander and Anna Alexander as a share of Mount Vernon. Expressly says none of these heirs have any claim to the proceeds arising from a sale of Mount Vernon, other than the $6,000.\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c115#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c115","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c115"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c115","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Agreement between John Augustine Washington III and William F. 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Expressly says none of these heirs have any claim to the proceeds arising from a sale of Mount Vernon, other than the $6,000."],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1858"],"unitdate_other_ssim":["1858 February"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":115,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 3"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1858],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Agreement ends with reference to the 10th of February) Deals with payment of $6,000 to heirs of W.F. Alexander and Anna Alexander as a share of Mount Vernon. Expressly says none of these heirs have any claim to the proceeds arising from a sale of Mount Vernon, other than the $6,000.\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["(Agreement ends with reference to the 10th of February) Deals with payment of $6,000 to heirs of W.F. Alexander and Anna Alexander as a share of Mount Vernon. Expressly says none of these heirs have any claim to the proceeds arising from a sale of Mount Vernon, other than the $6,000."],"_nest_path_":"/components#114","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","English\n."],"collection_title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"unitid_tesim":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"repository_ssm":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creator_ssm":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. 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(William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. 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Washington, Mount Vernon, 1834.\"\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c236#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c236","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c236"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c236","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Book - The American Almanac and repository of useful knowledge for the year 1834","title_ssm":["Book - The American Almanac and repository of useful knowledge for the year 1834"],"title_tesim":["Book - The American Almanac and repository of useful knowledge for the year 1834"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Book - The American Almanac and repository of useful knowledge for the year 1834, 1834"],"text":["Book - The American Almanac and repository of useful knowledge for the year 1834, 1834","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 6","English.","Boston: Published by Charles Bowen. Front page signed \"Jane C. Washington, Mount Vernon, 1834.\""],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834"],"unitdate_other_ssim":["1834"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":236,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 6"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1834],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eBoston: Published by Charles Bowen. Front page signed \"Jane C. Washington, Mount Vernon, 1834.\"\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["Boston: Published by Charles Bowen. Front page signed \"Jane C. Washington, Mount Vernon, 1834.\""],"_nest_path_":"/components#235","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. 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(William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. 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Discussions of various debts owed to different people.\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c28#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c28","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c28"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c28","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Copies (handwritten) of family letters concerning Mount Vernon estate and heirs, including letters by Bushrod Corbin Washington, George W. Bassett, and E.C. McGuire","title_ssm":["Copies (handwritten) of family letters concerning Mount Vernon estate and heirs, including letters by Bushrod Corbin Washington, George W. Bassett, and E.C. McGuire"],"title_tesim":["Copies (handwritten) of family letters concerning Mount Vernon estate and heirs, including letters by Bushrod Corbin Washington, George W. Bassett, and E.C. McGuire"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Copies (handwritten) of family letters concerning Mount Vernon estate and heirs, including letters by Bushrod Corbin Washington, George W. Bassett, and E.C. McGuire, 1847"],"text":["Copies (handwritten) of family letters concerning Mount Vernon estate and heirs, including letters by Bushrod Corbin Washington, George W. Bassett, and E.C. McGuire, 1847","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 1","English.","First letter discusses the Supreme Court taking on the suit of Mr. Hammond against General Washington. Bassett says he discharged all debts owed by Captain Lewis. There is another copy of the names of executors and legatees and their shares and values. Discussions of various debts owed to different people."],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1847"],"unitdate_other_ssim":["1847"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":28,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 1"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1847],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eFirst letter discusses the Supreme Court taking on the suit of Mr. Hammond against General Washington. Bassett says he discharged all debts owed by Captain Lewis. There is another copy of the names of executors and legatees and their shares and values. Discussions of various debts owed to different people.