George Washington Papers
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[Diary entry: 10 January 1760]

Thursday Jany. 10th. Accompanied Mrs. Bassett in a Visit to Belvoir.

She this day determind on setting of for Port Royal on Saturday.

Colo. West wrote me word that he had engag’d his Pork.

Killd the Beeves that Jack brought down two of which were tolerable good.

Belvoir, located on a bluff overlooking the Potomac on the next “neck” downriver from Mount Vernon, was the first seat of the Fairfax family of Virginia, built around 1741 by William Fairfax (1691–1757), cousin and agent of Thomas, Lord Fairfax. GW first visited there while in his early teens, during stays with his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon. It was then that the long friendship began between GW and William Fairfax’s son George William. From 1757 to 1773, when Belvoir was the permanent home of George William and Sarah Cary Fairfax, the Washingtons often visited it. Years later, in reflecting to George William on his days at Belvoir, GW observed that “the happiest days of my life had been spent there” (27 Feb. 1785, DLC:GW). For the house itself, see WATERMAN description begins Thomas Tileston Waterman. The Mansions of Virginia, 1706–1776. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1946. description ends , 329–34.

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