The record of failures is, of course, much greater than of successes, but that is the experience of every scientific farmer or horticulturist who ventures out of the beaten path. Even Burbank, the wizard, has his failures--and many of them.
One of Washington's successes was what he called a "barrel plough." At that time all seed, such as corn, wheat and oats had to be sown or dropped by hand and then covered with a harrow or a hoe or something of the kind. Washington tried to make a machine that would do the work more expeditiously and succeeded, though it should be said that his plans were not altogether original with him, as there was a plan for such a machine in Duhamel and another was published by Arthur Young about this time in the Annals of Agriculture, which Washington was now perusing with much attention. Richard Peters also sent yet another plan.
Washington's drill, as we should call it to-day, consisted of a barrel or hollow cylinder of wood mounted upon a wheeled plow and so arranged that as the plow moved forward the barrel turned. In the barrel, holes were cut or burnt through which the corn or other seed could drop into tubes that ran down to the ground. By decreasing or increasing the number of holes the grain could be planted thicker or thinner as desired. To prevent the holes from choking up he found it expedient to make them larger on the outside than on the inside, and he also found that the machine worked better if the barrel was not kept too full of seed. Behind the drills ran a light harrow or drag which covered the seed, though in rough ground it was necessary to have a man follow after with a hoe to assist the process. A string was fastened to this harrow by which it could be lifted around when turning at the ends of the rows, the drill itself being managed by a pair of handles.
Washington wrote to a friend that the drill would not "work to good effect in land that is very full either of stumps, stones, or large clods; but, where the ground is tolerably free from these and in good tilth, and particularly in light land, I am certain you will find it equal to your most sanguine expectation, for Indian corn, wheat, barley, pease, or any other tolerably round grain, that you may wish to sow or plant in this manner. I have sown oats very well with it, which is among the most inconvenient and unfit grains for this machine.... A small bag, containing about a peck of the seed you are sowing, is hung to the nails on the right handle, and with a small tin cup the barrel is replenished with convenience, whenever it is necessary, without loss of time, or waiting to come up with the seed-bag at the end of the row."
As Washington says, the drill would probably work well under ideal conditions, but there were features of it that would incline, I have no doubt, to make its operator swear at times. There was a leather band that ran about the barrel with holes corresponding to those in the barrel, the purpose of the band being to prevent the seeds issuing out of more than one hole at the same time. This band had to be "slackened or braced" according to the influence of the atmosphere upon the leather, and sometimes the holes in the band tended to gape and admit seed between the band and the barrel, in which case Washington found it expedient to rivet "a piece of sheet tin, copper, or brass, the width of the band, and about four inches long, with a hole through it, the size of the one in the leather."
Washington was, however, very proud of the drill, and it must have worked fairly well, for he was not the man to continue to use a worthless implement simply because he had made it. He even used it to sow very small seed. In the summer of 1786 he records: "Having fixed a Roller to the tale of my drill plow, & a brush between it and the barrel, I sent it to Muddy Hole & sowed turnips in the intervals of corn[5]."
[5] Another passage from his papers in which he mentions using his drill plow is also illustrative of the emphasis he placed upon having the seed bed for a crop properly prepared. The passage describes his sowing some spring wheat and is as follows: "12th [of April, 1785].--Sowed sixteen acres of Siberian wheat, with eighteen quarts, in rows between corn, eight feet apart. This ground had been prepared in the following manner: 1. A single furrow; 2. another in the same to deepen it; 3. four furrows to throw the earth back into the two first, which made ridges of five furrows. These, being done some time ago, and the sowing retarded by frequent rains, had got hard; therefore, 4. before the seed was sown, these ridges were split again by running twice in the middle of them, both times in the same furrow; 5. after which the ridges were harrowed; and, 6. where the ground was lumpy, run a spiked roller with a harrow at the tail of it, which was found very efficacious in breaking the clods and pulverizing the earth, and would have done it perfectly, if there had not been too much moisture remaining from the late rains. After this, harrowing and rolling were necessary, the wheat was sown with the drill plough on the reduced ridges eight feet apart, as above mentioned, and harrowed in with the small harrow belonging to the plough. But it should have been observed, that, after the ridges were split by the middle double furrows, and before they were closed again by the harrow, a little manure was sprinkled in."
No man better understood the value of good clean seed than did he, but he had much trouble in satisfying his desires in this respect. Often the seed he bought was foul with weed seeds, and at other times it would not grow at all. Once he mentions having set the women and "weak hands" to work picking wild onions out of some Eastern Shore oats that he had bought.
He advocated planting the largest and finest potatoes instead of the little ones, as some farmers out of false ideas of economy still make the mistake of doing, and he followed the same principle that "the best will produce the best" in selecting all seed.
