ions. From 1754 till 1759 he was most of the time on the
frontier; for nearly nine years his Revolutionary service separated him
absolutely from his property; and during the two terms of his Presidency
he had only brief and infrequent visits. Just one-half of his forty-six
years' occupancy of Mount Vernon was given to public service.

The result was that in 1757 he wrote, "I am so little acquainted with the
business relative to my private affairs that I can scarce give you any
information concerning it," and this was hardly less true of the whole
period of his absences. In 1775 he engaged overseers to manage his various
estates in his absence "upon shares," but during the whole war the
plantations barely supported themselves, even with depletion of stock and
fertility, and he was able to draw nothing from them. One overseer, and a
confederate, he wrote, "I believe, divided the profits of my Estate on the
York River, tolerably betwn. them, for the devil of any thing do I get."
Well might he advise knowingly that "I have no doubt myself but that
middling land under a man's own eyes, is more profitable than rich land at
a distance." "No Virginia Estate (except a very few under the best of
management) can stand simple Interest," he declared, and went even further
when he wrote, "the nature of a Virginia Estate being such, that without
close application, it never fails bringing the proprietors in Debt
annually." "To speak within bounds," he said, "ten thousand pounds will
not compensate the losses I might have avoided by being at home, &
attending a little to my own concerns" during the Revolution.

Fortunately for the farmer, the Mount Vernon estate was but a small part
of his property. His father had left him a plantation of two hundred and
eighty acres on the Rappahannock, "one Moiety of my Land lying on Deep
Run," three lots in Frederick "with all the houses and Appurtenances
thereto belonging," and one quarter of the residuary estate. While
surveying for Lord Fairfax in 1748, as part of his compensation Washington
patented a tract of five hundred and fifty acres in Frederick County,
which he always spoke of as "My Bull-skin plantation."

As a military bounty in the French and Indian War the governor of Virginia
issued a proclamation granting Western lands to the soldiers, and under
this Washington not merely secured fifteen thousand acres in his own
right, but by buying the claims of some of his fellow officers doubled