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John Augustine Washington III
John
Augustine Washington III (1821-1861), was the last private owner of the Mount
Vernon Estate. The estate passed to John
Augustine in this way: George Washington
willed the estate to his nephew Bushrod Washington. The childless Bushrod, in turn, willed the
estate to his nephew John Augustine II, the father of John Augustine III. John Augustine II died in 1832, when John
Augustine III was eleven years old. The
widowed Jane Charlotte then took possession of the property.
John
Augustine III graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, and proposed
to manage Mount Vernon for his mother.
Jane Charlotte contracted his services for a period of seven years, at
an annual salary of $500 (about $14,500 today).
In the
forty some years since the death of George Washington, Mount Vernon had
deteriorated sadly. Soil degradation,
bad weather, and poor harvests all contributed to the downward economic spiral. John Augustine brought in money selling and
renting out slaves, by land rents, by selling wood, and by running a fishing
operation on the Potomac. Farming still
brought in some revenue.
By
the 1850s, Mount Vernon had become a tourist Mecca. Thousands of people descended on the Estate
annually to gawk and ask questions. John
Augustine recognized the profit potential of historical tourism, and contracted
with the steamboat Thomas Collyer to
bring people to the estate. Slaves sold
bouquets of flowers, fruit, milk, and hand-carved canes to tourists.
By
the late-1850s, John Augustine, now the owner of Mount Vernon after the death
of his mother, was ready to sell the property and manage other more lucrative
family plantations. He set about trying
to find buyers, approaching both the state of Virginia and the federal government. There was no relief to be found from
either. Finally, in 1858, John Augustine
accepted the offer of a new organization, styling itself the Mount Vernon
Ladies’ Association (MVLA), to buy two hundred acres of the Mount Vernon
Estate, including the mansion, outbuildings and the family tomb for the sum of
$200,000 (about $5.5 million today).
John
Augustine and his family left Mount Vernon in February 1860, moving to Waveland
plantation in Fauquier County, Virginia.
John Augustine’s wife, Eleanor, died in childbirth that same year. With the outbreak of the Civil War, John
Augustine joined the Confederate Army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He served as aide-de-camp to General Robert
E. Lee during the early days of the war.
During
Lee’s campaign in the mountains of western Virginia, in September 1861, Lee
ordered Col. Washington to make a reconnaissance near Cheat Mountain (in what
is today West Virginia). The zealous
Washington advanced deep into enemy occupied territory with his detachment. When the detachment made to return to
friendly lines, enemy pickets opened fire.
Col. Washington fell from his horse, as the rest of the detachment
scattered.
The
wounded Confederate officer was surrounded by Union troops. Col. J.H. Morrow, of the third regiment of
Ohio volunteers knelt next to the stricken man and “…raised him so as to enable
him to recline against his breast, and directed one of his men, standing near,
and who wore a felt hat, to run and fill it with water from the stream.” Col. Morrow bathed the wounded man’s forehead
and endeavored to press water between his lips from a saturated handkerchief;
but he could not swallow as blood was flowing from his mouth and nose, and a
few moments later he was dead. The dead
officer wore a valuable ring, a pin in his shirt bosom, and a gold watch and
chain. These Col. Morrow removed, and
also took possession of his sword and pistols, and ordered a new ambulance,
under his control, to be brought at once from camp, in which he had the body
placed and taken to his headquarters, nearby.
Not
long after, Gen. William L. Loring, bearing a flag, and accompanied by a
two-horse wagon, arrived from Gen. Lee’s camp in order to obtain possession of
and remove the body. It was then that
Col. Morrow learned the name of the officer who had fallen….
General
Loring desired to transfer the body from the ambulance to the wagon, but Col.
Morrow kindly insisted upon his taking the ambulance. General Loring’s driver sprang upon the box,
taking the reins, with Col. Morrow sitting beside him, and in this manner, the
body was taken to General Lee’s headquarters.
The
watch and chain, with ring and pin, were turned over to Gen. Loring, and later
the sword and pistols were turned over to Gen. J. J. Reynolds…who at that time
was serving in the command of Union General George B. McClellan.
From
an account written by Thornton Washington for the Washington Examiner, printed in the Spirit of Jefferson (Charles
Town, West Virginia) on March 5, 1889.
John Augustine Washington died
on September 13, 1861. He is buried at
Zion Episcopal Churchyard in Charlestown, West Virginia.
A
distant relative to John Augustine, through the Lees, and a childhood friend,
Gen. Lee was hit hard by one of the first personal losses he would experience
in the War. Lee penned the following
letter to the eldest of John Augustine’s children, Louisa, aged seven.
Camp
on Valley River
Sept.
16, 1861
My
dear Miss Louisa,
With
a heart filled with grief, I have to communicate the saddest tidings you have ever
heard.
May
‘Our Father, Who is in Heaven’ enable you to hear it, for in his
Inscrutable Providence, abounding in mercy and omnipotent in person, he has
made you fatherless on earth.
Your
dear father, in reconnoitering the enemy’s position yesterday, came within
range of the fire of his pickets and was instantly killed. He fell in the cause
to which he had devoted all his energies, and in which his noble heart was
enlisted. My intimate association with him for some months had more fully
disclosed to me his great worth than double as many years of ordinary
intercourse would have been sufficient to reveal. We had shared the same tent
in morning and evening as his earnest devotion to Almighty God elicited my
grateful admiration. He is now happy in Heaven. I trust with her he so loved on
earth. We ought not to wish them back.
May
God, in His mercy, my dear child, sustain you, your sisters and brothers under
this heavy affliction. My own grief is so great I will not afflict you further
with it.
Faithfully
your friend
R.
E. Lee
A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The
book covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery
and the impact of the war on social customs.
