GW went to town on committee business: “at a meeting of the committee for Fairfax County, in the town of Alexandria, on Monday the 19th day of December, 1774, Messieurs [John] Fitzgerald and [Valentine] Peers, informed the committee that the ship Hope . . . had arrived in this colony . . . from Belfast, with sundry packages of Irish linen, amounting . . . to £1101 4s. 8d. sterling, their property, and requesting that the same should be sold, agreeable to the 10th article in the continental association . . . ordered, that the said goods be sold by the package, to the highest bidder . . . and if any profit shall arise from such sale, that [it be used] for relieving and employing such of the poor inhabitants of the town of Boston as are sufferers by the Boston port bill, subject to the direction of the committee for the said county of Fairfax” (Va. Gaz., Pi, 29 Dec. 1774).

While in Alexandria, GW also met with several other trustees of John Ballendine’s Potomac navigation project and authorized Ballendine to hire 50 slaves as laborers (Va. Gaz., D, 7 Jan. 1775).