From George Washington to George Gilpin, 16 October 1785
To George Gilpin
Mount Vernon Octr 16th 85.
Dear Sir,
I think your proposition is a very good one—If any question should come before the Board on wch you have not already given your opinion, it may as well be decided at the Falls as elsewhere; your going thither therefore, in the first instance, will certainly expedite the business which occasions (at least in part) the meeting. Indeed it wd seem now (for I do not recollect the cause which induced it) that the meeting at George Town, first, as we are to proceed to the Great Falls afterwards and the Maryland Gentlemen are, in a manner, to pass by them, and then to return to them, is altogether nugatory; for the business of the meeting might as well have been done wholly at that place as partly at both.1 I am Dear Sir Yr Most Obedt Servt
Go: Washington
ALS, PHi: Gilpin Correspondence.
1. As had been agreed upon, the directors of the Potowmack Company met the next day at Georgetown, Md., “Where, having all assembled, we proceeded towards the Great Falls. . . . Colo. Gilpin—I should have said before—had proceeded on to prepare the way for levelling &ca. at that place, in the morning” ( , 4:207).