To George Washington from Francis Deakins, 12 October 1796
From Francis Deakins
Montgomery County [Md.] 12th Octr 1796
Sir
I am Sorry I was from home when you called to See your Land1—Since my return I have wrote twice to Mr Jones—who now lives 16 miles from us—for A Statment of your Rents for 1792 93 & 94 the years he has to Account for—he has Just Sent me his Account—but Such as wants a further explanation which I have requested of him, & will forward it to you as Soon as it can be got.2
It is expected youl return through this County on your way to Philadelphia this Fall3—if so—I hope it may be Convenient for you to call on us, that more full Satisfaction may be gave you, respect’g the Quality of the Land. Rents & Arangments of the Tenants, which is now under the Superintendance of Mr Hezekiah Veatch—Mr Jones not hav’g recd any rent for last year I a few Month ago got Mr Veatch to undertake it—he has called on the Tenants who promise to Settle with him Soon for 1795.4 I am with due Respect Sir your Obedt Servt
Francis Deakins
ALS, DLC:GW.
Francis Deakins and his brother William Deakins, Jr., assisted GW with rent collection and other matters concerning the tenants on GW’s Montgomery County land.
GW replied to Deakins from Philadelphia on 13 Nov.: “Your favor of the 12th Ulto did not get to My hands until I had been arrived in this City, sometime, or it should have received an earlier acknowledgment.
“It would have been pleasing to me, as much on Acct of the esteem I feel for you, as for the satisfaction of viewing my land with more accuracy, to have found you ⟨at home.⟩ As the case happened, I took only a hasty & superficial view of parts of the ⟨Trac⟩t.
“I am very much obliged to you, for ⟨the⟩ trouble you have taken to obtain a settlement with Mr Jones for the Rents of the above Land: and as it is not in my way to do it, and besides, as I am entirely unacquainted with the circumstances attending the Tenants, in short as I know not what is due from either of them, or from Mr Jones himself, it would render me a very acceptable Service if you would be so obliging as to bring past transactions to a close; and advise me what had best be done in future, relatively to the Rents; the Tenan⟨ts⟩; and even the Land” (ALS [letterpress copy], DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW. Mutilated portions of the ALS [letterpress copy] are supplied in angle brackets from the LB).
1. Deakins refers to GW’s 519-acre tract at Woodstock Manor in Montgomery County, which GW acquired in April 1793 in payment for a debt owed him by the estate of John Mercer. The tract, comprising about half of Woodstock Manor, had been inherited by Sophia Sprigg Mercer, the wife of Mercer’s son, John Francis Mercer (see Deakins and Benjamin W. Jones to GW, 20 Dec. 1792, and n.1; see also GW to John Francis Mercer, 7 Aug. 1793, and n.1). GW must have first called on Deakins to view the land sometime between late September, when he arrived at Mount Vernon, and 12 October.
2. Neither the letters from Deakins to Benjamin W. Jones, GW’s rent collector on his Montgomery County land until 1795, nor Jones’s account have been identified. However, Deakins informed GW in February 1798 that he previously had sent Tobias Lear “A ful Statmt of B. Jones Accts with the Rects to whom paid” (Deakins to GW, 24 Feb. 1798, in 2:103). The only known transaction around this period pertaining to GW’s Woodstock Manor tract is found in GW’s account with Lear under 23 April 1797, which shows the receipt of $49.03 from an “Edwd Jones … on acct of Rents due me for my Land on Woodstock Manor” (, 5).
3. GW left Mount Vernon on 25 Oct. and reached Philadelphia on 31 October.
4. Hezekiah Veatch (Veach, Veitch) (c.1745–1811) had served as a militia officer during the Revolutionary War. A surveyor, Veatch succeeded Jones in 1795 or 1796 as GW’s rent collector on the Woodstock Manor tract. He represented Montgomery County in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1800 to 1803 and again from 1808 to 1809.
Veatch made efforts to collect rent on the Woodstock Manor tract until 1799 (see Priscilla Beale to GW, 2 April 1797, and the source note to that document, in 1:59–60; see also Deakins to GW, 12 June 1799, in 4:115–16). At the time that GW took over the Woodstock Manor tract in 1794, his tenants were Priscilla Beale, John Warring, and Mrs. Patrick McDaid. Beale and Warring were the only remaining tenants on the tract by 1799 (see Deakins to GW, 12 June 1794, and n.1 to that document).