Mount Vernon, formerly known as Little Hunting Creek, is the former plantation of American Founding Father, Continental Army commander-in-chief, and President George Washington, located near Alexandria in Fairfax County, Virginia. The Washington family acquired the land in 1674 and named it the "Little Hunting Creek Plantation", and the mansion was built from 1734 into the 1770s. Lawrence Washington inherited the estate from his father Augustine Washington in 1743, and he later renamed it for Admiral Edward Vernon, his commanding officer during the War of Jenkins' Ear; its new name, "Mount Vernon", would last for centuries. On Lawrence's death in 1752, the plantation was inherited by his widow Anne Fairfax Washington Lee, who later married into the Lee family and moved out. In 1754, Lawrence's younger half-brother George Washington persuaded William Fairfax, the father of his best friend George William Fairfax, to lease the plantation to him, and he became its sole owner on Anne's death in 1761. Washington added lands to the estate into the 1780s, and, by 1766, he replaced its tobacco cultivation with wheat production to ensure that the soil was not depleted. On Washington's death in 1799, he freed the 123 individuals he had enslaved, but his widow Martha Washington willed the remaining 153 slaves to her own Custis family. The Washingtons were buried in a small family crypt before being reinterred in a new, larger tomb in 1831, as Washington had willed that he and Martha be relocated from the increasingly decrepit vault he had build upon first inheriting the estate. George Washington's nephew Bushrod Washington inherited the plantation in 1802, and it passed down to John Augustine Washington II in 1829 and John Augustine Washington III in 1855. In 1858, John Augustine III sold the mansion - which was falling into a state of disrepair - to Ann Pamela Cunningham's Mount Vernon Ladies' Association for $200,000 ($6.3 million in 2020), ending the Washington family's ownership of Mount Vernon. Starting in 1878, Potomac River steamboats began to carry tourists to Mount Vernon, and a memorial parkway opened in 1932 to replace a railroad. A replica of Washington's distillery at nearby Dogue Run Farm was built in 2007. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association maintained private ownership of the 500-acre property, and it became a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
Gallery[]
Main house[]
Plantation buildings[]
Pioneer farm[]
Monuments and memorials[]
Museum[]
Revolutionary War Weekend[]
Redcoats[]
Hessians[]
Patriots[]