He also appreciated the importance of getting just the right stand of grain--not too many plants and not too few--upon his fields and conducted investigations along this line. He laboriously calculated the number of seed in a pound Troy of various seeds and ascertained, for example, that the number of red clover was 71,000, of timothy 298,000, of "New River Grass" 844,800 and of barley 8,925. Knowing these facts, he was able to calculate how much ought to be sowed of a given seed to the acre.
The spectacle of the former Commander of the Armies of a Continent engaging in such minute labor is ridiculous or sublime, according to the viewpoint!
In the spring of the year that he helped to frame the Federal Constitution he "Sowed the squares No. 2 & 4 at this place [Dogue Run] with oats in the following manner--viz--the East half of No. 2 with half a Bushel of Oats from George Town--and the west half with a Bushel of Poland Oats--The east half of No. 4 with half a bushel of the Poland Oats and the west half with a bushel of the George Town Oats. The objects, and design of this experiment, was to ascertn. 3 things--1st. which of these two kinds of Oats were best the George Town (which was a good kind of the common Oats)--2d. whether two or four bushels to the Acre was best--and 3d. the difference between ground dunged at the Rate of 5 load or 200 bushels to the Acre and ground undunged."
This experiment is typical of a great many others and it resulted, of course, in better yields on the manured ground and showed that two bushels of seed were preferable to four. But if he ever set down the result of the experiment as regards the varieties, the passage has escaped me.
While at Fredericksburg this year visiting his mother and his sister Betty Lewis he learned of an interesting method of raising potatoes under straw and wrote down the details in his diary. A little later when attending the Federal Convention he kept his eyes and ears open for agricultural information. He learned how the Pennsylvanians cultivated buckwheat and visited the farm of a certain Jones, who was getting good results from the use of plaster of Paris. With his usual interest in labor-saving machinery he inspected at Benjamin Franklin's a sort of ironing machine called a mangle, "well calculated," he thought, "for Table cloths & such articles as have not pleats & irregular foldings & would be very useful in large families."
This year he had in wheat seven hundred acres, in grass five hundred eighty acres, in oats four hundred acres, in corn seven hundred acres, with several hundred more in buckwheat, barley, potatoes, peas, beans and turnips.
In 1788 he raised one thousand eighty-eight bushels of potatoes on one plantation, but they were not dug till December and in consequence some were badly injured by the frost. An experiment that year was one of transplanting carrots between rows of corn and it was not successful.
He worked hard in these years, but, as many another industrious farmer has discovered, he found that he could do little unless nature smiled and fickle nature persisted in frowning. In 1785 the rain seemed to forget how to fall, and in 1786 how to stop falling. Some crops failed or were very short and soon he was so hard up that he was anxious to sell some lands or negroes to meet debts coming due. In February, 1786, in sending fifteen guineas to his mother, he wrote:
"I have now demands upon me for more than £500, three hundred and forty odd of which is due for the tax of 1786; and I know not where or when I shall receive one shilling with which to pay it. In the last two years I made no crops. In the first I was obliged to buy corn, and this year have none to sell, and my wheat is so bad I can neither eat it myself nor sell it to others, and tobacco I make none. Those who owe me money cannot or will not pay it without suits, and to sue is to do nothing; whilst my expenses, not from any extravagance, or an inclination on my part to live splendidly, but for the absolute support of my family and the visitors who are constantly here, are exceedingly high."
To bad crops were joined bad conditions throughout the country generally. The government of the Confederation was dying of inanition, America was flooded with depreciated currency, both state and Continental. In western Massachusetts a rebellion broke out, the rebels being largely discouraged debtors. A state of chaos seemed imminent and would have resulted had not the Federal Convention, of which Washington was a member, created a new government. Ultimately this government brought order and financial stability, but all this took time and Washington was so financially embarrassed in 1789 when he traveled to New York to be inaugurated President that he had to borrow money to pay the expenses of the journey.
After having set the wheels of government in motion he made an extended trip through New England and whenever public festivities would permit he examined into New England farm methods and took copious notes. On the first day up from New York he saw good crops of corn mixed with pumpkins and met four droves of beef cattle, "some of which were very fine--also a Flock of Sheep.... We scarcely passed a farm house that did not abd. in Geese." His judgment of New England stock was that the cattle were "of a good quality and their hogs large, but rather long legged." The shingle roofs, stone and brick chimneys, stone fences and cider making all attracted his attention. The fact that wheat in that section produced an average of fifteen bushels per acre and often twenty or twenty-five was duly noted. On the whole he seems to have considered the tour enjoyable and profitable in spite of the fact that on his return through Connecticut the law against Sabbath traveling compelled him to remain over Sunday at Perkins' Tavern and to attend church twice, where he "heard very lame discourses from a Mr. Pond."
