1809
In 1809, Horace Binney, a Pennsylvania lawyer and biographer, visited Mount Vernon. The following is an account of his visit as detailed in the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union's 1968 Annual Report. Binney was notably known for his biography of Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington, George Washington's nephew.
An abstract from the unpublished biography of Horace Binney (1780-1868) at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, which was acquired this year, affords a colorful account of Judge Washington's hospitality in 1809. Binney, a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer, and several other barristers had been invited to Mount Vernon for an overnight visit. They were met in Alexandria by the Judge's coach-and-four. 'The coach,' wrote Binney, 'looked as if it might have been an heirloom of the Estate, antique, capacious & shewy. A black Coachman, with rather incomplete garments, a shabby hat, and his feet wrapped up in a piece of old green baise, held the reins of four of the most raw-boned and ill groomed horses I ever sat behind; & the harness was unlike any thing I had ever seen before, or have seen since, except perhaps in France, being part leather & part rope, the harness of the leaders & that of the wheel horses having less consanguinity than the horses themselves, looking as if it had been collected from different parts of Old Virginia...But a warmer welcome, & a higher degree of comfort than were prepared for us at Mount Vernon, it was impossible to have any where--I never passed a more delightful day and night than under the roof of General Washington, & his nephew the Judge, who resembled his uncle in many things more than his equipage.'