formerly was. He declared if his ticket
should turn up a prize, he would go and live in the Federal City. He did
not consider, poor little fellow, that some of the prizes would hardly
build him a baby house nor foresee that one of these small tickets would
be his lot, having drawn no more than ten dollars."

Lear's first wife had died the year before of yellow fever at the
President's house in Philadelphia, and for his second he took the widow
of George A. Washington--Fanny--who was a niece of Martha Washington,
being a daughter of Anna Dandridge Bassett and Colonel Burwell Bassett.
This alliance tended to strengthen the friendly relations between Lear
and the General. In Washington's last moments Lear held his dying hand
and later penned a noble description of the final scene that reveals a
man of high and tender sentiments with a true appreciation of his
benefactor's greatness. Washington willed him the use of three hundred
sixty acres east of Hunting Creek during life. When Fanny Lear died,
Lear married Frances Dandridge Henley, another niece of Mrs. Washington.
Lear's descendants still own a quilt made by Martha Washington and given
to this niece.

During part at least of Washington's absence in the French war his
younger brother John Augustine, described in the General's will as "the
intimate friend of my ripened age," had charge of his business affairs
and resided at Mount Vernon. The relations with this brother were
unusually close and Washington took great interest in John's eldest son
Bushrod, who studied law and became an associate justice of the Federal
Supreme Court. To Bushrod the General gave his papers, library, the
Mansion House Farm and other land and a residuary share in the estate.

I am inclined to believe that during 1757-58 John Augustine did not have
charge, as Mount Vernon seems to have been under the oversight of a
certain Humphrey Knight, who worked the farm on shares. He was evidently
a good farmer, for in 1758 William Fairfax, who kept a friendly eye upon
his absent neighbor's affairs, wrote: "You have some of the finest
Tobacco & Corn I have seen this year," The summer was, however,
exceedingly dry and the crop was good in a relative sense only. Knight
tried to keep affairs in good running order and the men hard at work,
reporting "as to ye Carpentrs I have minded em all I posably could, and
has whipt em when I could see a fault." Knight died September 9, 1758, a
few months before Washingt