III-A. Schedule A: Assignment of the Widow’s Dower, c.October 1759

III-A

Schedule A: Assignment of the Widow’s Dower

[c.October 1759]

All the Lands in King William County	2880 acres1
N.B. the Marsh adjoing this Land is to furnish the other parts of the Estate with Hay (they being at the Expence and trouble of getting it) and this Land to receive necessary Timber from the Estate upon the same Conditions.2
Bridge Quarter Land ⟨is⟩ supposd to be about 700 acres
Ship Landing Quarter and to make up the above 700 acres3	1000
A Mill in York County4
Dwelling House, Gardens, and Appurtenances in Williamsburg5
One third of the Lotts in James Town6

Negroes pr Appraisment
House Servants7
Breechy		£50	Beck	50
Doll		40	Jenny	45
Betty & Chd Austin		60	Sall	35	£ 280
Tradesmen
Morris		60	Scomberg	45
Michael		60	Mulatto Jack Job[be]r	60	£ 275
Tom		50
In New Kent
			⟨illegible⟩	15
Anthony £20 & wife Betty 25		£55	Phillis	50
Will		40	Duke	40
George		40	Scomberg	30
Doll		30	Prince	10	£ 367
Lucy	Dolls Childn	25			£ 922
Peter		20
Alce		12
In York
Bacchus		£40	Child Je[my] ⟨illegible⟩
Ben		50	Young B⟨illegible⟩8

Crispin		40	Frank & C[hild Judith	50]
Ned		50	Brunsw⟨ick⟩	[50]
Old Captain		15	Arling⟨ton⟩	[35]
Young Ned		50	Caesar	[25]
Jupiter		50	Geor⟨ge⟩	[30]
Cupid		50	Doll	[15]
Old Daphne		25	Lydia	2⟨6⟩
Moll		50	Suckey	25
Pegg		60	Hannah	25
Young Daphne		[25]			⟨illegible⟩
In K. William
George		2[0]	Sew	45
Stephen		6⟨illeg.⟩	Patt	50
David		60	Rachel	35
Guy		50	Crayger	25
Marlborough		45	Kitt a girl	35
Sam		40	George	35
Parros		65	Bi⟨l⟩	25
Hector		50	Lucy	20
Solomon		65	⟨Frank⟩	10
Will		45	Na⟨n⟩	15
Sarah		30	⟨illegible⟩	15	£ 845
In Hanover
Matt		45	John	20
Sam		45	Paul	23
Sarah		30	Patrick	15
Moll		35	Davy	12
Jenny		40	Alce	25
Morris		25	Jenny	8
Bob		25	Kitt	40	[£] 388

			In all		[£]29869
				Sign’d as before

	Stock10
	Cattle	⟨illegible⟩	Sheep	Hogs
At Claibornes K: William	161	35	78	195
Hanover	31	3		30
Bridge Quarter (York)	68	12
Ship Landing	32	4
To get from Rocahock	32
from the Eastn Shore			19
In all	324	54	97	225

N.B. The Estate to be chargd with £100 for 80 head of Neat Cattle delivd Short of one T⟨hir⟩d.11

D, ViLxW: Washington’s Account Book. To this important account GW devoted an entire preliminary page to the letter “(A),” presumably to identify this and succeeding documents as comprising Schedule A (see Editorial Note, 20 April 1759–5 Nov. 1761). A part of the manuscript page on which the dower slaves are listed is mutilated, and occasionally other words and numbers are illegible. When the name or assessed value of a slave is mutilated or illegible but can be deduced from the Combined County Inventory (doc. III-A–1), the one or the other, or both, has been inserted here in square brackets.

For a discussion of Martha Washington’s dower rights, see doc. II, especially notes 1–3. The names of all the slaves belonging to the Custis estate are listed in the various county inventories (doc. III-A–1). GW’s list of slaves, entitled “A List of Working Dower Negroes, where settled, & under whose care, 1760,” is Appendix F.

1. Called Claiborne’s, this plantation on the Pamunkey River came into Daniel Parke Custis’s possession in 1750 when he bought it from the estate of William Claiborne (d. 1746). John Roan was the overseer. Surveys of the plantation dated 14–18 April 1789 and 25–29 Mar. 1791 are in the Virginia State Library.

2. Nearly half of Claiborne’s was marshland, which furnished grazing for the large amount of livestock there.

3. Bridge Quarter (William Jackson, overseer) and Ship Landing Quarter (William Taylor, overseer), both on Queens Creek just north of Williamsburg, had a combined acreage of about one thousand acres. The estate steward, Joseph Valentine, lived on this tract.

4. The gristmill adjoined the Queens Creek plantations.

5. Custis House in Williamsburg was set in a four-acre tract on Francis Street, or the back street. It was here that John Custis lived before his death in 1749, tending his celebrated gardens and supervising his Queens Creek plantations.

6. The 3,880 acres in addition to town property that were assigned to GW as his wife’s share of the Custis land was out of a total of 17,779 acres in the Custis estate (see III-A–6).

7. See GW’s listing of house servants and tradesmen at Mount Vernon (Appendix C), which GW may have made before April 1759 and almost certainly made before the widow’s dower was assigned in October 1759.

8. Young B. is probably Brunswick, the child of Moll (see Papers, Colonial Series description begins W. W. Abbot et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series. 10 vols. Charlottesville, Va., 1983–95. description ends , 6:229).

9. This total represents one-third of the total value of all the slaves in the six counties. Slaves not assigned to Martha belonged to John Parke Custis. In the general account of the estate (doc. III-B), the appraised value of the slaves in each of the six counties where Daniel Parke Custis owned land is given.

10. Mrs. Washington was entitled to one-third of all livestock, the remainder going to her son. According to the draft copies of GW’s and John Parke Custis’s individual accounts (see doc. III-C–1, n.2), GW got, as his share of the Custis livestock, cattle valued at £421.13.10, hogs valued at £77.7.2, and sheep valued at £18.18.8. See also doc. III-C–2, n.2. Because in the delivery of cattle GW got eighty head of cattle fewer than he was entitled to, he made up his full third by debiting the account that he kept for John Parke Custis by £100 “To 80 head of Cattle omitted in your former Accot” (April 1763, ViLxW).

11. This refers to the cattle valued at £100 that GW transferred to John Parke Custis. See note 10.

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Source Project: Washington Papers
Title: III-A. Schedule A: Assignment of the Widow’s Dower, c.October 1759
Author: Commissioners to Settle the Estate
Date: October 1759

Reference

Cite as: “III-A. Schedule A: Assignment of the Widow’s Dower, c.October 1759,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-06-02-0164-0005. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 6, 4 September 1758 – 26 December 1760, ed. W. W. Abbot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988, pp. 217–220.]