\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["First letter discusses the Supreme Court taking on the suit of Mr. Hammond against General Washington. Bassett says he discharged all debts owed by Captain Lewis. There is another copy of the names of executors and legatees and their shares and values. Discussions of various debts owed to different people."],"_nest_path_":"/components#27","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. 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Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"names_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"language_ssim":["English\n."],"descrules_ssm":["Describing Archives: A Content Standard"],"total_component_count_is":251,"online_item_count_is":12,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c28"}},{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c237","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"Diary of John Augustine Washington III, 1841/1859","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c237#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003eDiary inscribed \"Account of all my recpts. \u0026amp; expenditures beginning with Sept. 16th, 1841, that being the date at which I came to Mount Vernon to reside.\" There are intermittent entries through November 1859. This is not as full a diary but includes lists of food, clothing, and china, table, and cookware.\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c237#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c237","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c237"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c237","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Diary of John Augustine Washington III","title_ssm":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III"],"title_tesim":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III, 1841/1859"],"text":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III, 1841/1859","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 6","English.","Diary inscribed \"Account of all my recpts. \u0026 expenditures beginning with Sept. 16th, 1841, that being the date at which I came to Mount Vernon to reside.\" There are intermittent entries through November 1859. This is not as full a diary but includes lists of food, clothing, and china, table, and cookware."],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1841/1859"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1841-1859"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":237,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 6"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eDiary inscribed \"Account of all my recpts. \u0026amp; expenditures beginning with Sept. 16th, 1841, that being the date at which I came to Mount Vernon to reside.\" There are intermittent entries through November 1859. This is not as full a diary but includes lists of food, clothing, and china, table, and cookware.\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["Diary inscribed \"Account of all my recpts. \u0026 expenditures beginning with Sept. 16th, 1841, that being the date at which I came to Mount Vernon to reside.\" There are intermittent entries through November 1859. This is not as full a diary but includes lists of food, clothing, and china, table, and cookware."],"_nest_path_":"/components#236","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","English\n."],"collection_title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"unitid_tesim":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"repository_ssm":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creator_ssm":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"names_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. 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Loose note at the front reads \"Extracts from the diary of my father\" with notes on this diary and previous ones.\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c238#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c238","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c238"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c238","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Diary of John Augustine Washington III","title_ssm":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III"],"title_tesim":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III, 1847/1850"],"text":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III, 1847/1850","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 6","Mount Vernon (Va. : Estate)","Enslaved persons","Business records","Ledgers (account books)","English.","Includes \"List of Negroes\" and Mount Vernon farming and maintenance details. Loose note at the front reads \"Extracts from the diary of my father\" with notes on this diary and previous ones."],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1847/1850"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1847 July 8 - 1850 March 9"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":238,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 6"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"geogname_ssim":["Mount Vernon (Va. : Estate)"],"geogname_ssm":["Mount Vernon (Va. : Estate)"],"places_ssim":["Mount Vernon (Va. : Estate)"],"access_subjects_ssim":["Enslaved persons","Business records","Ledgers (account books)"],"access_subjects_ssm":["Enslaved persons","Business records","Ledgers (account books)"],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1847,1848,1849,1850],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eIncludes \"List of Negroes\" and Mount Vernon farming and maintenance details. 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Loose note at the front reads \"Extracts from the diary of my father\" with notes on this diary and previous ones."],"_nest_path_":"/components#237","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","English\n."],"collection_title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"unitid_tesim":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"repository_ssm":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creator_ssm":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"names_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"language_ssim":["English\n."],"descrules_ssm":["Describing Archives: A Content Standard"],"total_component_count_is":251,"online_item_count_is":12,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c238"}},{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c239","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"Diary of John Augustine Washington III, 1850/1852","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c239#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003eIncludes \"List of Negroes\" and Mount Vernon farming and maintenance details.