?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(GEORGE WASHINGTON.) Group of letters to John Augustine Washington III, the last private owner of Mount Vernon. 39 items, almost all of them letters to John Augustine Washington; condition generally strong, a few worn or torn, at least 3 incomplete, most with postal markings. Various places, 1835-1861
John Augustine Washington III (1821-1861) was the great-grandnephew of George Washington and the last private owner of Mount Vernon. He leased it from his mother from 1841 onward, and inherited it outright in 1855. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Washington joined the Confederate Army as aide-de-camp to his relative by marriage, Robert E. Lee, and in September 1861, he was shot dead by a Union sniper.
This lot includes 14 letters to Washington from his mother Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington (1786-1855), all while he was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia from 1838 to 1841. The letters include copious discussion of agriculture at Mount Vernon and their other holdings, and family news. She inquires frequently about university news, including the 1840 murder of Professor John A.G. Davis. She offers advice which would have made the Father of our Country proud: "Do not be led astray by the vain visionary notions so flattering to human pride. We can have no aristocracy under our pure and excellent government" (20 November 1838). Her 12 November 1840 letter discusses the will of a Washington uncle, mandating that his law books be sent to Mount Vernon for John Augustine's use.
John Augustine's aunt Judith Ball Blackburn Alexander (1796-1866) of the Caledon estate in Goby, VA wrote 6 letters dated 1839-1861, one of them during the earliest part of the Civil War: "With great difficulty we reached Fredericksburg and took the cars to Richmond as far as the junction. There were soldiers on their way to Richmond, and as we advanced, soldiers supposed to be on their way to Alexandria, and so many fair & delicate youths among them that my very soul felt crushed" (13 May 1861).
A few of the letters in the collection discuss slaves and ex-slaves. One from his mother relates explicitly to Mount Vernon: "I found scarcely any work done at M.V. The whole autumn has been consumed in covering Sambo's field with March mud. . . . I really think it would be better to bring Willoughby and Gabriel back & hire them out. What think you?" (20 November 1838). Gabriel Johnson (1820-after 1900) remained at Mount Vernon through the Civil War and beyond. Jane's 12 November 1840 letter discusses a proposal to rent land to "Abraham Nickens, the coloured man. . . . He is a very humble old man."
Richard Scott Blackburn, a cousin on John's mother's side in Spring Grove, WV, responded to a query in 1852 about "whether I design selling any of my Negroes. To this I say that I never have sold a Negro except for a fault. I have but 12 Negroes all told. . . . I have a boy 16 years old at Dr. Alexander's hired that I may sell to a good master at the termination of the present year. He is a very fine boy but I have no use for him personally." Blackburn wrote twice more regarding his enslaved workers in 1858: "I am sorry on your account you did not get these valuable negroes, but you were candid with me in saying they were worth more than you offered, but that you were embarrassed with the purchase of the woman whom you did not want"
The lot also contains one very early letter from John to his mother, written from a Philadelphia boarding school in 1835 when he was only 14 years old. Other correspondents include cousin George William Washington, brother Richard B. Washington, and other family members. A friend named J. Prosser Tabb wrote in 1853: "Sincerely regretting the necessity, I am truly glad that you have prospect of disposing of Mt. Vernon so advantageously. To keep it must ruin you, & I think the only plan to make our niggardly government sensible of its duty is the one you have adopted."