About 1785 Washington had begun a correspondence with Arthur Young and also began to read his periodical called the Annals of Agriculture. The Annals convinced him more than ever of the superiority of the English system of husbandry and not only gave him the idea for some of the experiments that have been mentioned, but also made him very desirous of adopting a regular and systematic course of cropping in order to conserve his soil. Taking advantage of an offer made by Young, he ordered (August 6, 1786) through him English plows, cabbage, turnip, sainfoin, rye-grass and hop clover seed and eight bushels of winter vetches; also some months later, velvet wheat, field beans, spring barley, oats and more sainfoin seed. He furthermore expressed a wish for "a plan of the most complete and useful farmyard, for farms of about 500 acres. In this I mean to comprehend the barn, and every appurtenance which ought to be annexed to the yard."
Young was as good as his word. Although English law forbade the exportation of some of these things--a fact of which Washington was not aware--he and Sir John Sinclair prevailed upon Lord Grenville to issue a special permit and in due course everything reached Mount Vernon. Part of the seeds were somewhat injured by being put into the hold of the vessel that brought them over, with the result that they overheated--a thing that troubled Washington whenever he imported seeds--but on the whole the consignment was in fair order, and our Farmer was duly grateful.
The plows appeared excessively heavy to the Virginians who looked them over, but a trial showed that they worked "exceedingly well."
To Young's plan for a barn and barnyard Washington made some additions and constructed the barn upon Union Farm, building it of bricks that were made on the estate. He later expressed a belief that it was "the largest and most convenient one in this country." It has now disappeared almost utterly, but Young's plan was subsequently engraved in the Annals.
In return for the exertions of Young and Sinclair in his behalf Washington sent over some American products and also took pains to collect information for them as to the state of American agriculture. His letters show an almost pathetic eagerness to please these good friends and it is evident that in his farming operations he regarded himself as one of Young's disciples. He was no egotist who believed that because he had been a successful soldier and was now President of the United States he could not learn anything from a specialist. The trait was most commendable and one that is sadly lacking in many of his countrymen, some of whom take pride in declaring that "these here scientific fellers caint tell me nothin' about raisin' corn!"
Young and Sir John Sinclair were by no means his only agricultural correspondents. Even Noah Webster dropped his legal and philological work long enough in 1790 to propound a theory so startlingly modern in its viewpoint that it is worthy of reproduction. Said he:
"While therefore I allow, in its full extent, the value of stable manure, marl, plaster of Paris, lime, ashes, sea-weed, sea-shells & salt, in enriching land, I believe none of them are absolutely necessary, but that nature has provided an inexhaustible store of manure, which is equally accessible to the rich and the poor, & which may be collected & applied to land with very little labor and expense. This store is the atmosphere, & the process by which the fertilizing substance may be obtained is vegetation."
He added that such crops as oats, peas, beans and buckwheat should be raised and plowed under to rot and that land should never be left bare. As one peruses the letter he recalls that scientists of to-day tell us that the air is largely made up of nitrogen, that plants are able to "fix it," and he half expects to find Webster advocating "soil innoculation" and speaking of "nodules" and "bacteria."
Throughout the period after the Revolution our Farmer's one greatest concern was to conserve and restore his land. When looking for a new manager he once wrote that the man must be, "above all, Midas like, one who can convert everything he touches into manure, as the first transmutation toward gold; in a word, one who can bring worn-out and gullied lands into good tilth in the shortest time." He saved manure as if it were already so much gold and hoped with its use and with judicious rotation of crops to accomplish his object. "Unless some such practice as this prevails," he wrote in 1794, "my fields will be growing worse and worse every year, until the Crops will not defray the expense of the culture of them."
He drew up elaborate plans for the rotation of crops on his different farms. Not content with one plan, he often drew up several alternatives; calculated the probable financial returns from each, allowing for the cost of seed, cultivation and other expenses, and commented upon the respective advantages from every point of view of the various plans. The labor involved in such work was very great, but Washington was no shirker. He was always up before sunrise, both in winter and summer, and seems to have been so constituted that he was most contented when he had something to do. Perhaps if he had had to engage in hard manual toil every day he would have had less inclination for such employment, but he worked with his own hands only intermittently, devoting his time mostly to planning and oversight.
One such plan for Dogue Run Farm is given on the next page. To understand it the reader should bear in mind that the farm contained five hundred
No. of Fields 1793 1794 1795 1796 1797 1798 1799 3 Corn and Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass 4 Clover or Grass Corn and Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass 5 Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn and Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass 6 Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn and Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat 7 Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn and Potatoes Wheat Buckwheat for Manure 1 Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn and Potatoes Wheat 2 Wheat Buckwheat for Manure Wheat Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Clover or Grass Corn and Potatoes
twenty-five arable acres divided into seven fields, each of which contained about seventy-five acres.
Of this rotation he noted that it "favors the land very much; inasmuch as there are but three corn crops [i.e. grain crops] taken in seven years from any field, & the first of the wheat crops is followed by a Buck Wheat manure for the second Wheat Crop, wch. is to succeed it; & which by being laid to Clover or Grass & continued therein three years will a ford much Mowing or Grassing, according as the Seasons happen to be, besides being a restoration to the Soil--But the produce of the sale of the Crops is small, unless encreased by the improving state of the fields. Nor will the Grain for the use of the Farm be adequate to the consumption of it in this Course, and this is an essential object to attend to."
