Tuesday first. Thermometer at 50 in the Morning—56 at Noon and 56 at Night.
A White frost and damp kind of a Morning, with but little Wind. Rather hazy all day, & towards evening lowering.
Rid to my Plantations at Dogue run and Muddy hole—at the former preparing, & Sowing Ground with Timothy seed.
Mrs. Fendall, Mrs. Lee & Miss Flora Lee, daughters of the former with Doctr. Skinner, came here to Dinner. And stayed all Night.
A Mr. Sacket from Tygers Valley on the Monongahela, and another person came here before Dinner and shewed me some propositions they had to make to Congress for a large territory of Country West of the Ohio, which I discouraged them from offering, as I was sure they never would be acceded to by that body.
Mrs. Lee was Matilda Lee, the wife of Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee. Flora Lee, Matilda’s sister, was the younger daughter of Elizabeth Steptoe Lee Fendall and her first husband, Philip Ludwell Lee. In 1788 Flora married her cousin Ludwell Lee (1760–1836).
Alexander Skinner (1743–1788) served as head of the military hospital at Suffolk in 1776. He later served as surgeon of the 1st Virginia Regiment and of Lee’s Legion.
mr. sacket: possibly Nathaniel Sackett of New York who had, during the Revolution, supplied GW with intelligence from behind the British lines. He laid before Congress on 22 Aug. 1785 a plan for making a “new state intended for the relief of all our distressed and neglected citizens.” For this purpose, Sackett wanted a grant of western lands bounded by the Ohio, Scioto, and Muskingum rivers and Lake Erie. Congress did not act on the memorial, and so Sackett again presented the plan with 340 supporting signatures on 28 Dec. Nothing ever came of the scheme (Sackett to GW, 23 May 1789, DNA:PCC, Item 78; Sackett to GW, 7 April 1777, GW to Sackett, 8 April 1777, NNgWHM; , 273; , 29:650, n.3, 788, n.1, 909). GW’s designation “from Tygers Valley” may have meant that Sackett had just come from a visit to Tygart Valley River.