Washington [18]
Sometime around 1749-50 George became smitten with a young woman he coyly referred to as the “Low Land Beauty” and dallied with another he referred to as “very agreeable,” who was likely Mary Cary, Sally’s younger sister.27 George found solace by copying out two banal poems about a man spurned by his lady love. In one poem, the poet is tortured by secret love: “Ah! woe’s me, that I should Love and conceal, / Long have I wish’d, but never dare reveal.”28 In the second poem, the poet stands helpless beford his ardor. “Oh Ye Gods why should my Poor Resistless Heart / Stand to oppose thy might and Power / At Last surrender to cupids feather’d Dart / and now lays Bleeding every Hour / For her that’s Pityless of my grief and Woes / And will not on me Pity take.”29 But Washington was not born to pine away as an idle, lovesick youth.
In the spring of 1749 he again profited from his connection with brother Lawrence when he helped to survey the new Potomac port of Alexandria, north of Mount Vernon; Lawrence served as a trustee of the town. A more momentous change occurred in July 1749, when George was appointed surveyor of Culpeper County. Even though the College of William and Mary, under a 1693 charter, retained the power to name the county surveyor, it proved susceptible to the blandishments of influential men. When seventeen-year-old George Washington captured this lucrative sinecure, becoming the youngest official surveyor in Virginia history, it reflected his privileged friendship with the omnipotent Lord Fairfax. Instead of starting out as a lowly, obscure apprentice, the young man was enabled by patronage to skip the preliminary steps. As Marcus Cunliffe has noted, the young Washington “was not an intellectual genius or the heir to a great fortune,” but “he was evidently energetic, reliable, and canny.”30
Two days after his appointment, George performed an obligatory survey of four hundred acres in eastern Culpeper County and proudly affixed his signature to the document with his new title. Apparently, this was the only survey George ever performed in the county for which he was the nominal surveyor. He then gladly turned his attention to more profitable opportunities awaiting him in the hinterlands beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, where rich soil tempted hordes of settlers. As fortune’s favorite, George received a steady stream of assignments that issued from the splendid portals of Belvoir as Lord Fairfax cashed in on the booming settlements in his domain. These surveys were often plum assignments, for they covered small, easily measured parcels that could be surveyed in a single day. Choosing to work in crisp spring or autumn weather, George avoided the summertime, when thick foliage impeded the sight lines of surveyors. Lord Fairfax pocketed one shilling per annum for every fifty acres of settled land and piled up a substantial fortune from the labors of George and his fellow surveyors. Within a year the busy young man shed his duties as surveyor of Culpeper County, most likely because he no longer needed the extra work.
In the spring of 1750 George Washington again mounted his horse, loaded up his surveying tools, and cantered off to the Shenandoah Valley. He laid out forty-seven tracts on that one trip alone, jotting notes for each survey in a tiny notebook he tucked into his pocket. He grew increasingly accustomed to the wilderness and was no longer too particular about changing his clothes. As he notified a friend, “The coldness of the weather will not allow my making a long stay, as the lodging is rather too cold for the time of year. I have never had my clothes off, but lay and sleep in them like a Negro.”31 An instant professional success, George toiled just a few months yearly and