\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c239#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c239","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c239"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c239","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Diary of John Augustine Washington III","title_ssm":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III"],"title_tesim":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III, 1850/1852"],"text":["Diary of John Augustine Washington III, 1850/1852","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 6","English.","This diary may not actually be part of accession RM-848 as it is not mentioned in the initial inventory/correspondence. However, it was in the same box as the other diaries and the almanac when found on the shelf, therefore it was described with the collection.","Includes \"List of Negroes\" and Mount Vernon farming and maintenance details."],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1850/1852"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1850 March 10 - 1852 March 27"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":239,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 6"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1850,1851,1852],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis diary may not actually be part of accession RM-848 as it is not mentioned in the initial inventory/correspondence. However, it was in the same box as the other diaries and the almanac when found on the shelf, therefore it was described with the collection.\u003c/p\u003e"],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["This diary may not actually be part of accession RM-848 as it is not mentioned in the initial inventory/correspondence. However, it was in the same box as the other diaries and the almanac when found on the shelf, therefore it was described with the collection."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eIncludes \"List of Negroes\" and Mount Vernon farming and maintenance details.\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["Includes \"List of Negroes\" and Mount Vernon farming and maintenance details."],"_nest_path_":"/components#238","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","English\n."],"collection_title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"unitid_tesim":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"repository_ssm":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creator_ssm":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"names_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"language_ssim":["English\n."],"descrules_ssm":["Describing Archives: A Content Standard"],"total_component_count_is":251,"online_item_count_is":12,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c239"}},{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c46","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"Draft agreement for sale of Mount Vernon to John Linton, 1853","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c46#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003eAgreement to sell 200 acres of Mount Vernon for $200,000. Includes all buildings and the tomb, as well as furnishings currently there. Also will allow heirs to be buried there. He may not sell the estate without first offering it to the U.S. Government and the State of Virginia for no more than $350,000.\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c46#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c46","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c46"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c46","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Draft agreement for sale of Mount Vernon to John Linton","title_ssm":["Draft agreement for sale of Mount Vernon to John Linton"],"title_tesim":["Draft agreement for sale of Mount Vernon to John Linton"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Draft agreement for sale of Mount Vernon to John Linton, 1853"],"text":["Draft agreement for sale of Mount Vernon to John Linton, 1853","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 1","English.","Agreement to sell 200 acres of Mount Vernon for $200,000. Includes all buildings and the tomb, as well as furnishings currently there. Also will allow heirs to be buried there. He may not sell the estate without first offering it to the U.S. Government and the State of Virginia for no more than $350,000."],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1853"],"unitdate_other_ssim":["1853 June 13"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":46,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 1"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"digital_objects_ssm":["{\"label\": \"Draft agreement for sale of Mount Vernon to John Linton, 1853 June 13\", \"href\": \"http://catalog.mountvernon.org/digital/collection/p16829coll8/id/47/rec/1\"}"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1853],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eAgreement to sell 200 acres of Mount Vernon for $200,000. Includes all buildings and the tomb, as well as furnishings currently there. Also will allow heirs to be buried there. He may not sell the estate without first offering it to the U.S. Government and the State of Virginia for no more than $350,000.