From George Washington to the Fairfax County, Va., Court Justices, 28 September 1796
To the Fairfax County, Va., Court Justices
Mount Vernon1 Sept. 28. 1796
Gentlemen,
Having been named an Executor to the Will of the late Major George Augustine Washington, of Fairfax County, decd my avocations made it necessary for me to decline acting in that capacity, and his Widow, who was also named Executrix, took upon her the execution of the trust.2 Her decease makes it proper that some other person should be empowered to settle and manage the business of the Estate of the late Major Washington, as the causes which first led me to decline the execution still exist. I therefore request you will authorize Tobias Lear to act as Administrator to the Estate above mentioned.3 I am Gentlemen your most Obedt servt
Go: Washington
DfS, in Tobias Lear’s writing, owned (1984) by Mary A. Benjamin of Walter R. Benjamin Autographs, Inc.; LB, DLC:GW.
1. GW left Philadelphia on 19 Sept. (see , 343). He reached Mount Vernon between 25 Sept., the day he arrived at Georgetown, D.C., and 27 Sept., on which date Attorney General Charles Lee, writing from Alexandria, Va., informed Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr., that GW “is arrived safe and in excellent spirits at Mount Vernon” (CtHi: Wolcott Papers; see also Thomas Peter to GW, 19 Oct., and n.3 to that document).
2. George Augustine Washington’s will, dated 24 Jan. 1793, named both his wife Frances “Fanny” Bassett Washington and GW as its executors (see Fairfax County Will Book, F-1, 243–49, ViFfCh). Following George Augustine’s death in February 1793, GW expressed his inability to serve as the will’s executor or bear “responsibility in the management of” his nephew’s estate (GW to Burwell Bassett, Jr., 4 March 1793). The will was admitted to probate on 15 July 1793, when Fanny qualified as executrix.
3. Fanny died in March 1796. Her second husband, Tobias Lear, succeeded her as administrator of George Augustine’s estate; a note written at the bottom of the DfS indicates that Lear “Qualified as Admr on the 19th of Decr 1796” (see also Lear to GW, 25 March 1796).