Excerpt from The Last Will and Testament of George Washington and Schedule of His Property: To Which Is Appended the Last Will and Testament of Martha Washington There were two Wills existent when Washing ton was stricken with his fatal illness, and it is possible that one of these was the Will made in Philadelphia in the year 1775, just before the Gen eral started for Cambridge to take command of the Continental Army; but we have small grounds of surmise as to the provisions of the destroyed instrument or the date of-its making. One of Lear's accounts of Washington's death relates that the General sent Mrs. Washington down to his room (the library) to get two Wills from his desk. He selected one, which he said was worth less and requested her to burn it, which she did; the other (the Will herewith) Mrs. Washington placed in her closet. Washington died, Saturday night, December 14, 1799, between ten and eleven o'clock, and his Will was probated in the County Court of Fairfax, then holden in Alexandria, January 10, 1800. By a peculiar combination of circumstances the Will was thus probated within the boundaries of the seat of government of the Nation which George Washington had contributed so largely to create and found; Alexandria being then (and until the year 1801) in the District of Columbia, and not in either Virginia or Fairfax County. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.