Agreement with Lewis Lemart, 10 April 1784
Agreement with Lewis Lemart
[Mount Vernon, 10 April 1784]
I hereby empower Mr Lewis Lemart to receive such Rents as are due to me upon the Land tract on which he himself lives, and which lyes partly in the County of Fauquier and partly in Loudoun.11 give him the same powers with respect to my other Tract on Goose Creek, near Mr Robert Ashby’s—and I authorize him to make distress for the annual or Transfer Rents which are reserved to me by the Leases.2 and this he is in a more especial manner to do from such persons as are about to remove from off the Land—He will see by the Lease (for I have it not ⟨in⟩ My power at this moment, to make out the Accts for each Man individually⟨)⟩ for many years they have been subjec⟨t⟩ to the payment of Rent, and he will make no allowances save such as appear by receipts from myself, Mr Lund Washington or any public Officer, by way of deduction without further authority from me. He is not to detain any money which he receives under this power, in his hands longer than can well be avoided; but shall transmit the same to me with an Acct of the sums, from whom, and when received as soon as possible.
For his trouble in all these acts and doings, and in full compensation for all his expences, I hereby agree to allow him five prCent all the monies which he shall actually pay into my hands, or to any other person by my order—this power to remain in force till revoked by me. Given under my hand at Mount Vernon the 10th day of April 1784
Go: Washington
ADS, owned (1977) by Mrs. Robb A. Hake, Schenectady, New York.
Lewis Lemart served only briefly as GW’s agent, for he died in the spring of 1785 (GW to Battaile Muse, 18 Sept. 1785). Lemart began in December 1772 leasing for £7 per annum 150 acres of the tract called Ashby’s Bent, the 2,682 acres that GW bought from the estate of George Carter in November 1767 (see , 2:133, 3:239). It was located on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.
1. After buying the Ashby’s Bent tract, GW divided it into lots of 100 to 200 acres which he leased to tenants for periods ranging from ten years to three lives. See , 4:257, and Cash Accounts, November 1767, in , folio 255.
2. GW acquired a 600–acre tract in Fauquier County on Goose Creek, usually referred to as the Chattins Run tract, from Bryan Fairfax in August 1772. When looking over the tract in May 1772, GW stayed at Yew Hill, the house of Robert Ashby (c.1707–1792) about eight miles south of Ashby’s Gap on the road to Winchester, Virginia. In his cash accounts for April 1784, GW enters, on 10 April, £20, “To Edwd Phillips reed from him by Lewis Lamart for Rent of Lott No. 3 in Fauquier County leas’d Dulan,” and £3, “To Henry Shaffar by Lewis Lamart in part of Rent for the Lott on which Michl Henry Liv’d”( , 197).