Thursday Feby. 14th. Mr. Clifton came here and we conditiond for his Land viz., if he is not bound by some prior engagement. I am to have all his Land in the Neck (500 Acres about his house excepted) and the Land commonly calld Brents for 1600 £ Curry. He getting Messrs. Digges &ca. to join in making me a good & less Colo. Carlyle will let me have his Land adjoining Brents at half a Pistole an Acre.
Visited my Quarters and saw a plant patch burnt at the Mill.
Brought home 4003 lbs. of Hay from Mr. Digges’s.
The Southerly wind still continued to blow fresh till abt. 9 Oclock at Night and then it suddenly changed to No. Et. Clouded up, and threatned Rain every moment.
William Clifton (c.1704-c.1770) was descended from an English Roman Catholic family, several branches of which began leaving England for Maryland and Virginia in the mid-seventeenth century. William left England in the early eighteenth century and settled in Truro Parish, where he was living in 1739 when he bought 500 acres of the Neck land from his brother-in-law George Brent (d. 1778) of Stafford County. By 1760 Clifton’s land was a plantation of about 1,806 acres in Clifton’s Neck, which lay on the east side of Little Hunting Creek, facing the Potomac River, across which Clifton ran a ferry often used by GW.
brents: George Brent’s remaining land in the Neck, 238 acres lying between Little Hunting Creek and Clifton’s plantation.
GW paid William Digges £14 for hay on 5 June 1760 (, folio 95).