In a second table he estimated the amount of work that would be required each year to carry out this plan of rotation, assuming that one plow would break up three-fourths of an acre per day. This amount is hardly half what an energetic farmer with a good team of horses will now turn over in a day with an ordinary walking plow, but the negro farmer lacked ambition, the plows were cumbersome, and much of the work was done with plodding oxen. The table follows:
PLANTING CHART.
He estimated that seventy-five acres of corn would yield, at twelve and a half bushels per acre, 937-1/2 bushels, worth at two shillings and sixpence per bushel £117.3.9. In this field potatoes would be planted between the rows of corn and would produce, at twelve and a half bushels per acre, 937-1/2 bushels, worth at one shilling per bushel £46.17.6. Two fields in wheat, a total of one hundred fifty acres, at ten bushels per acre, would yield one thousand five hundred bushels, worth at five shillings per bushel three hundred seventy-five pounds. Three fields in clover and grass and the field of buckwheat to be turned under for manure would yield no money return. In other words the whole farm would produce three thousand three hundred seventy-five bushels of grain and potatoes worth a total of £539.1.3.
A second alternative plan would yield crops worth £614.1.3; a third, about the same; a fourth, £689.1.3; a fifth, providing for two hundred twenty-five acres of wheat, £801.11.0; a sixth, £764. Number five would be most productive, but he noted that it would seriously reduce the land. Number six would be "the 2d. most productive Rotation, but the fields receive no rest," as it provided for neither grass nor pasture, while the plowing required would exceed that of any of the other plans by two hundred eighty days.
On a small scale he tried growing cotton, Botany Bay grass, hemp, white nankeen grass and various other products. He experimented with deep soil plowing by running twice in the same furrow and also cultivated some wheat that had been drilled in rows instead of broadcasted.
In 1793 he built a new sixteen-sided barn on the
Part of Washington's Plan for His Sixteen-Sided Barn.
Dogue Run Farm. The plan of this barn, drawn by Washington himself, is still preserved and is reproduced herewith. He calculated that one hundred and forty thousand bricks would be required for it and these were made and burnt upon the estate. The barn was particularly notable for a threshing floor thirty feet square, with interstices one and a half inches wide left between the floor boards so that the grain when trodden out by horses or beat out with flails would fall through to the floor below, leaving the straw above.
This floor was to furnish an illustration of what Washington called "the almost impossibility of putting the overseers of this country out of the track they have been accustomed to walk in. I have one of the most convenient barns in this or perhaps any other country, where thirty hands may with great ease be employed in threshing. Half the wheat of the farm was actually stowed in this barn in the straw by my order, for threshing; notwithstanding, when I came home about the middle of September, I found a treading yard not thirty feet from the barn-door, the wheat again brought out of the barn, and horses treading it out in an open exposure, liable to the vicissitudes of the weather."
I think we may safely conclude that this was one of those rare occasions when George lost his temper and "went up in the air!"
Under any conditions treading or flailing out wheat was a slow and unsatisfactory process and, as Washington grew great quantities of this grain, he was alert for a better method. We know that he made inquiries of Arthur Young concerning a threshing machine invented by a certain Winlaw and pictured and described in volume six of the Annals, and in 1790 he watched the operation of Baron Poelnitz's mill on the Winlaw model near New York City. This mill was operated by two men and was capable of threshing about two bushels of wheat per hour--pretty slow work as compared with that of a modern thresher. And the grain had to be winnowed, or passed through a fan afterward to separate it from the chaff.
Finally in 1797 he erected a machine on plans evolved by William Booker, who came to Mount Vernon and oversaw the construction. Next April he wrote to Booker that the machine "has by no means answered your expectations or mine," At first it threshed not quite fifty bushels per day, then fell to less than twenty-five, and ultimately got out of order before five hundred bushels had been threshed, though it had used up two bands costing between eight and ten pounds. Booker replied that he had now greatly improved his invention and would come to Mount Vernon and make these additions, but whether or not he ever did so I have failed to discover.
By 1793 the burden of the estate had become so heavy that Washington decided to rent all of it except the Mansion House Farm and accordingly he wrote to Arthur Young telling his desire in the hope that Englishmen might be found to take it over. One man, Parkinson, of whom more hereafter, came to America and looked at one of the farms, but decided not to rent it. Washington's elaborate description of his land in his letter to Young, with an accompanying map, forms one of our best sources of information regarding Mount Vernon, so that we may be grateful that he had the intention even though nothing came of it. The whole of Mount Vernon continued to be cultivated as before until the last year of his life when he rented Dogue Run Farm to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis.
