Since the heady moment when he married Martha Custis in 1759, combining their estates into one of the preeminent holdings in northern Virginia, everything Washington touched had turned to brass. He had failed repeatedly to grow profitable tobacco crops. In London his leaf had acquired an unshakable reputation for mediocrity. Meanwhile the expenses of maintaining a great planter’s lifestyle, while keeping up a slave labor force and several plantations, had proved unrelenting. His own debtors — former comrades-in-arms who unhesitatingly touched him for loans, neighbors with whom he ran accounts, tenants who owed him rent — were slow to pay, and sometimes never did; yet he was too tightly bound by the expectations of gentlemanly behavior to refuse a loan when asked, or to press a debtor insistently when payment fell due. By 1763 Washington found himself deep in debt, doubting that he would ever extricate himself by growing tobacco, and casting about to find some way out of his predicament.
Place | City | |
---|---|---|
General Nathanael Greene Homestead | Coventry | Built in 1770, home to the General that George Washington recommended as his replacement if he should be die. |
Varnum House Museum | East Greenwich | Mansion built in 1773 by James Mitchell Varnum, who became one of Washinton's generals and later elected to the Continental Congress. |
Colony House | Newport | Completed in 1739, it was the state house of Rhode Island until 1901. |
Hunter House | Newport | Built 1748—54 and considered one of the ten best colonial homes existing in the U.S. |
Redwood Library and Athenaeum | Newport | Chartered in 1747 and opened to the public in 1750, it is the oldest circulating library in the U.S. |
Touro Synagogue | Newport | Completed and dedicated in 1763, it is the oldest Synagogue in the U.S.; following the war it served as a meeting place for the Rhode Island General Assembly, Rhode Island Supreme Court and the town of Newport. |
Trinity Church | Newport | Completed in 1726, it has a pipe organ tested by Georg Friedrich Handel; French Admiral Charles de Ternay is buried in the adjacent cemetery. |
White Horse Tavern | Newport | Now a restaurant, originally built in 1673 as a residence, and for awhile, the meeting place of the general assembly. |
Fort Butts | Portsmouth | The earthwork redoubt is still discernable, it was a key position during the Battle of Rhode Island (1778), and provides a panoramic view of Mt. Hope Bay. |
Benefit Street’s Mile of History | Providence | A street of restored colonial homes and buildings overlooking the waterfront. |
Old State House | Providence | Built in 1762, the State House was the primary seat of state government until 1901. |
Gilbert Stuart Birthplace & Museum | Saunderstown | This restored house, built in 1750, was the birthplace of painter Gilbert Stuart. |
Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754 - 1766 (2000)