George Washington Papers

[Diary entry: 13 May 1774]

13. At Fredg. all day. Dined at Colo. Lewis’s & spent the Evening at Weedens.

On 11 April 1774 GW wrote to Dr. Hugh Mercer: “I will bring down my title papers [for the Ferry Farm] & leave them with you, as I go to the Assembly” (DLC:GW). The sale by GW of his boyhood home to Hugh Mercer was concluded, probably on this day; but within a year the Revolution broke out, and in Jan. 1776 Mercer was appointed brigadier general in the Continental Army. He was with GW’s army from the New York campaign in 1776 to the Battle of Princeton, where he was mortally wounded. Mercer’s brother-in-law George Weedon, as executor of the estate, offered to pay GW in the current (1778) much-inflated currency. “After animadverting a little upon the subject,” GW authorized Lund Washington to accept the payment (GW to Lund Washington, 17 Aug. 1779, DLC:GW).

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