As a public man he was anxious to improve the general state of American agriculture and in his last annual message to Congress recommended the establishment of a board of agriculture to collect and diffuse information and "by premiums and small pecuniary aids to encourage and assist a spirit of discovery and improvement." In this recommendation the example of the English Board of Agriculture and the influence of his friend Arthur Young are discernible. It would have been well for the country if Congress had heeded the advice, but public opinion was not then educated to the need of such a step and almost a century passed before anything of much importance was done by the national government to improve the state of American agriculture.
In farming as in politics Washington was no standpatter. Notwithstanding many discouragements, he could not be kept from trying new things, and he furnished his farms with every kind of improved tool and implement calculated to do better work. At his death he owned not only threshing machines and a Dutch fan, but a wheat drill, a corn drill, a machine for gathering clover seed and another for raking up wheat. Yet most of his countrymen remained content to drop corn by hand, to broadcast their wheat, to tread out their grain and otherwise to follow methods as old as the days of Abel for at least another half century.
He was the first American conservationist. He realized that man owes a duty to the future just as he owes a debt to the past. He deplored the already developing policy of robber exploitation by which our soil and forests have been despoiled, for he foresaw the bitter fruits which such a policy must produce, and indeed was already producing on the fields of Virginia. He was no misanthropic cynic to exclaim, "What has posterity ever done for us that we should concern ourselves for posterity?" His care for the lands of Mount Vernon was evidence of the God-given trait imbedded in the best of men to transmit unimpaired to future generations what has been handed down to them.
His agricultural career has its lessons for us, even though we should not do well to follow some of his methods. The lessons lie rather in his conception of farming as an honorable occupation capable of being put on a better and more scientific basis by the application of brains and intelligence; in his open-minded and progressive seeking after better ways. Many of his experiments failed, it is true, but for his time he was a great Farmer, just as he was a great Patriot, Soldier and Statesman. Patient, hard-working, methodical, willing to sacrifice his own interests to those of the general good, he was one of those men who have helped raise mankind from the level of the brute and his whole career reflects credit upon human nature.
Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war, and the picture of the American Cincinnatus striving as earnestly on the green fields of Mount Vernon as he did upon the scarlet ones of Monmouth and Brandywine, is one that the world can not afford to forget.
CHAPTER IX
THE STOCKMAN
A various times in his career Washington raised deer, turkeys, hogs, cattle, geese, negroes and various other forms of live stock, but his greatest interest seems to have been reserved for horses, sheep and mules.
From his diaries and other papers that have come down to us it is easy to see that during his early married life he paid most attention to his horses. In 1760 he kept a stallion both for his own mares and for those of his neighbors, and we find many entries concerning the animal. Successors were "Leonidas," "Samson," "Steady," "Traveller" and "Magnolia," the last a full-blooded Arabian and probably the finest beast he ever owned. When away from home Washington now and then directed the manager to advertise the animal then reigning or to exhibit him in public places such as fairs. Mares brought to the stallion were kept upon pasture, and foal was guaranteed. Many times the General complained of the difficulty of collecting fees.
During the Revolution he bought twenty-seven worn-out army mares for breeding purposes and soon after he became President he purchased at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, thirteen fine animals for the same use. These last cost him a total of £317.17.6, the price of the highest being £25.7.6 and of the cheapest £22.10. These mares were unusually good animals, as an ordinary beast would have cost only five or six pounds.
In November, 1785, he had on his various Mount Vernon farms a total of one hundred thirty horses, including the Arabian already mentioned. Among the twenty-one animals kept at the Mansion House were his old war horses "Nelson" and "Blewskin," who after bearing their master through the smoke and dangers of many battles lived in peace to a ripe old age on the green fields of Virginia.
In his last days he bought two of the easy-gaited animals known as Narragansetts, a breed, some readers will recall, described at some length by Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans. A peculiarity of these beasts was that they moved both legs on a side forward at the same time, that is, they were pacers. Washington's two proved somewhat skittish, and one of them was responsible for the only fall from horseback that we have any record of his receiving. In company with Major Lewis, Mr. Peake, young George Washington Custis and a groom he was returning in the evening from Alexandria and dismounted for a few moments near a fire on the roadside. When he attempted to mount again the horse sprang forward suddenly and threw him. The others jumped from their horses to assist him, but the old man got up quickly, brushed his clothes and explained that he had been thrown only because he had not yet got seated. All the horses meanwhile had run away and the party started to walk four miles home, but luckily some negroes along the road caught the fugitives and brought them back. Washington insisted upon mounting his animal again and rode home without further incident. This episode happened only a few weeks before his death.
