1. For GW’s purchase of land from Simon Pearson, see Cash Accounts, 1762, n.13. In his account with Pearson, GW has an entry, dated 16 Feb. 1763, of £60: “To Money left in my hands as security agt his Wife’s claim of Dower—to be paid whenever she can be prevailed upon to relinquish her Right to the said Land or at her Death shoud this happen before his—(pr Bond given him).” On the other side of the ledger, GW has an undated note, “The Contra Sum of £60 has been paid to Pearson—his wife having relinquishd her Right of Dower in the Land” (General Ledger A description begins General Ledger A, 1750–1772. Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 5, Financial Papers. description ends , folio 132). On 18 June 1765 Simon and Milkey Trammell Pearson gave GW a deed of release of her dower (Fairfax County Order Book [1765–66], 8). Simon Pearson and his wife Milkey were living apart and continued to do so.

2. The old Fairfax County courthouse, built in 1742, was on the road from Hunting Creek to Vestal’s (Keyes’s) Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was about eighteen miles from Alexandria and twelve miles east of Coleman’s ordinary on Sugar Land Run. The courthouse was moved to Alexandria in 1755.

3. Richard Stephenson (died c.1765) left provision in his will for a slave “to Tend and Nurse” his invalid daughter Eleanor (Frederick County Will Book 3 [1761–70], 288–89).

4. In the 1760s GW frequently bought tickets for lotteries such as this one in which a merchant or fellow planter resorted to a lottery to liquidate his estate, usually because of heavy indebtedness. Joseph Watson, a merchant in Alexandria “intending for England as soon as he can possibly accomplish it,” advertised in the Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), on 1 April 1762 his “LOTTERY, For the disposing of Effects to the full Value of Two Thousand Pounds.” The “Effects” included: 8 tracts of land on the South Branch of the Potomac and Patterson’s Creek, ranging in size from 750 acres to 220 acres and in value from £250 to £55; “A very neat Assortment of Dry Goods”; “A large and very valuable Collection of Books, in History, Divinity, Natural Philosophy, Commerce, and on almost every Art and Science”; “A great Variety of the latest done Maps”; “A considerable Collection of Perspective Views of the most magnificent public and private Edifices, Bridges, Monuments, and Ruins, in Rome, Venice, France, England, and China”; and “A Collection of the genteelest Pictures, done by Hogarth, and other masterly Hands. His Election Prints are amongst them.” Two thousand tickets at twenty shillings each were to be sold at Alexandria, Falmouth, Fredericksburg, Port Royal, Norfolk, Williamsburg, Dumfries, Colchester, and Winchester, in Virginia, and at Upper Marlboro, Chaptico, Port Tobacco, Piscataway, and Annapolis in Maryland. There would be 584 prizes at the drawing, scheduled for 10 June in Alexandria but successively delayed until 10 Nov. (Maryland Gazette [Annapolis], 1 July, 30 Sept., 23 Dec. 1762).

5. John Semple (1727–1773), a merchant in Port Tobacco, Md., took over John Ballendine’s iron furnace on Occoquan Creek, Prince William County, in 1763.