From George Washington to William Pearce, 14 November 1796
To William Pearce
Philadelphia 14th Novr 1796.
Mr Pearce,
Your letter of the 6th was received (with the Reports) on Saturday;1 but I do not clearly understand by it, whether James Wilkes reembarked with, or without a bed, or is yet at Mount Vernon. If the latter, he had better (if his health is sufficiently restored) offer himself to Mr Law as A Coachman;2 for before he could get here, and be well settled, I shall be making my arrangements to return to Virginia; when I shall have no further occasion for hired Servants, unless to carry me there.
I am extremely sorry that Mr Alexr Smith will not be able to take up his note when it becomes due. I wish that may be the worst of it, notwithstanding the Language he makes his Book of Accounts speak.3 However dangerous and inconvenient it is to me, to lye out of the money (for the reasons which were given to you in my last letter or Memorandum)4—I have informed him in a note of this date, that I should direct you to make an estimate of the several Sums which were wanting to pay of every farthing that is due from me, before you go (which is my earnest desire) and that if he will give you unequivocal surety of paying you the aggregate amount of them, on, or before the 24th day of December, I would (however inconvenient it was to me) wait until the first day of March next for the balance; Provided he would give indubitable security for the payment of both sums at the times above mentioned, with interest thereon, from the time his note becomes due.5
You will perceive I lay a stress upon the goodness of the Security, & the surety of payments—I do it, because I know speculators (without meaning to apply the term to Mr Smith, whose pursuits I am unacquainted with) may be men one day, and mice the next. If he is a responsible character he can find no difficulty in giving the Security required. If he is not, the sooner I take effectual means to secure the debt, the less risk I run of loosing it.
I hope Richmond was made an example of, for the Robbery he committed on Wilkes Saddle bags.6 I wish he may not have been put upon it by his father (although I never had any suspicion of the honesty of the latter) for the purpose perhaps of a journey together. This will make a watch, without its being suspected by, or intimated to them, necessary; nor wd I have these suspicions communicated to any other lest it should produce more harm than good.7
The drought here, is also very severe.8 It is unlucky that I cannot get my Wheat ground into flour, on acct of the sale of it, and the fly also;9 but the latter, I hope, is not very bad, or you would have mentioned it, that I might decide whether to await the operation of the Mill, or sell the grain unground, if it should appear to be in much danger.
Did you get the Quarter at River farm removed without much difficulty, or injury? and is it now, or soon will be, comfortable to its inhabitants?10 Let that at Muddy hole be made tight, if by patch work only, as I am unwilling the people should suffer.
As I wish to have venitian blinds for all the Windows in the West front of the Mansion house—on the out side—I request you will give me the dimensions of the window frames, above & below; and though Neal is not a competentjudge of the manner of hanging them, or precisely where the hooks should be drove, on which the venitian Shutters are to be hung—yet understanding that these hooks are to go as far back as there is solid wood to drive them into (the shutters being double, & coming together as they do at the front or West door.) he cannot be much at a loss to give the width, & height, of those in the first and second stories; allowing them to cover as much of the frame on both sides, and at top, as the mouldings will permit: into which the hooks, on which the shutters hang, might be drove, if there be solid wood to receive them (for this is all important, otherwise the hooks would get loose, & be a constant plague); the shutters, or blinds would, in that case, go from moulding to moulding at the sides and at top. The shutters which are now to the lower Windows will be to be taken away altogether, as two sets cannot be on the outside, and there is no place for them within.11 I wish you well and am Your friend
Go: Washington
P.S. If Mr Smith cannot give unquestionable Personal security and has real property as (unincumbered &) adequate thereto, you had better have me secured that way, & in time. I pay but little regard to fair promises; as I know that distressing times are coming upon the Merchts for their Speculatn.12
ALS, ViMtvL.
1. The previous Saturday was 12 November. Neither Pearce’s letter to GW of 6 Nov., nor the enclosed reports, have been found. Farm reports dated 16–22 Oct. are among GW’s papers in DLC:GW, but GW likely already perused them during his stay at Mount Vernon from late September to 25 October.
