After serving eight years as President, George Washington retired from public life to spend his remaining two-and-a-half-years of his life at his home in Mount Vernon. Even while away serving America as Commander-in-Chief, and then as President, he maintained Mount Vernon and its surrounding farms River Farm, Douge Run Farm, Muddy Hole Farm, Union Farm, and Mansion House Farm from afar. He did this with the assistance of long-term farm managers. Returning from the presidency, and excited to further develop Mount Vernon, Washington hired James Anderson, who was employed as farm manager from 1796 from 1802.
Personal Life
Anderson was raised on his father's farm about 40 miles north of Edinburgh, Scotland, near the village of Inverkeithing. At the age of twenty-one, Anderson began a farming apprenticeship, and at the end of the second year began to manage the estate of the farm owner's uncle. Anderson held that post for three years and then for the next nineteen owned his own farm, mills, and distillery. During this time Anderson married Helen Gordon of Inverkeithing, with whom he had seven children. While living in Scotland, he corresponded with Washington about agriculture and sent him seeds.1
Immigration to America
By the early 1790s, the entire family immigrated to the United States. Anderson rented a farm in the northern part of nearby Fairfax County for two years. Over the next several years, he managed farms for other people. Washington discussed with Anderson qualities he desired in a farm manager, “Besides being sober, & a man of integrity, he must possess a great deal of activity and firmness, to make the under Overseers do their duty strictly.”2
As Farm Manager at Mount Vernon
As farm manager, Anderson oversaw operations at Washington’s farms, communicating with white and enslaved overseers, but also other staff such as hired gardeners and servants. He would then relay this information to Washington, who demanded close supervision of his properties. Anderson also supervised development projects such as construction or clearing, most often performed by enslaved laborers. A large part of his role was managing the labor and supervising the activities of those enslaved by the Washingtons.
Shortly after he was hired, Anderson approached George Washington with a proposal; under Anderson's direction, Washington should go into the whiskey-making business. Trusting his farm manager's expertise, Washington ordered that a distillery be constructed next to his gristmill on Dogue Creek, about two miles from the mansion. The distillery was finished with boilers, tubs, and five copper stills, and wooden troughs were made to bring water from the nearby creek to cool the vapor of the heated mash.
This new enterprise was operational by the spring of 1798. Enslaved distillers Hanson, Peter, Nat, Daniel, James, and Timothy performed the hot and tiring work of making whiskey from a combination of rye, wheat, corn, and malted barley. A surviving ledger shows that by the following year the distillery provided nearly 11,000 gallons of whiskey—valued at over $7,500—to more than eighty customers, including neighbors, merchants, family members, and overseers at Mount Vernon. Washington considered expanding his operations, so that Anderson solely managed the distilling and milling.3
Washington frequently tried to diversify his operations at Mount Vernon and had success with fishing commercially on the Potomac River, as well as the development of his gristmill. Whiskey, however, proved to be the most profitable of his many business ventures.
Having built a strong relationship with Anderson, Washington sent him long term plans for his properties just days before his death.4 After Washington's death in 1799, Anderson remained employed at Mount Vernon as its farm manager until Martha Washington died in 1802.
Revised by Zoie Horecny, Ph.D., 24 April 2025
Notes:
1. “From George Washington to James Anderson (of Scotland), 20 June 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives.
2. “From George Washington to James Anderson, 18 August 1796,” Founders Online, National Archives.
3. “From George Washington to James Anderson, 11 June 1798,” Founders Online, National Archives; “From George Washington to James Anderson, 10 September 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives.
4. “Enclosure: Washington’s Plans for His River, Union, and Muddy Hole Farms, 10 December 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives.
Bibliography:
Ragsdale, Bruce A., Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021.
Pogue, Dennis J. Founding Sprits: George Washington and the Beginnings of the American Whiskey Industry. Buena Vista, VA: Harbour Books, 2011.
Pogue, Dennis. "Drink and Be Merry: Liquor and Wine at Mount Vernon," Dining with the Washingtons, Ed. Stephen A. McLeod. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
Schoelwer, Susan P., ed. Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies Association, 2016.
Thompson, Mary V. “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2019.
