According to George Washington's slave inventory, there were eighty-seven slaves on the Mansion House Farm in the summer of 1799. This did not include two men, Peter Hardiman (who was rented from Martha Washington's former daughter-in-law), and Elish, who belonged to Martha outright in 1802. The census did not include eleven other slaves who worked and lived at Washington's mill and distillery.
Around the time of Washington's death the population at the "Home House" included a total of fifty-nine adults between the ages of fourteen and ninety, and twenty-eight children under the age of fourteen. There appear to have been nine major family groups at the "Home House," comprising the children mentioned previously and thirty-nine of the adults. In addition, there were eighteen men and three women who were unrelated to one another or any of the identified families. While all of the women in this group appear to have been single or widowed, the majority of the men (83.3%) were married and had wives and children living elsewhere. Forty-six of the fifty-nine adults (77.97%) had been living on the Mansion House Farm for at least thirteen years, since 1786.
Mary V. Thompson Research Historian Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens
