The first hundred years at Mount Vernon, 1653-1753

This brief monograph was self-published in 1976 and, as of 2013, remains the only "all source" history of the early years of George Washington's historic Mount Vernon estate, located in Fairfax County, Virginia. The author, Robert Moxham, was a professional cartographer and at the time he began his research, Moxham was acknowledged as the foremost expert on the Colonial-era settlement of Fairfax County. (See tribute to Moxham in the foreword to "Beginning at a White Oak" by Betsy Mitchell.) By careful examination of surviving survey maps of the 1730s and 1740s, Moxham demolishes the theory - put forth in the late 1930s by archaeologists at Mt. Vernon - that the original Mansion House stood at its present location as early as 1735. Moxham's analysis demonstrates, from original sources, that from 1735-38 the Washington family lived in a smaller "Quarter" near the mouth of Little Hunting Creek, about a half mile below where the Mansion House now stands. Augustine Washington did not begin to build a house atop the neck overlooking the Potomac River for his eldest son, (then, British Army Captain) Lawrence Washington, until 1741-42. A detailed survey plat of the estate made by the county surveyor in 1741, shows the Quarter along the creek and leaves vacant the higher ground on the distinctive neck. The first mention of "Mount Vernon" comes in August 1742.// Moxham died of cancer in 1978, and this book was/is largely ignored by George Washington biographers.