An indentured bricklayer from Ireland, Michael Tracy began working at Mount Vernon from 1768 to 1769. Washington purchased Tracy's indenture from a Mr. Piper in July of 1768 for eighteen pounds, four shillings. Tracy appeared on the Mount Vernon tithables list in June of 1769.1 However, Washington appears to have sold Tracy's indenture by July of 1770.
Andrew Wales, a brewer in Alexandria placed an advertisement searching for a "Michael Tracey." He described him as a runaway indentured servant who was twenty-five years old, five feet, seven or eight inches tall, with a fair but freckled complexion, and marred by smallpox scars. In the advertisement he was detailed as having worn "his own hair, a little curled." Wales also shared information about Tracy's skills as a bricklayer should he be located in an attempt to find work outside of his contracted indenture. He remarked that he was "forward in speech, though but little of the dialect."2
Notes:
1. The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, Vol. 8, 220.
2. Mesick, Cohen & Waite, "Building Trades," Mount Vernon: Historic Structure Report (Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies' Association), 2-44; "July 1768," The Diaries of George Washington, Vol. 2, eds. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia), 77 & 77n. See also The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, Vol. 8, ed. W.W. Abbot (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia), 112, 112n5; Virginia Gazette, 26 July 1770.
