d "amazingly cheap." Washington's share cost him,
including interest, eighteen hundred and seventy-five pounds, and in 1793
two-thirds of the land had been sold for three thousand four hundred
pounds, and in his inventory of 1799 Washington valued what he still held
of the property at six thousand dollars.

In 1790, having inside information that the capital was to be removed from
New York to Philadelphia, Washington tried to purchase a farm near that
city, foreseeing a speedy rise in value. In this apparently he did not
succeed. Later he purchased lots in the new Federal city, and built houses
on two of them. He also had town lots in Williamsburg, Alexandria,
Winchester, and Bath. In addition to all this property there were many
smaller holdings. Much was sold or traded, yet when he died, besides his
wife's real estate and the Mount Vernon property, he possessed fifty-one
thousand three hundred and ninety-five acres, exclusive of town property.
A contemporary said "that General Washington is, perhaps, the greatest
landholder in America."

All these lands, except Mount Vernon, were, so far as possible, rented,
but the net income was not large. Rent agents were employed to look after
the tenants, but low rents, war, paper money, a shifting population, and
Washington's dislike of lawsuits all tended to reduce the receipts, and
the landlord did not get simple interest on his investments. Thus, in 1799
he complains of slow payments from tenants in Washington and Lafayette
Counties (Pennsylvania). Instead of an expected six thousand dollars, due
June 1, but seventeen hundred dollars were received.

Income, however, had not been his object in loading himself with such a
vast property, as Washington believed that he was certain to become
rich. "For proof of" the rise of land, he wrote in 1767, "only look to
Frederick, [county] and see what fortunes were made by the ... first
taking up of those lands. Nay, how the greatest estates we have in this
colony were made. Was it not by taking up and purchasing at very low rates
the rich back lands, which were thought nothing of in those days, but are
now the most valuable land we possess?"

In this he was correct, but in the mean time he was more or less
land-poor. To a friend in 1763 he wrote that the stocking and repairing of
his plantations "and other matters ... swallowed up before I well knew
where I was, all the moneys I got by marriage, nay more, brought me in
debt" In 1775,