Washington's landed estate as listed in his will amounted to about sixty
thousand two hundred two acres, besides lots in Washington, Alexandria,
Winchester, Bath, Manchester, Edinburgh and Richmond. Nine thousand two
hundred twenty-seven acres, including Mount Vernon and a tract on Four
Mile Run, he specifically bequeathed to individuals, as he did some of
the lots. The remaining lots and fifty thousand nine hundred
seventy-five acres (some of which land was already conditionally sold)
he directed to be disposed of, together with his live stock, government
bonds and shares held by him in the Potomac Company, the Dismal Swamp
Company, the James River Company and the banks of Columbia and
Alexandria--the whole value of which he conservatively estimated at five
hundred and thirty thousand dollars. The value of the property he
specifically bequeathed, with his slaves, which he directed should be
freed, can only be guessed at, but can hardly have been short of two
hundred and twenty thousand dollars more. In other words, he died
possessed of property worth three-quarters of a million and was the
richest man in America.

Not all of the land that he listed in his will proved of benefit to his
heirs. The title to three thousand fifty-one acres lying on the Little
Miami River in what is now Ohio and valued by him at fifteen thousand
two hundred fifty-five dollars proved defective. In 1790 a law, signed
by himself, had passed Congress requiring the recording of such
locations with the federal Secretary of State. Washington's locations
and surveys of this Ohio land had already been recorded in the Virginia
land office, and with a carelessness unusual in him he neglected to
comply with the statute. After his death certain persons took advantage
of the defect and seized the lands, and his executors failed to embrace
another opportunity given them to perfect the title, with the result