George Washington spent a surprising amount of time thinking about land.
Washington’s land activities were far from passive investments. He spent years pursuing military bounty claims, securing patents, commissioning surveys, and defending ownership interests in western lands. At times, those efforts led to disputes with competing claimants and settlers. Long before title insurance existed, Washington learned firsthand how complicated ownership could become.
Years ago, while visiting Mount Vernon, I came across correspondence related to one of Washington’s land claims, clouded by what we would now call a title issue, and I remember being struck by how familiar the problems seemed. Surveys. Boundaries. Patents. Competing ownership interests and claims. The terminology may have changed, but the underlying questions had not.
The more I have worked on this America 250 series, the more apparent it has become that many of the Founders were doing more than creating a government. They were also confronting questions of ownership, investment, and opportunity that they knew well from personal experience. In Washington’s case, those experiences began long before the presidency. Before he commanded an army or presided over a constitutional convention, he was a surveyor learning how land was measured, described, claimed, and transferred. Remarkably, he himself had drawn more than 200 surveys by age 20, after becoming a professional surveyor at only 17 years old.
That experience shaped much of what followed. Throughout his life, Washington acquired extensive landholdings, especially in the western territories. He pursued military bounty claims, commissioned surveys, sought patents, and evaluated opportunities for expansion and investment. In a 1767 letter discussing western lands, he wrote that he was “very well convinced that no Colony upon the Continent has at present so good an opening as this for advantageous purchases.”
Most of us think of Washington as a soldier, statesman, and president. We marvel at his remarkable decision to surrender power voluntarily twice—first by resigning his military commission in 1783 and later by stepping down from the presidency in 1797 after two terms—acts that helped shape American democracy. All of that is true. But Washington was also a businessman who believed the country’s future was tied to the settlement and productive use of land. The nation’s growth was not only a political project; it was also an ownership project.
Washington wasn’t the only Founding Father thinking about land ownership in lasting ways. Thomas Jefferson reached many of the same conclusions from a different direction. While Washington often saw land as an investment opportunity, Jefferson viewed ownership as foundational and essential for independence. In a 1785 letter to James Madison, he wrote that “the small landholders are the most precious part of a state.” Jefferson believed broad ownership created citizens who were invested in their communities and in the republic’s future.
What makes Jefferson’s observation especially interesting is that his own experience with land was anything but simple. Despite substantial holdings, he struggled financially for much of his life and died deeply in debt. In today’s terms, he was “land-rich and cash-poor”. The War of 1812, and the subsequent recession headed by the Panic of 1819, along with buyer demand dispersing towards western territory expansion deflated land prices in The Original Colonies. Jefferson hoped a public auction of Monticello would satisfy his debts after his death. Then, as now, the relationship between landownership and financial success was not always as straightforward as theory suggested.
James Madison approached the issue as a political thinker. In his 1792 essay Property, (a great read!) he wrote that “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort.” That sentiment also helps explain why questions of ownership appear so often in the early history of the United States. Property was not a peripheral concern; to Madison the protection of it was one of government’s central purposes.
Even Benjamin Franklin, whose legacy is often associated with science, invention, and diplomacy, understood the economic power of ownership. Like many of his contemporaries, he joined land ventures and recognized the opportunities a growing nation offered to those willing to invest in its future.
I’ve come to appreciate that many of the Founders viewed land holdings not as an abstract theory, but as a practical challenge. They surveyed it, invested in it, inherited it, borrowed against it, disputed it, and worried about it. Their understanding of ownership was shaped as much by experience as by philosophy.
That may help explain why property rights became such a durable feature of the American system. The people building the nation's institutions were not writing theoretical rules for someone else's benefit. They were trying to create a framework for problems and benefits they knew firsthand.
As I was putting the finishing touches on this piece, I happened to watch an interview with filmmaker Ken Burns about his documentary on the American Revolution. One exchange caught my attention. While discussing the forces driving the Revolution, Burns remarked that the struggle was ultimately over "the prize of North America." When asked what he meant by "the prize," his answer was simple: "The land." The more I study America's founding, the harder it becomes to separate the story of our nation from the story of land ownership itself.
As we celebrate Independence Day this week, I find myself viewing the Founders a little differently. Beyond the speeches, documents, and monuments were individuals trying to make sense of opportunity, ownership, risk, and responsibility in a rapidly changing country. In that respect, they were not quite as distant from our world as they sometimes seem.
I hope you have a wonderful Fourth of July.
Until next time,
Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC
Click here for more Tuesdays with Mary