Like every farmer he found that his horses had a way of growing old. Those with which he had personal associations, like "Blueskin" and "Nelson," he kept until they died of old age. With others he sometimes followed a different course. In 1792 we find his manager, Whiting, writing: "We have several Old Horses that are not worth keeping thro winter. One at Ferry has not done one days work these 18 Months. 2 at Muddy hole one a horse with the Pole evil which I think will not get well the other an Old Mare was not capable of work last summer. Likewise the Horse called old Chatham and the Lame Horse that used to go in the Waggon now in a one horse Cart. If any thing could be Got for them it might be well but they are not worth keeping after Christmas." No doubt a sentimental person would say that Washington ought to have kept these old servants, but he had many other superannuated servants of the human kind upon his hands, so he replied that Whiting might dispose of the old horses "as you judge best for my interest."
Now and then his horses met with accidents. Thus on February 22, 1760, his horse "Jolly" got his right foreleg "mashed to pieces," probably by a falling limb. "Did it up as well as I could this night." "Saturday, Feb. 23d. Had the Horse Slung upon Canvas and his leg fresh set, following Markleham's directions as well as I could." Two days later the horse fell out of the sling and hurt himself so badly that he had to be killed.
Of Washington's skill as a trainer of horses his friend De Chastellux writes thus: "The weather being fair, on the 26th, I got on horseback, after breakfasting with the general--he was so attentive as to give me the horse he rode, the day of my arrival, which I had greatly commended--I found him as good as he is handsome; but above all, perfectly well broke, and well trained, having a good mouth, easy in hand, and stopping short in a gallop without bearing the bit--I mention these minute particulars, because it is the general himself who breaks all his own horses; and he is a very excellent and bold horseman, leaping the highest fences, and going extremely quick, without standing upon his stirrups, bearing on the bridle, or letting his horse run wild,--circumstances which young men look upon as so essential a part of English horsemanship, that they would rather break a leg or an arm than renounce them."
Comparatively few farmers in Virginia kept sheep, yet as early as 1758 Washington's overseer at Mount Vernon reported sixty-five old sheep and forty-eight lambs; seven years later the total number was one hundred fifty-six. The next year he records that he "put my English Ram Lamb to 65 Ewes," so that evidently he was trying to improve the breed. What variety this ram belonged to he does not say. Near the end of his career he had some of Bakewell's breed, an English variety that put on fat rapidly and hence were particularly desirable for mutton.
During his long absences from home his sheep suffered grievously, for sheep require a skilled care that few of his managers or overseers knew how to give. But sheep were an important feature of the English agriculture that he imitated, and he persisted in keeping them. In 1793 he had over six hundred.
"Before I left home in the spring of 1789," he wrote to Arthur Young, "I had improved that species of my stock so much as to get 5-1/4 lbs of Wool as the average of the fleeces of my whole flock,--and at the last shearing they did not yield me 2-1/2 lbs.--By procuring (if I am able) good rams and giving the necessary attention, I hope to get them up again for they are with me, as you have declared them to be with you, that part of my stock in which I most delight."
In 1789, by request, he sent Young "a fleece of a midling size and quality." Young had this made up into cloth and returned it to the General.
In 1793 we find our Farmer giving such instructions to Whiting as to cull out the unthrifty sheep and transform them into mutton and to choose a few of the best young males to keep as rams. Whiting, however, did not manage the flock well, for the following February we find Pearce, the new manager, writing:
"I am sorry to have to inform you that the stock of sheep at Both Union and Dogue Run farms are Some of them Dicing Every Week--& a great many of Them will be lost, let what will be done--Since I came I have had shelters made for them & Troughs to feed them In & to give them salt--& have attended to them myself & was In hopes to have saved those that I found to be weak, but they were too far gone--and Several of the young Cattle at Dogue Run was past all Recovery when I come & some have died already & several more I am afraid must die before spring, they are so very poor and weak."
Washington, according to his own account, was the first American to attempt the raising of mules. Soon after the Revolution he asked our representative in Spain to ascertain whether it would be possible "to procure permission to extract a Jack ass of the best breed." At that time the exportation of these animals from Spain was forbidden by law, but Florida Blanca, the Spanish minister of state, brought the matter to the attention of the king, who in a fit of generosity proceeded to send the American hero two jacks and two jennets. One of the jacks died on the way over, but the other animals, in charge of a Spanish caretaker, reached Boston, and Washington despatched an overseer to escort them to Mount Vernon, where they arrived on the fifth of December, 1785. An interpreter named Captain Sullivan was brought down from Alexandria, and through him the General propounded to the caretaker many grave inquiries regarding the care of the beasts, the answers being carefully set down in writing.
