Farm Report on Ice Harvesting

Work at Mount Vernon was recorded by the Farm Manager each day. Then it was reported weekly to George Washington. These reports were written from 1797 to 1798. They record the work that enslaved people did to cut, haul, and pack ice so it would stay frozen through the summer. Some information was added to these reports by historians in order to help organize data. The text in quotation marks is from the original 18th-century source.