2. James Wilkes, a hired servant in the presidential household who had been at Mount Vernon during GW’s recent visit there, returned to Philadelphia on the ship that conveyed GW’s baggage (see GW to Pearce, 26 Oct., and notes 1 and 2 to that document; see also Pearce to GW, 17 Nov.). A payment of $22.25 for the “passage of James Wilkes and freight of Sundries from Mt Vernon” was recorded in GW’s for 1 December.
“Mr Law” refers to Thomas Law, who in March 1796 married Martha Washington’s granddaughter Elizabeth Parke Custis.
3. GW refers to Alexandria, Va., merchant Alexander Smith’s letter to him of 9 November. For Smith’s debt to GW for flour he purchased from Mount Vernon, see Smith to GW, 4 October. Smith’s account book has not been found.
5. See GW to Smith, this date.
6. For the reimbursement provided Wilkes for his property that had been stolen by Richmond, a dower slave and son of GW’s cook Herculas (Hercules), see GW to Pearce, 27 Nov., and n.4 to that document.
7. GW’s fear of an attempted escape by Richmond and Herculas became a reality when the latter ran away in February 1797 (see GW to Tobias Lear, 10 March 1797, and n.2 to that document, in 1:27–28).
8. Elizabeth Drinker of Philadelphia described the recent drought in her diary for 9 Nov. 1796: “the sun appears like a red ball—the rays entirely obscured … a signe of continued dry weather I believe, which has been the case for many weeks past.” Drinker wrote in her diary for 15 Nov. that the rain that fell that day around noon was “much wanted” (, 2:859–60). For the severe drought that also affected Virginia at the time, see Pearce to GW, 13 Nov., and n.11 to that document.
9. The larvae of the Hessian fly had devastated wheat crops in the region for years (see Thomas Jefferson to GW, 15 May 1791, and n.3 to that document; see also GW to Anthony Whitting, 19 May 1793).
10. For recent work on the “Quarter,” or slave dwellings, at the Mount Vernon farms, see Pearce to GW, 13 Nov., and n.6 to that document.
11. For previous directives about the placement of window shutters on the Mount Vernon mansion house’s west, or inland, side, see GW to Pearce, 7 Feb. 1796. Bartholomew Dandridge, Jr., recorded a purchase of “Venetian blinds” on 15 Feb. 1797 (). These may have been among the green “blinds,” or shutters, that Tobias Lear shipped to Mount Vernon on GW’s behalf in March 1797 (see Lear to GW, 20 March 1797, and n.1 to that document, in 1:37–38).
Pearce provided window measurements for the Mount Vernon mansion house in an undated memorandum docketed “The Sizes of the windows &c.” In that document, likely composed before Dandridge’s 1797 purchase of shutters, Pearce wrote the heading “The Size of the windows In west S. the Mansion House.” He then recorded the measurements for the six first-story windows on the west side of the mansion. These measured 6 feet 7½ inches high “By 3 feet ½ Inch wide all one Size.” The size of the nine second-story windows on the same side of the house varied in height and width, but they all measured between 3 feet 10 inches and 4 feet 3½ inches high, with the width ranging from just over 2 feet to 3 feet 11 inches. The frame size of the “windows west Side of the Cellar” measured over 2 feet “from Inside to Inside wide and one foot one Inch high” (ViMtvL). In another undated memo in GW’s writing, probably composed at a later time, GW also gave measurements for the “Venetian window in the New room,” which was “13 f. 6 I:” from “the top of the arch to the Chair board.” GW added: “The whole width of the wood part, or frame of the window, is 7. f.—and from the outer edge to the centre of each pillar 3 f 8 I.” (AD [photocopy], ViMtvL). For more on the measurements for cellar windows, see GW to Pearce, 20 Nov., and n.11.
GW’s instructions about the shutters undoubtedly were made in anticipation of large-scale renovations to the mansion (see Pearce to GW, 13 Nov., and n.10 to that document; see also , 214–15).
12. Pearce replied to GW on 17 November.