10871Editorial Note (Washington Papers)
The following diary is GW’s Philadelphia journal (Regents’ No. 34), a rough diary (from 11 May through 15 Nov. 1787) from which GW drew information for his more complete diary entries for those dates which appear earlier in this volume (see entry for 8 May 1787 ).
10872Editorial Note (Washington Papers)
In the two years between his return from Barbados and the outbreak of the French and Indian War, GW steadily advanced his position in the Virginia community. He already owned some two thousand acres of land in the Shenandoah Valley, with additional holdings at Ferry Farm and Deep Run. His half brother Lawrence’s death in July 1752 brought expectations of more property. Under the terms of...
10873Editorial Note (Washington Papers)
E ditorial note . From the first days of his presidency, GW was determined “to visit every part of the United States” during his term of office if “health and other circumstances would admit of it” ( GW to Edward Rutledge, 16 Jan. 1791 , ScCMu ). A month after GW returned from his New England tour, Gov. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina wrote him suggesting a tour of the southern states (14...
10874Editorial Note (Washington Papers)
In the weeks after GW’s return from his journey to the French commandant, reports of further French infiltration into the Ohio Valley continued to reach Williamsburg and Gov. Robert Dinwiddie made preparations to resist. He appealed to other colonial governors for aid in repelling the French. DINWIDDIE R. Alonzo Brock, ed. The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of the...
10875Editorial Note (Washington Papers)
E ditorial N ote . GW’s brief journal for 30 Sept.—20 Oct. 1794 records his journey from Philadelphia to western Pennsylvania with the militia raised to suppress the so-called Whiskey Insurrection that erupted in the fall of 1794 in the Pennsylvania counties of Westmoreland, Fayette, Washington, and Allegheny. The Excise Act, passed by Congress 3 Mar. 1791, had imposed substantial duties on...
10876Editorial Note (Washington Papers)
E ditorial note . In Feb. 1795 GW resumed making notations on the calendar pages of his almanacs and continued to do so until the end of 1798. In some cases the notations are clear. For example, in Jan. 1797, he temporarily kept some daily temperature readings on that month’s calendar, and during 1795 and 1796 he occasionally recorded stops on his journeys between Mount Vernon and...
10877Editorial Note (Washington Papers)
GW’s older half brother Lawrence had been in poor health during the decade following the British assault upon Spanish bases in the Caribbean, an encounter commonly termed the War of Jenkins’ Ear. He had led a Virginia military company in the 1741 attack on Cartagena, becoming so fond of Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, naval commander of the expedition, that he later named his own home Mount...
10878The Washingtons in Barbados (Washington Papers)
The arrival at Bridgetown, on Carlisle Bay, is not well documented because pages are missing from the diary at this point. There are no collateral data such as newspaper listings of shipping arrivals, for not a single copy of the Barbados Gazette for 1751 is known to exist. The first two diary entries after the Washingtons disembarked are supplied by Jared Sparks, who obviously saw them while...