"Royal Gift," as he was duly christened, probably by the negro groom, Peter, who seems to have considered it beneath his dignity to minister to any but royalty, was a large animal. According to careful measurements taken on the porch at Mount Vernon he was fifteen hands high, and his body and limbs were very large in proportion to his height; his ears were fourteen inches long, and his vocal cords were good. He was, however, a sluggish beast, and the sea voyage had affected him so unfavorably that for some time he was of little use. In letters to Lafayette and others Washington commented facetiously upon the beast's failure to appreciate "republican
Bill of Lading for "Royal Gift".
enjoyment." Ultimately, however, "Royal Gift" recovered his strength and ambition and proved a valuable piece of property. He was presently sent on a lour of the South, and while in South Carolina was in the charge of Colonel William Washington, a hero of the Cowpens and many other battles. The profits from the tour amounted to $678.64, yet poor "Royal Gift" seems to have experienced some rough usage on the way thither, arriving lame and thin and in a generally debilitated condition. The General wrote to the Colonel about it thus:
"From accounts which I have received from some gentlemen in Virginia he was most abominably treated on the journey by the man to whom he was entrusted;--for, instead of moving him slowly and steadily along as he ought, he was prancing (with the Jack) from one public meeting or place to another in a gate which could not but prove injurious to an animal who had hardly ever been out of a walk before--and afterward, I presume, (in order to recover lost time) rushed him beyond what he was able to bear the remainder of the journey."
No doubt the beast aroused great curiosity along the way among people who had never before set eyes upon such a creature. We can well believe that the cry, "General Washington's jackass is coming!" was always sufficient to attract a gaping crowd. And many would be the sage comments upon the animal's voice and appearance.
In 1786 Lafayette sent Washington from the island of Malta another jack and two jennets, besides some Chinese pheasants and partridges. The animals landed at Baltimore in November and reached Mount Vernon in good condition later in the month. To Campion, the man who accompanied them, Washington gave "30 Louis dores for his trouble." The new jack, the "Knight of Malta," as he was called, was a smaller beast than "Royal Gift," and his ears measured only twelve inches, but he was well formed and had the ferocity of a tiger.
By crossing the two strains Washington ultimately obtained a jack called "Compound," who united in his person the size and strength of the "Gift" with the courage and activity of the "Knight." The General also raised many mules, which he found to be good workers and more cheaply kept in condition than horses.
Henceforward the peaceful quiet of Mount Vernon was broken many times a day by sounds which, if not musical or mellifluous, were at least jubilant and joyous.
Evidently the sounds in no way disturbed the General, for in 1788 we find him describing the acquisitions in enthusiastic terms to Arthur Young. He called the mules "a very excellent race of animals," cheap to keep and willing workers. Recalling, perhaps, that a king's son once rode upon a mule, he proposes to breed heavy ones from "Royal Gift" for draft purposes and lighter ones from the "Knight" for saddle or carriage. He adds: "Indeed in a few years, I intend to drive no other in my carriage, having appropriated for the sole purpose of breeding them, upwards of twenty of my best mares."
Ah, friend George, what would the world not give to see thee and thy wife Martha driving in the Mount Vernon coach down Pennsylvania Avenue behind four such long-eared beasts!
In all his stock raising, as in most other matters, Washington was greatly hampered by the carelessness of his overseers and slaves. It is notorious that free negroes will often forget or fail to water and feed their own horses, and it may easily be believed that when not influenced by fear, slaves would neglect the stock of their master. Among the General's papers I have found a list of the animals that died upon his Mount Vernon estate from April 16, 1789, to December 25, 1790. In that period of about twenty months he lost thirty-three horses, thirty-two cattle and sixty-five sheep! Considering the number of stock he had, a fifth of that loss would have been excessive. During most of the period he was away from home looking after the affairs of the nation and in his absence his own affairs suffered.
Hardly a report of his manager did not contain some bad news. Thus one of January, 1791, states that "the Young black Brood Mare, with a long tail, which Came from Pennsylvania, said to be four Years old next spring ... was found with her thigh broke quite in two." This happened on the Mansion House farm. On another farm a sheep was reported to have been killed by dogs while a second had died suddenly, perhaps from eating some poisonous plant.
Dogs, in fact, constituted an ever present menace to the sheep and it was only by constant watchfulness that the owner kept his negroes from overrunning the place with worthless curs. In 1792 he wrote to his manager: "I not only approve of your killing those Dogs which have been the occasion of the late loss, & of thinning the Plantations of others, but give it as a positive order that after saying what dog, or dogs shall remain, if any negro presumes under any pretence whatsoever, to preserve, or bring one into the family, that he shall be severely punished, and the dog hanged.--I was obliged to adopt this practice whilst I resided at home, and from the same motive, that is for the preservation of my Sheep and Hogs.... It is not for any good purpose Negroes raise, and keep dogs; but to aid them in their night robberies; for it is astonishing to see the command under which the dogs are."
After the Revolution, in imitation of English farmers, he made use of hurdles in pasturing sheep and milk cows. Thereby he secured more even distribution of the manure, which was one of his main objects in raising stock.
