George Washington, Survey-Taker

Figure 1. Survey done in 1949 by 17-year-old George Washington, County Surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia. Source: https://virginiahistory.org/learn/george-washington-land-surveyor.

I learned two things about George Washington’s early life in school: the cherry tree “I cannot tell a lie” story (ironically, this tale about honesty is now thought to have been totally fabricated by biographer Mason Weems — it first appears in the 5th edition of The Life of Washington in 1806, seven years after Washington’s death) and Washington’s early career as a public land surveyor (see Figure 1). Surveying work helped Washington build his immense wealth.* His intimate knowledge of the backcountry may also have contributed to his military successes in the French and Indian War, which ultimately led to his appointment as Commander in Chief during the Revolutionary War.

The textbooks, however, did not mention Washington’s activities as a surveyor in the statistical sense of the word. In 1791, President George Washington took what may have been the first sample survey conducted by a United States government official (Statistical Reporting Service, 1969).

After the war ended, Washington returned to Mount Vernon and devoted himself to his lands. “At length my Dear Marquis,” he wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette in 1784, “I am become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, & under the shadow of my own Vine & my own Fig-tree." Washington kept meticulous crop records and filled multiple diaries with the results of his agricultural experiments and observations (see, for example, George Washington Papers, 1785). His experiments included planting new crops (he introduced clover, rye, grass, hope, trefoil, timothy, and spelt to Virginia agriculture); rotating crops; varying distance between rows; exploring crop combinations (such as planting peas and potatoes between rows of corn); comparing drill with broadcast seeding; trying new types of plows; and comparing the effectiveness of horse dung, cow dung, creek mud, marl, sheep dung, and black mold as fertilizer (Howarth, 1915; Washington found that sheep dung and black mold gave the best results).

Washington began corresponding in the 1780s with Arthur Young, the English editor of the Annals of Agriculture who was considered to be one of the leading scientific farmers of the day. In one of his letters, Young requested information on some particulars of American agriculture. Washington sent the following reply on December 5, 1791:

Sir,
In a letter which I addressed to you on the 15th of August, acknowledging the receipt of your favor dated the 25th of January preceding, I promised to answer the queries contained in it, in detail. Accordingly I took measures for that purpose, by writing to some of the most intelligent farmers in the State of New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia; as you will perceive by the circular letter herewith enclosed: and have obtained the answers from the three last-mentioned States, that are thereunto annexed. I did not extend my inquiries to the northward of New-York, nor to the southward of Virginia; because in neither extremity of the Union, in my opinion, is the climate, soil, or other circumstances, well adapted to the pursuits of a mere farmer, or congenial to the growth of the smaller grains (Washington, 1803, p. 19).

In essence, Washington took a survey — he selected a subset of farmers from those he knew in the Middle States and sent each of them the same “circular letter,” i.e. questionnaire, shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. George Washington’s 1791 letter to farmers requesting information about crops and prices. Source: Washington (1803), pp. 23-24.

Washington sent his questionnaire to five selected “intelligent farmers” and the three farmers who responded gave their opinions of agricultural conditions and prices in their counties. His correspondents did their best to answer the questions, but acknowledged that their knowledge was limited and their numbers might be wrong. The correspondent from Maryland wrote:

AFTER many endeavours for assistance, in answering your inquiry into the agriculture, &c. of Montgomery, Frederic, and Washington counties, I was obliged to rely principally upon my own observations and conjectures; for, as very few measure their fields or produce, it is mere guess work, and they commonly think and speak the best of their own affairs. I wish my conjectures had more certain foundation than they have, yet I flatter myself they will mislead no body to his injury; they certainly are not calculated for that purpose (Washington, 1803, p. 32).

Modern agricultural statistics, of course, have a much sounder scientific basis than Washington’s survey, which relied on the opinions of three farmers. The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) surveys hundreds of thousands of farmers and ranchers each year, thus gathering data — on acreage planted to different crops, crop yields, milk production, hog and cattle inventory, and hundreds of other topics — directly from agricultural producers. NASS issues approximately 500 statistical reports each year, plus many other publications at the state level (National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2023).