\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["Agreement to sell 200 acres of Mount Vernon for $200,000. Includes all buildings and the tomb, as well as furnishings currently there. Also will allow heirs to be buried there. He may not sell the estate without first offering it to the U.S. Government and the State of Virginia for no more than $350,000."],"_nest_path_":"/components#45","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","English\n."],"collection_title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"unitid_tesim":["RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65"],"repository_ssm":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creator_ssm":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865"],"creator_persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"names_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"language_ssim":["English\n."],"descrules_ssm":["Describing Archives: A Content Standard"],"total_component_count_is":251,"online_item_count_is":12,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c46"}},{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c110","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"Draft copy of bill introduced to the Virginia Assembly, 1858","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c110#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003eGives price of sale of $200,000 for 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate and pledges the MVLA to guarantee to not disturb any remains currently there and to allow descendants of JAW to also be interred there.\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c110#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c110","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c110"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c110","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Draft copy of bill introduced to the Virginia Assembly","title_ssm":["Draft copy of bill introduced to the Virginia Assembly"],"title_tesim":["Draft copy of bill introduced to the Virginia Assembly"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Draft copy of bill introduced to the Virginia Assembly, 1858"],"text":["Draft copy of bill introduced to the Virginia Assembly, 1858","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 3","English.","Gives price of sale of $200,000 for 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate and pledges the MVLA to guarantee to not disturb any remains currently there and to allow descendants of JAW to also be interred there."],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1858"],"unitdate_other_ssim":["1858 January 21"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":110,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 3"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1858],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eGives price of sale of $200,000 for 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate and pledges the MVLA to guarantee to not disturb any remains currently there and to allow descendants of JAW to also be interred there.\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["Gives price of sale of $200,000 for 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate and pledges the MVLA to guarantee to not disturb any remains currently there and to allow descendants of JAW to also be interred there."],"_nest_path_":"/components#109","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. 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(William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. 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Does not wish to dispose of the property except to the government of the United States or Virginia and so declines the proposition from the \"Ladies of the South.\"\u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c56#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c56","ref_ssm":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c56"],"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c56","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","parent_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_ids_ssim":["vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65"],"title_filing_ssi":"Draft letter from Eleanor L.S. Washington to Ann Pamela Cunningham","title_ssm":["Draft letter from Eleanor L.S. Washington to Ann Pamela Cunningham"],"title_tesim":["Draft letter from Eleanor L.S. Washington to Ann Pamela Cunningham"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Draft letter from Eleanor L.S. Washington to Ann Pamela Cunningham, 1854"],"text":["Draft letter from Eleanor L.S. Washington to Ann Pamela Cunningham, 1854","John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","box 2","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","English.","Draft in writing of John Augustine Washington III. Addressed to \"Miss Cunningham\" but could also be a response to Louisa Cunningham's letter instead of Ann Pamela Cunningham. Praises the women of the south for their affection for Washington. Does not wish to dispose of the property except to the government of the United States or Virginia and so declines the proposition from the \"Ladies of the South.\""],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1854"],"unitdate_other_ssim":["1854 January 9"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[1],"sort_isi":56,"repository_ssim":["The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"collection_ssim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"containers_ssim":["box 2"],"creator_ssim":["Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"persname_ssim":["Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860"],"names_ssim":["Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860"],"language_ssim":["English."],"date_range_isim":[1854],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eDraft in writing of John Augustine Washington III. Addressed to \"Miss Cunningham\" but could also be a response to Louisa Cunningham's letter instead of Ann Pamela Cunningham. Praises the women of the south for their affection for Washington. Does not wish to dispose of the property except to the government of the United States or Virginia and so declines the proposition from the \"Ladies of the South.\"\u003c/p\u003e"],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["Draft in writing of John Augustine Washington III. Addressed to \"Miss Cunningham\" but could also be a response to Louisa Cunningham's letter instead of Ann Pamela Cunningham. Praises the women of the south for their affection for Washington. Does not wish to dispose of the property except to the government of the United States or Virginia and so declines the proposition from the \"Ladies of the South.\""],"_nest_path_":"/components#55","timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_ssi":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_root_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","_nest_parent_":"vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/oai/MV/repositories_3_resources_65.xml","title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"title_tesim":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection"],"unitdate_ssm":["1834-1957"],"unitdate_inclusive_ssm":["1834-1957"],"normalized_date_ssm":["1834/1957"],"normalized_title_ssm":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957"],"text":["John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) collection, 1834/1957","RM.848","/repositories/3/resources/65","This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.","The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.","(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence.","Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection","This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. 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(William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"creator_corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"creators_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917","Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"has_online_content_ssim":["true"],"extent_ssm":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"extent_tesim":["3 Linear Feet 7 boxes"],"date_range_isim":[1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853,1854,1855,1856,1857,1858,1859,1860,1861,1862,1863,1864,1865,1866,1867,1868,1869,1870,1871,1872,1873,1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1879,1880,1881,1882,1883,1884,1885,1886,1887,1888,1889,1890,1891,1892,1893,1894,1895,1896,1897,1898,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1904,1905,1906,1907,1908,1909,1910,1911,1912,1913,1914,1915,1916,1917,1918,1919,1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,1945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Conditions Governing Access"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["This collection is open for research during scheduled appointments. Researchers must complete the Washington Library's Special Collections and Archives Registration Form before access is provided. The library reserves the right to restrict access to certain items for preservation purposes."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged chronologically with undated material listed at the beginning in alphabetical order by folder title. Addenda, photocopies, and bound volumes are described at the end of the collection."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAs the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThese visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eJohn Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence. \u003c/p\u003e  "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical / Historical"],"bioghist_tesim":["(Taken from the Digital Encyclopedia entry by Matthew Costello, George Washington's Mount Vernon website)","John Augustine Washington III was the great-grand nephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. The fourth of five children, he was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. John Augustine spent his young childhood at his parents' Blakeley plantation near present day Charles Town, West Virginia, but after the deaths of Bushrod Washington and his wife Julia in 1829, the Mount Vernon estate became the possession of Bushrod's nephew, John Augustine Washington II. As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, John Augustine enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Mount Vernon, developing interests in politics, hunting, and agriculture. After John Augustine Washington II passed away in June 1832, the estate was left to his widow Jane Charlotte, who vowed to maintain the estate to the best of her ability without involving her children's inheritances. While John Augustine Washington III preferred his more aristocratic pastimes, Jane insisted that he attend college after his father's death. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, returning to Mount Vernon in September 1841 with a proposition to manage the estate for his mother. She agreed, loaning him twenty-two slaves and contracting his employment for five hundred dollars per year for seven years.","As the oldest living male heir, John Augustine Washington III positioned himself to take possession of Mount Vernon from his mother. While she did not pass away until 1855, she gave John Augustine the proverbial keys to the kingdom, granting him full autonomy to run the plantation as he saw fit. However, John Augustine quickly realized that the deteriorating Mount Vernon estate was a far cry from the profitable plantation that his great-great uncle George Washington once presided over. His primary means of income came from wheat and potato production, woodcutting, selling slaves and outsourcing slave labor, collecting land rents, and his herring operation on the Potomac River. However, soil degradation, poor harvests, temperamental weather, and the devastation of crops by insects and pests limited his agricultural returns. While he managed to slow Mount Vernon's financial decline, these endeavors were not enough to stop the downward spiral. In addition to facing these hardships, John Augustine also experienced constant interruptions by sightseers, many of whom wanted the meet the living descendent of General George Washington, see the Mansion, and ask questions about Washington's life.","These visitors were considered a nuisance to John Augustine's family, and their presence slowed plantation work for slaves, overseers, and hired farm laborers. Initially John Augustine followed the precedential policies of his mother, father, and uncle Bushrod, publishing trespassing notices around the property, requesting letters of introduction to enter the Mansion, and denying the landing of steamboats on the Potomac River. But with his lands yielding such little profit, John Augustine decided to embrace this historical tourism, implementing business strategies to extract money from the thousands of visitors who journeyed to the home of George Washington. In order to bring more people to the estate, he entered into a contract with the proprietors of the Thomas Collyer to permit their steamboat to dock directly at Mount Vernon. He also promoted and invested in the construction of the Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and Accotink Turnpike Road, which was designed to make travel easier to Mount Vernon over land. As more visitors descended upon the grounds, he instructed slaves and laborers to sell bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists. Beyond the property boundaries, he went into business with James Crutchett, who purchased timber from the estate and manufactured wooden Washington trinkets near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot in the nation's capital. While John Augustine Washington capitalized on the American fascination with George Washington, these sales were not substantial enough to convince him to retain Mount Vernon. He attempted to sell the property to both the federal government and the state of Virginia, but both bodies were deeply mired in sectional and political partisanship. Convinced that neither would meet his terms, he agreed to sell 200 acres of the Mount Vernon estate, which included the Mansion, outlying buildings, and the family tomb to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) in 1858 for $200,000.","John Augustine and his family vacated Mount Vernon for their new home Waveland plantation in February 1860. About a year later the state of Virginia called for a convention to debate the issue of secession, and in April 1861, Virginia delegates responded to the firing on Fort Sumter by voting in favor of leaving the Union. John Augustine joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel, and he served as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, General Robert E. Lee. In September 1861, John Augustine was killed during a reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Cheat Mountain by a Union bushwhacker. In a letter to John's teenage daughter Louisa, Lee painfully informed her that her father \"fell in the cause to which he had devoted all his energies, and which his noble heart was earnestly enlisted.\" The two men had shared many conversations and moments together as tent mates, and Lee admired his unflinching \"devotion to Almighty God,\" assuring Louisa that \"He is now safely in Heaven.\" John Augustine was buried in the Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charles Town, West Virginia, one of several Washington family members who fought and died for Southern independence."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"prefercite_tesim":["[Name and date of item], John Augustine Washington III and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) Collection, [Folder], Special Collections, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon [hereafter Washington Library], Mount Vernon, Virginia."],"relatedmaterial_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eEarly Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection\u003c/p\u003e  "],"relatedmaterial_heading_ssm":["Related Materials"],"relatedmaterial_tesim":["Early Records of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nPapers of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden Correspondence ;\nJohn Augustine Washington III and Descendants Papers ;\nHistoric Manuscripts Collection"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThis collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals. \u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDescendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990.\u003c/p\u003e  "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Contents"],"scopecontent_tesim":["This collection concerns the inheritance, maintenance, and sale of the Mount Vernon estate by its last private owner, John Augustine Washington III. A large majority of the collection is correspondence to or from John Augustine Washington III with a significant portion relating to the purchase of the estate by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Three diaries kept by John Augustine are also included and contain important information about his slaves, agricultural practices, and finances. Other types of material in the collection include legal documents, receipts, photographs, and ephemera. Photocopies were made for most of the manuscripts and can be viewed as surrogates to the originals.","Descendants of John Augustine Washington III maintained ownership of these records until 1990 when they were sold to Gary Hendershott, a manuscripts dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the collection in October 1990."],"corpname_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon"],"persname_ssim":["Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"names_ssim":["Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","Washington, John Augustine, III, 1821-1861","Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 1816-1875","Ritchie, Anna Cora Mowatt, 1819-1870","Washington, Jane Charlotte Blackburn, 1786-1855","Lossing, Benson John, 1813-1891","Everett, Edward, 1794-1865","Washington, George Corbin, 1789-1854","Lewis, Lawrence, 1767-1839","Lewis, Eleanor Parke Custis, 1779-1852","Davis, Henry Winter, 1817-1865","Bassett, George Washington, 1800-1878","Johnson, Joseph, 1785-1877","Corcoran, W.W. (William Wilson), 1798-1888","Custis, George Washington Parke, 1781-1857","McKenzie, Lewis, 1810-1895","Cunningham, Louisa Bird, 1794-1873","Washington, Eleanor Love Selden, 1824-1860","Taylor, John L. (John Lampkin), 1805-1870","Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866","Washington, Bushrod C. (Bushrod Corbin), 1839-1919","Tyler, Nathaniel, 1828-1917"],"language_ssim":["English\n."],"descrules_ssm":["Describing Archives: A Content Standard"],"total_component_count_is":251,"online_item_count_is":12,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-07-23T21:25:13.167Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vimtvl_repositories_3_resources_65_c56"}}],"included":[{"type":"facet","id":"repository_ssim","attributes":{"label":"Repository","items":[{"attributes":{"label":"The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon","value":"The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount 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