Washington's interest in cattle seems to have been less intense than was the case with some other kinds of stock. He always had a great number of cows, bulls, oxen and calves upon his farms--in 1793 over three hundred "black cattle" of all sorts. He was accustomed to brand his cattle with the letters "G.W.," the location of the brand on the body indicating the farm on which the beast was raised. To what extent he endeavored to improve the breed of his cattle I am unable to say, but I have found that as early as 1770 he owned an English bull, which in July he killed and sold to the crew of the British frigate Boston, which lay in the Potomac off his estate. In 1797 he made inquiries looking toward the purchase of an improved bull calf from a cattle breeder named Gough, but upon learning that the price was two hundred dollars he decided not to invest. Gough, however, heard of Washington's interest in his animals, and being an admirer of the General, gave him a calf. An English farmer, Parkinson, who saw the animal in 1798, describes him in terms the reverse of enthusiastic, and of this more hereafter.
A large part of the heavy work on all the farms was done by oxen. In November, 1785, there were thirteen yoke of these beasts on the Mount Vernon estate and the number was sometimes still larger. In 1786 Washington recorded putting "a Collar on a large Bull in order to break him to the draft.--at first he was sulky and restive but came to by degrees." The owner always aimed to have enough oxen broken so that none would have to be worked too hard, but he did not always succeed in his aim. When they attained the age of eight years the oxen were usually fattened and killed for beef.
The management of the milk cows seems to have been very poor. In May, 1793, we find the absent owner writing to his manager: "If for the sake of making a little butter (for which I shall get scarcely anything) my calves are starved, & die, it may be compared to stopping the spigot, and opening the faucit." Evidently the making of butter was almost totally discontinued, for in his last instructions, completed only a few days before his death, he wrote: "And It is hoped and will be expected, that more effectual measures will be pursued to make butter another year; for it is almost beyond belief, that from 101 Cows actually reported on a late enumeration of the Cattle, that I am obliged to buy butter for the use of my family."
In his later years he became somewhat interested in the best methods of feeding cattle and once suggested that the experiment be tried of fattening one bullock on potatoes, another on corn, and a third on a mixture of both, "keeping an exact account of the time they are fatting, and what is eaten of each, and of hay, by the different steers; that a judgment may be formed of the best and least expensive mode of stall feeding beef for market, or for my own use."
During his early farming operations his swine probably differed little if at all from the razor-backs of his neighbors. They ranged half wild in the woods in summer and he once expressed the opinion that fully half the pigs raised were stolen by the slaves, who loved roast pork fully as well as did their master. In the fall the shoats were shut up to fatten. More than a hundred were required each year to furnish meat for the people on the estate; the average weight was usually less than one hundred forty pounds. Farmers in the Middle West would to-day have their Poland Chinas or Durocs of the same age weighing two hundred fifty to three hundred pounds. Still the smallness of Washington's animals does not necessarily indicate such bad management as may at first glance appear. Until of considerable size the pigs practically made their own living, eating roots and mast in the woods, and they did not require much grain except during fattening time. And, after all, as the story has it, "what's time to a hawg?"
In his later years he seems to have taken more interest in his pigs. By 1786 he had decided that when fattening they ought to be put into closed pens with a plank floor, a roof, running water and good troughs. A visitor to Mount Vernon in 1798 says that he had "about 150 of the Guinea kind, with short legs and hollow back," so it is evident that he was experimenting with new breeds. These Guinea swine were red in color, and it is said that the breed was brought to America from west Africa by slave traders. It was to these animals that Washington fed the by-products of his distillery.
In the slaughtering of animals he tried experiments as he did in so many other matters. In 1768 he killed a wether sheep which weighed one hundred three pounds gross. He found that it made sixty pounds of meat worth three pence per pound, five and a half of tallow at seven and a half pence, three of wool at fifteen pence, and the skin was worth one shilling and three pence, a total of £1.3.5. One object of such experiments was to ascertain whether it was more profitable to butcher animals or sell them on the hoof.
Washington also raised chickens, turkeys, swans, ducks, geese and various other birds and beasts. In 1788 Gouverneur Morris sent him two Chinese pigs and with them "a pair of Chinese geese, which are really the foolishest geese I ever beheld; for they choose all times for setting but in the spring, and one of them is even now [November] actually engaged in that business." Of some golden pheasants that had been brought from China the General said that before seeing the birds he had considered that pictures of them must be "only works of fancy, but now I find them to be only Portraits."
The fact is that his friends and admirers sent him so many feathered or furred creatures that toward the end of his life he was the proprietor of a considerable zoo.
Notwithstanding mismanagement by his employees and slaves, Washington accumulated much valuable domestic stock. In his will, made the year of his death, he lists the following: "1 Covering horse, 5 Cob. horses--4 Riding do--Six brood mares--20 working horses and mares,--2 Covering jacks & 3 young ones 10 she asses--42 working mules--15 younger ones. 329 head of horned cattle. 640 head of Sheep, and the large stock of hogs, the precise number unknown." He further states that his manager believes the stock worth seven thousand pounds, but he conservatively sets it down at fifteen thousand six hundred fifty-three dollars.