George Washington Papers

[Diary entry: 17 April 1775]

17. Colo. Mason & myself went up to Alexa. to a Committee & to a New choice of Delegates. I returnd at Night.

This meeting was called in Alexandria for election of delegates to the Virginia Convention from Fairfax County. GW and Charles Broadwater were again elected. By early May GW and the other Virginia delegates to the Second Continental Congress, all of whom were also Virginia Convention delegates, had advised their Virginia constituents to replace them in the convention “during their necessary Absence” at the Congress in Philadelphia (Va. Gaz., D&H, 13 May 1775). On 12 July a “meeting of the freeholders” of Fairfax County chose George Mason to replace GW in the Third Virginia Convention which convened in Richmond five days later (George Mason to William Ramsay, 11 July 1775; MASON [2] description begins Robert A. Rutland, ed. The Papers of George Mason, 1725–1792. 3 vols. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970. description ends , 1:239). GW was the only one of the Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress who had not resumed his seat in the Third Virginia Convention by mid-August (STANARD [1] description begins William G. and Mary Newton Stanard, comps. The Colonial Virginia Register. A List of Governors, Councillors and Other Higher Officials . . .. 1902. Reprint. Baltimore, 1965. description ends , 203–5).

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