[Pelham]

Douglas Southall Freeman is one of those authors who has been on my must read list for years. But I did get around to Shelby Foote.

Young George wasn’t a surveyor for nothing. The Fairfax family owned Belvoir next Mount Vernon and were the largest landowners in Virginia. Lawrence Washington married Anne Fairfax and young half-brother George was included as part of the greater Fairfax clan, which probably set him on the road to being a successful land speculator.

There’s an interesting article here, “How Did Washington Make His Millions?”:

https://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/winter13/washington.cfm

[major-pelham]

Thanks - good article. I’d always believed John Hancock was the acknowledged richest American of the era.