tea from China and India,
coffee from Brazil, oil and condiments from Spain, sugar and fruits from
the West Indies, Alexandrians fared sumptuously.

By 1770 Alexandria's tobacco trade had largely given way to wheat, and
the local shipping merchants were finding their supplies farther and
farther west in the valley of the Shenandoah. George Washington was one
of the first planters on the upper Potomac to change his money crop from
tobacco to wheat. He enlarged his mill and took advantage of the latest
mechanical advances of his time. However successful he became as a wheat
farmer, he never escaped the trials and grief caused by those middlemen,
his agents. In 1767 he wrote a nine-page letter roundly berating Carlyle
and Adam for the destruction of his bags and for delay in paying him for
his wheat.

A list of merchants and factors doing business in Alexandria in 1775
emphasizes the transition from tobacco to wheat. Of twenty-one firms
enumerated, fourteen were purchasers of wheat:

1. Hooe and Harrison--_wheat_ purchasers.
2. Steward and Hubard--_wheat_ purchasers.
3. Fitzgerald and Reis--_wheat_ purchasers.
4. Harper and Hartshorne--_wheat_ purchasers.
5. John Allison--_wheat_ purchaser.
6. William Sadler--_wheat_ purchaser.
7. Robert Adam and Co.--_wheat_ purchasers.
8. Henby and Calder--_wheat_ purchasers.
9. William Hayburne--_wheat_ purchaser.
10. James Kirk--_wheat_ purchaser.
11. George Gilpin--_wheat_ purchaser, inspector of flour.
12. Thomas Kilpatrick--_wheat_ purchaser, inspector of flour.
13. McCawlay and Mayes--import British goods which they sell
wholesale.
14. William Wilson--seller of British goods who buys tobacco.
15. John Locke--seller of British goods who buys tobacco.
16. John Muir--seller of British goods who buys tobacco.
17. Brown and Finley--they import goods from Philadelphia and
purchase tobacco and _wheat_.
18. Josiah Watson--he imports goods from Philadelphia and purchases
tobacco and _wheat_.
19. Robert Dove and Co.--distillers.
20. Carlyle and Dalton--import Rum and Sugar.
21. Andrew Wales--brewer.[42]

It is said that Virginia wheat was the best to be procured and all
Europe was a market for Alexandria flour. It was not long before the
great wagons that had formerly carried wheat from Tidewater to
Philadelphia and the Delaware found the Potomac port