Early planters' enterprises were a factor in Virginia's industrial development

by Paul Levengood
for Virginia Business
December 2006

George Washington played many roles in his public life - legislator, soldier and politician - but his private life as a

Virginia planter was just as varied.

Early Virginia plantations were sophisticated business enterprises, and planters like Washington wore many hats. They were, by necessity, agriculturists whose skill with the temperamental tobacco plant largely determined their success. After raising, harvesting, and curing a tobacco crop, many large planters also were deeply involved in its marketing and sales.

They often dealt personally with consignment merchants in London or Bristol to get the highest price. This meant that successful planters had to be attuned to the economic and political currents of the Atlantic world, sensitive to developments that might affect the price of their tobacco could command or what they would need to pay for European goods.

This sophisticated business sense led many planters to diversify their economic activities. Much of the beginnings of industrialism in early Virginia owed itself to their investment. Planters established iron forges, mills, brickworks, and shipyards.

With their need to transport agricultural produce, planters also were primary investors in such transportation initiatives as canals, turnpikes and eventually railroads. And through their involvement in land speculation, Virginia planters played a vital role in opening the territory west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Washington provides us with a striking example of the planter as businessman. In the 1760s the future president realized that Mount Vernon's tobacco failed to command a high price, and he switched to wheat production.

With the profits from his new, less-demanding cash crop, Washington built a commercial grist mill, went into the shad-fishing business, bought thousands of acres of western land, and invested in the James River Co., which sought to connect the James with the Ohio via a canal.

After his retirement from the presidency, Washington tried one other business venture, making whiskey. His rye whiskey distillery produced nearly 11,000 gallons in 1799, which he sold for $7,674, more than $120,000 in today's money. A reproduction of the distillery was dedicated at Mount Vernon this fall.

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Paul Levengood is managing editor of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. He also serves as the program coordinator of the Reynolds Business History Center, which opened in July as part of the VHS 175th anniversary celebrations. For more information, go to www.vahistorical.org.