George Washington Papers
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[Diary entry: 15 December 1785]

Thursday 15th. Thermometer at 40 in the Morng. 45 at Noon and [ ] at Night.

Moderate & clear all the fore part of the day with the Wind at So. East, but not fresh. In the Afternoon it began to lower—at Dusk turned very cloudy and in the Night set in to a constant rain.

Mr. Shaw went up to Alexandria, after dinner, to a Ball I presume. And in the Evening Joseph Winzor & Willm. Kirchwall 2 of my tenants from Frederick came in & stayed all Night.

tenants from FREDERICK description begins Millard Milburn Rice. New Facts and Old Families: From the Records of Frederick County, Maryland. Redwood City, Calif., 1976. description ends : GW had bought two lots totaling about 570 acres at George Mercer’s 1774 sale of a 6,500–acre tract in Frederick County. The land, now in Clarke County, was on the Shenandoah River near the present town of Berryville. Late in 1784 Joseph Windsor of Maryland bargained with Edward Snickers, who was acting as GW’s agent in the matter, for a 14–year lease on 172 acres of the land. Although GW preferred a shorter lease, he honored Snickers’s agreement with Windsor for a lease commencing 1 Jan. 1785 and ending 31 Dec. 1798, at a rent of £17 4s. per year. William Kirchwall’s (Kercheval) lease for 172 acres was for 13 years, commencing 1 Jan. 1786 and ending 31 Dec. 1798 at a rental of £17 6s. per year. Both men had their rent increased slightly after the 1789 resurvey, when their farms were discovered to total 174½ acres each (CHAPPELEAR [3] description begins Curtis Chappelear. “Early Landowners in the Benjamin Harrison and Robert Carter Nicholas Tracts.” Proceedings of the Clarke County Historical Association 7 (1947): 33–48. description ends , 33–36; GW to Battaile Muse, 28 July 1785, DLC:GW; GW’s rental accounts, 1788–90 and 1791, ViMtvL).

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