Thursday 30th. The business which brot. me to George town being finished & the Comrs. instructed with respect to the mode of carrying the plan into effect—I set off this morning a little after 4 oclock in the prosecution of my journey towards Philadelphia; and being desirous of seeing the nature of the Country North of Georgetown, and along the upper road, I resolved to pass through Frederick town 1 in Maryland & York & Lancaster in Pennsylvania & accordingly.
Breakfasted at a small village called Williamsburgh in which stands the Ct. House of Montgomerie County 14 M. from George Town. Dined at one Peters’s tavern 20 2 miles further and arrived at Frederick town about Sun down—the whole 3 distance 43 miles.
The road by wch. I passed 4 is rather hilly, but the lands are good, and well timbered. From Monocasy to F. T. 4 Miles they are very rich & fine. 5 The Country is thicker 6 settled and the farm Houses of a better kind 7 than I expected to find. This is 8 well calculated for small grain of wch. a good deal is now 9 on the grd. but thin—owing as the farmers think 10 to the extreme drought of the Spring 11 though more, it appeared to me, to the frosts & want of Snow to cover their fds. during the Winter.
Williamsburg (now Rockville), Md., was established in 1784 but had been the site of the Montgomery County courthouse since 1777. Peter’s tavern was on Bennett Run near present-day Urbana, Md. Its proprietor may have been Enoch or Richard Peter of Frederick County, Md. (, map; , 68, 72).
GW arrived in Frederick at 7:25 P.M. “So sudden and unexpected was the visit of this amiable and illustrious character,” declared a newspaper account, “as to leave it entirely out of the power of the citizens to make the necessary preparations for his reception. On notice being given of his arrival, the bells of the Lutheran and Calvinist churches were rung—fifteen rounds from Cannon-Hill were discharged—and a band of music serenaded him in the evening. He was politely invited to spend the succeeding day in town; but answered (as an apology for not accepting the invitation), that public business obliged him to hasten to Philadelphia” (The Mail, or Claypoole’s Daily Adv. [Philadelphia], 9 July 1791, , 224–25). GW is said to have lodged at Brother’s tavern (, 4:201, n.3); Henry Brother was a tavernkeeper in Frederick in the 1790s (, 1:486–87).
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