proclamation of 1763, "5000 Acres of Land in my own right, & by purchase
from Captn. Roots, Posey, & some other officers, I obtained rights to
several thousand more." In 1786, after sales, he had over thirty thousand
acres, which he then offered to sell at thirty thousand guineas, and in
1799, when still more had been sold, his inventory valued the holdings at
nearly three hundred thousand dollars.

In addition, Washington was a partner in several great land
speculations,--the Ohio Company, the Walpole Grant, the Mississippi
Company, the Military Company of Adventures, and the Dismal Swamp Company;
but all these ventures except the last collapsed at the beginning of the
Revolution and proved valueless. His interest in the Dismal Swamp Company
he held at the time of his death, and it was valued in the inventory at
twenty thousand dollars.

The properties that came to him from his brother Lawrence and with his
wife have already been described. It may be worth noting that with the
widow of Lawrence there was a dispute over the will, but apparently it was
never carried into the courts, and that owing to the great depreciation of
paper money during the Revolution the Custis personal property was
materially lessened, for "I am now receiving a shilling in the pound in
discharge of Bonds which ought to have been paid me, & would have been
realized before I left Virginia, but for my indulgences to the debtors,"
Washington wrote, and in 1778 he said, "by the comparitive worth of money,
six or seven thousand pounds which I have in Bonds upon Interest is now
reduced to as many hundreds because I can get no more for a thousand at
this day than a hundred would have fetched when I left Virginia, Bonds,
debts, Rents, &c. undergoing no change while the currency is depreciating
in value and for ought I know may in a little time be totally sunk."
Indeed, in 1781 he complained "that I have totally neglected all my