Washington, though, did not have the NASS staff of 1,000 people to collect and analyze data. He was trying to answer Young’s questions on his own and conducted his survey about 150 years before the theory of probability sampling was developed. Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, who was assembling customs statistics at about the same time, might have been able to suggest alternative methods for collecting the information, but Hamilton would also have been aware of the difficulty of collecting agricultural statistics when most farmers did not keep records.

Washington’s survey stemmed from his awareness that the new country needed information about agricultural production and capacity. He urged Congress in 1796 to establish a National Board of Agriculture, but reported that Congress did not pass the measure because of “their limited sitting, and a pressure of what they conceived, more important business.” Congress, in fact, did not appear to conceive agricultural statistics as important business until the 1830s, when it approved President Martin Van Buren’s recommendation that the decennial census be expanded to include agriculture. Washington’s vision for “the establishment of Boards, composed of proper characters, charged with collecting and diffusing information, and enabled by premiums and small pecuniary aids, to encourage and assist a spirit of discovery and improvement” was finally realized in 1862, when Congress established the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It is to Washington’s credit that, instead of answering Young’s questions solely from his personal knowledge, he consulted other farmers in the states. The information he collected provides one of the most comprehensive records of agricultural practices available from that time. Washington’s survey marks “the first known occasion in the United States when an actual survey form was used to collect expert opinions” (Allen et al., 1995, p. 614).

Footnotes and References

Figure 3. Page 1 of George Washington’s School Copy Book, 1745. Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw1a.002.

*Washington’s father died when George was 11 years old, leaving Mount Vernon to George’s older half-brother Lawrence (George inherited the property when Lawrence’s widow died in 1761 with no surviving children). Young George, viewing his prospects as meager, began studying geometry (see Figure 3) and practicing with a set of surveying tools from his father’s storehouse.

At age 17, in 1749, Washington was appointed Surveyor for Culpeper County in Virginia (Fitzsimmons, 1991) and he surveyed land in other counties as well. Being a surveyor helped Washington’s financial prospects immensely. Chase (1998, p. 161) wrote that surveyors “could earn an annual cash income that was exceeded only by the colony's finest trial lawyers.” As a surveyor, Washington was able to identify desirable parcels of land before they became available to the public and eventually acquired more than 70,000 acres between the Potomac and Ohio rivers.

When Washington married wealthy widow Martha Custis in 1759, he assumed control of the property that she had been administering — both her dower share and the two-thirds held in trust for the Custis children. Washington’s wealth was also increased by the forced labor of more than 300 enslaved people; his will arranged for his slaves to be set free, but only after Martha’s death (Morgan, 2000). His peak net worth has been estimated at approximately $600 million in 2020 dollars (Sauter et al., 2020).

Allen, R. (2008). Agriculture Counts: The Founding and Evolution of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, 1957-2007. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Allen, R., Huggins, V.J., and Killion, R.A. (1995). The evolution of agricultural data collection in the United States. In M. J. Colledge., A. Christianson, D. A. Binder, B. Nanjamma Chinnappa, B. G. Cox, P. S. Kott (editors), Business Survey Methods. New York, Wiley, pp. 607-631.

Chase, P. (1998). A stake in the west: George Washington as backcountry surveyor and landholder. In Hofstra, W. (ed.), George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry. Madison, WI: Madison House Publishers, pp. 159-194.

Fitzsimmons, N. (1999). George Washington: An engineering legacy. The Military Engineer, 91(602), 43-44.

George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence: George Washington, "Notes & observations" on Plantations (1785). Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw435142/.

Haworth, P. L. (1915). George Washington: Farmer. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Morgan, K. (2000). George Washington and the problem of slavery. Journal of American Studies, 34(2), 279-301.

National Agricultural Statistics Service (2023). Introduction to NASS. https://www.nasda.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Intro-to-NASS.pdf

Sauter, M.B., Suneson, G., and Stebbins, S. (2020). From Washington to Trump: This is the net worth of every U.S. President. USA Today, November 5.

Statistical Reporting Service (1969). The Story of U.S. Agricultural Estimates. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Washington, G. (1803). Letters from His Excellency George Washington, to Arthur Young, Esq. F. R. S. and Sir John Sinclair, Bart. M. P.: Containing An Account of His Husbandry, with His Opinions on Various Questions in Agriculture; and Many Particulars of the Rural Economy of the United States. Alexandria, VA: Cottom and Stewart.