Oldal 308 [308]
MOUNI VERNON
(NI TES, HE estate of Hunting Creek, situated on the
Ep Res Potomac River between Doque Creek and Little
Es stati Hunting Creek, was an original grant by Lord
1 VEIN) Culpeper in 1674, to John Washington, and in
1743 was left to Lawrence Washington by his
father, Augustine Washington, son of John.
On the brow of the gentle slope, which ended at a thickly
wooded precipitous river bank, Lawrence built his mansion. This
is the nucleus of the present group of buildings. Before it swept
the Potomac in a magnificent curve, its broad bosom thronged
with graceful gull, wild duck, and other water fowl, while beyond
the river lay the green fields and shadowy forests of Maryland.
This house he called Mount Vernon, in honor of Admiral Vernon,
under whom Lawrence Washington had served in the expedition
against Cartagena, in South America.
Lawrence died in 1752, and left Mount Vernon to his little
daughter, Sarah, with the proviso in case of her death that it should
go to his half-brother, George, to whom he was tenderly attached.
Sarah soon passed to that other land where so many little ones are
gathered that it can but be a wonderful place of purity and beauty,
and so George Washington came into possession of this beautiful
tract of 2,500 acres. James McIntosh said of his visit to Mount
Vernon:
The combination of what is grandest in nature with
whatever is pure and sublime in human conduct affects me
more powerfully than any scene I have ever seen.”’
To think of Mount Vernon and not of its owner, George Wash¬
ington, would be impossible (so any article on his home must first
give us the characteristics of its possessor). Pictures that we see
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