Good Deed for the Week: George Washington Slept Here...And Surveyed the Land!

Occasionally I like to highlight items of interest I have found in deed books. Today, I present the following good deeds:

Royal Land Patent
The Right Honourable Thomas, Lord Fairfax to Abraham Pennington for 12 shillings quitrent
600 acres on a branch of the Shenandoah River
Frederick County, Virginia
Executed July 1, 1751
Recorded Northern Neck Royal Land Grants Book H, p. 261

Royal Land Patent
The Right Honourable Thomas, Lord Fairfax to Isaac Pennington for 9 shillings quitrent
445 acres in Pennington Marsh
Frederick County, Virginia
Executed April 2, 1754
Recorded Northern Neck Royal Land Grants Book H, p. 431

Royal Patent to Abraham Pennington
July 1, 1751

Royal Patent to Isaac Pennington
April 2, 1754

In the 1750s, two of my ancestors received royal patents to large tracts of land in Frederick County, Virginia. The land patent system was complex and had many ins and outs, but suffice it to say, my Pennington ancestors understood it and used it to their advantage to gain ownership of hundreds of acres of unoccupied land in both Virginia and South Carolina. The terms of the patents stipulated that the recipients would owe annual rent of one shilling per fifty acres on the land to a Scottish nobleman called Lord Fairfax. These rents--called quitrents--were a royal property tax which were due each year on a church holiday called the Feast Day of St. Michael the Archangel, or Michaelmas. 

This part of the agreement fascinates me. Traditionally, the British and Irish designate four church holidays as "quarter days" for the hiring of servants, the beginning of new school terms, and the collection of rents. The use of Michaelmas as a day when rents are due is a British tradition going back to the Middle Ages. It's cool to think of my own ancestors still paying their rents on this ancient calendar, even in the New World.

The royal land patent system was a booming business for a lot of folks, and perhaps no one in the system had a more important role to play--or more opportunity to profit-- than the surveyor. My father-and-son ancestors, Abraham (the Indian Trader mentioned in last week's installment) and Isaac Pennington, were awarded two patents in Frederick County, Virginia at the time that an enterprising and ambitious young surveyor was making his mark on the world, and he surveyed both tracts just a few months apart.

His name was George Washington, and he eventually dabbled in politics. You may know him from the dollar bill. Or perhaps the quarter.

A young GW, surveying to his heart's content
Source: Pixels.com

It's true, my Pennington ancestors had two of their royal land patents surveyed by the father of the nation, himself. George started surveying when he was 17. Over the next three years, he surveyed more than 190 properties, most of them for Lord Fairfax's royal land grants in Virginia's northern neck. And in the process, George accumulated a great deal of wealth, influence, and choice real estate for himself. 

George made note of his survey for Abraham Pennington in one of his field books, seen below.

Page from George Washington's Field Book
Describing Survey done for Abraham Pennington
March 21, 1754
Source: Library of Congress

George was no stranger to the Penningtons. When he was sixteen, George Washington stayed the night at Isaac Pennington's home at least twice. He wrote about these times in his diary in the spring of 1748. The original pages are below:

Pages from George Washington's 1748 Journal
Source: Library of Congress

The entries say: 

Monday 14th. We sent our Baggage to Capt. Hites (near Frederick Town) went ourselves down the River about 16 Miles to Capt. Isaac Penningtons (the Land exceeding Rich & Fertile all the way produces abundance of Grain Hemp Tobacco &c.) in order to Lay of some Lands on Cates Marsh &Long Marsh.

Tuesday 15th. We set out early with Intent to Run round the sd. Land but being taken in a Rain & it Increasing very fast obliged us to return. It clearing about one oClock & our time being too Precious to Loose we a second time ventured out & Worked hard till Night & then returnd to Penningtons we got our Suppers & was Lighted in to a Room & I not being so good a Woodsman as the rest of my Company striped my self very orderly & went in to the Bed as they call'd it when to my Surprize I found it to be nothing but a Little Straw— Matted together without Sheets or any thing else but only one Thread Bear blanket with double its Weight of Vermin such as Lice Fleas &c. I was glad to get up (as soon as the Light was carried from us) & put on my Cloths & Lay as my Companions. Had we not have been very tired, I am sure we should not have slep'd much that night. I made a Promise not to Sleep so from that time forward chusing rather to sleep in the open Air before a fire as will Appear hereafter.

As an interesting aside, George paid homage to Isaac's time as a militia captain in a surviving plat he drew of Isaac's neighbor's land. George wrote "Capt. Pennington" near the eastern property boundary, and identified him in the notes below as Isaac Pennington.

Plat of land surveyed for John Lindsey
By George Washington
November 7, 1750
Source: Mount Vernon

Isaac was commissioned as a captain of the militia when he lived in Orange County, Virginia on February 24, 1742/3.

George's career as a surveyor was almost over when he surveyed my ancestors' land, as was Isaac and Abraham's stay in Frederick County. By the autumn of 1754, George was making international headlines as the young militia commander who had sparked the French and Indian War that spring and the Penningtons were in South Carolina, where they continued to acquire royal land, this time in the sparsely-settled Carolina back-country. 

A will recorded in Berkeley County, South Carolina indicates that Abraham died sometime in the next year, and Isaac followed him in 1760, the same year that Isaac's son (or perhaps brother) Jacob built Fort Pennington on Indian Creek near modern Newberry, South Carolina. 

Jacob, Isaac's son, served as a "spy on the Indian line" for the Patriot cause in 1779, as well as two other tours of duty in the patriot militia during the Revolutionary War. He brought his own sons to the Buffalo River in Lawrence County, Tennessee in 1816, and his bones lie buried less than ten miles from where I, his 6x-great-grandson, was born and raised two centuries later.