Mount Vernon

It had been his home for 45 years, but he had been away for many years. He and Martha were glad to be back. “The General and I,” wrote Martha to a friend, “feel like children just released from school.”

Washington liked being a farmer. He worked hard to get Mount Vernon running smoothly. By the end of his life, he had split his 8,000 acres of land into five farms. Each had its own overseers, enslaved people, livestock, tools, and buildings. After checking on his farms one snowy morning in 1799, Washington caught a cold. He soon had a high fever. On December 14, he died. He was 67 years old. Congress had built a special vault for him under the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. But the vault remains empty to this day. That’s because the nation’s first president wanted to be buried at Mount Vernon, and so he was. Having worked long and hard for his country, George Washington at last rested as a private citizen.