It is evident, therefore, that very early he acquired the "land hunger"
to which most of the Virginians of his day were subject, as a heritage
from their English ancestry. In the England of that day, in fact, no
one except a churchman could hope to attain much of a position in the
world unless he was the owner of land, and until the passage of the
great Reform Bill in 1832 he could not even vote unless he held land
worth forty shillings a year. In Virginia likewise it was the landholder
who enjoyed distinction and consideration, who was sent to the House of
Burgesses and was bowed and scraped to as his coach bumped along over
the miserable roads. The movement to cities did not begin until after
the Industrial Revolution, and people still held the healthy notion that
the country was the proper place in which to live a normal human
existence.

In 1752 Lawrence Washington died. As already stated, he was the
proprietor by inheritance of Mount Vernon, then an estate of two
thousand five hundred acres which had been in the Washington family
since 1674, being a grant from Lord Culpeper. Lawrence had fought
against the Spaniards in the conflict sometimes known as the war of
Jenkins's Ear, and in the disastrous siege of Cartagena had served under
Admiral Vernon, after whom he later named his estate. He married Anne
Fairfax, daughter of Sir William Fairfax, and for her built on his
estate a new residence, containing eight rooms, four to each floor, with
a large chimney at each end.

[Illustration: Mount Vernon, Showing Kitchen to the Left and Covered
Way Leading to It]

[Illustration: _From a painting by T.P. Rossiter and L.R. Mignot_ The