Union Farm was composed of two smaller farms known as "The Ferry" and "French's." Both were acquired by George Washington in six purchases between 1769 and 1786.1 With the final purchase completed in October 1786, Washington resurveyed the individual tracts into two farms, each with orderly seven-field crop systems. Washington envisioned the farms as a single operating unit, placing his new farm complex at the center of the two farms. By November of 1788 the two farms were united under one manager.2 The farms retained separate identities as “Ferry” and “French’s” for several more years even with shared management and references to them as “united. Beginning in 1793, they were labeled jointly as “Union Farm.”3 Union Farm was located near Dogue-Run Farm, and sometimes enslaved people would take agricultural outputs such as wheat to be processed there.
Design Inspiration
The original design for the farm by Arthur Young was a plain line drawing to scale with numbers keyed to explanatory text in the body of the accompanying letter.4 Young published a more carefully executed copy of the plan and explanatory key in Annals of Agriculture in 1791. The core of the design was a rectangular brick barn with entry wings on each façade. The main structure followed a traditional tripartite functional plan, with the opposing facade doors opening onto a central threshing floor flanked by storage bays. At the corners flanking sheds were enclosed to create protected rooms for foaling, feed storage, and farm implements. Other details included feeding passages and mangers in the stable sheds and a gutter system that drained manure to outlying cisterns for collection and eventual transport to the fields.
Washington's Design
George Washington followed the Young design closely but determined that it would not fully satisfy his needs for livestock shelter. As a result, he drafted a plan for a large brick stable complex that he married to the Arthur Young plan, creating a barn that was in some respects more English than the design his English mentor had provided. The two-story barn was a dramatic break from local tradition. The north and east barns housed livestock on the first story and hay on the second. Both barns were designed to accommodate a variety of livestock.
The north barn included twenty stalls for cattle on the south side and an unpartitioned browsing area for sheep on the north side with doors opening onto a pasture. The sheep and cattle fed from a bisecting manger, and trapdoors in the loft floor above simplified feeding. The east barn was arranged similarly, but with a combination of five by ten-foot stalls for cattle and six double stalls for horses.
Construction
With a design in hand, construction of the main barn moved forward quickly. In early December 1787, Washington opened negotiations with the Alexandria mercantile firm Peterson & Taylor for his lumber needs and on January 5, 1788 forwarded a "Bill of Scantling" for the principal framing members required for the barn.5 Enslaved carpenters and brick-makers spent much of the winter cutting and cording wood for the brick kilns, and working on the foundation. Extensive work was by done by enslaved ditchers to prepare for construction.
The exterior shell of the new barn was completed in the winter of 1789 and by September of 1790 the main barn was being used to store rye and oats. A second phase of construction took place from 1789-91, constructing the adjoining brick stable complex.6 By the Spring of 1791, the Union Farm complex was complete, and this large project involving both farms contributed to unifying the two farms under one name. Washington wrote to his manager Anthony Whitting in December of 1792 desiring more accurate accounts of each farm, “inform me what numbers of the fields will be united at the Ferry & French’s plantations, and what will be the numbers of them when this is done: without this knowledge I shall be at a loss when you are speaking of the different fields how to distinguish them.”7
Over the ensuing years many other improvements were made at the “unified” Union Farm. The old entrance lane, which had previously passed the new barn on its west side, was realigned to approach the barn and stable complex on axis. Framed against fields, clover lots, a stack yard, and the river was what Washington claimed to be one of the largest and finest barns in the country. In addition to the barn structures was a fishery, which was a key feature of Washington’s development of Mount Vernon and its outlying farms as he diversified his assets.
Slavery at Union Farm
The ongoing construction, agriculture, and industry at Union Farm was completed by enslaved labor. As at all his outlying farms, crops were on a crop rotation that accommodated various crops such as wheat, corn, barley, flax, grass, and other vegetables, which would cultivating these crops would have been the primary labor completed at Union Farm.8 However, those engaged at the fishery could potentially earn extra money or rations by working extra hours there.
In 1799, there were seventy-five enslaved people living at Union Farm.9 Of these individuals, six were enslaved by George Washington, thirty were enslaved by Martha Washington, and thirty-nine were individuals rented from a neighbor to Mount Vernon, Mrs. French, the original owner of one of the tracts. There appear to have been at least twelve family groups. Another seventeen individuals cannot yet be linked with any relatives living at this farm. Of the seventeen people living at Union Farm, enslaved by George and Martha Washington and considered to be of adult working age, sixteen (around ninety-four percent) had been living on Union Farm since 1786.10
Union Farm at the End of Washington’s Life
Washington attempted to lease Union Farm in 1796. He detailed it has having, “seven fields, nearly equal in size, and containing in the aggregate, 841 acres of ploughable land; besides 67 acres of mowable meadow; principally of reclaimed swamps of the richest sort; and four lots of 5 acres each, designated for clover, by the stables. On the premises are a comfortable (though small) dwelling house, in which the Superintendent of the estate resides; with a kitchen and other convenient houses, very pleasantly situated on the river. In the centre of the farm there is a new house with two rooms below, and two above (inhabited by the Overlooker of the farm). Covering of the same kind, and for about the same number of labourers and their families” and as having “barns of brick.”11 After his death, his nephew Bushrod Washington inherited the most of Mount Vernon proper and property between Little Hunting and Dogue Creeks, including Union Farm.12
Revised by Zoie Horecny, 22 May 2025
Notes:
1. “December 1786,” Founders Online, National Archives.
2. “[Diary entry: 22 November 1788],” Founders Online, National Archives.
3. “[May 1788],” Founders Online, National Archives and “From George Washington to Anthony Whitting, 27 January 1793,” Founders Online, National Archives.
4. “From George Washington to Arthur Young, 4 December 1788,” Founders Online, National Archives.
5. “From George Washington to Peterson & Taylor,” The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008. Original Source: Confederation Series (1 January 1784–23 September 1788), Volume 6 (1 January 1788–23 September 1788).
6. “To George Washington from George Augustine Washington, 14 December 1790,” Founders Online, National Archives.
7. “From George Washington to Anthony Whitting, 16 December 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives.
8. “From George Washington to James Bloxham, 1 January 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives.
9."Washington’s Slave List, June 1799," Founders Online, National Archives.
10. [Diary entry: 18 February 1786], Founders Online, National Archives.
11. “Advertisement, 1 February 1796,” Founders Online, National Archives.
12. “George Washington’s Last Will and Testament, 9 July 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives.
Bibliography:
Dalzell, Robert, Jr. and Lee Baldwin Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Ragsdale, Bruce A., Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021.
Schoelwer, Susan P., ed. Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies Association, 2016.
Thompson, Mary V. “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2019.
