YOUNG GEORGE WASHINGTON WRITES TO SALLY FAIRFAX, HIS REPUTED FIRST GREAT LOVE

THE ONLY SURVIVING AUTOGRAPH LETTER TO HER IN PRIVATE HANDS

“…how easy is it to remove my suspicions, enliven my Spirits, and make me happier than the Day is long; by honouring me with a correspondence which you did once partly promise to do…”

GEORGE WASHINGTON. 1 page, approximately 7 x 8¾ in., signed at close “Yr most Obedt & most Hble Servt / Go: Washington,” dated “Fort Cumberland at Wills Creek / 7th of June 1755”; with expected folds, overall toning, edge wear and old losses at the left margin not affecting the text, later carefully stabilized at separations and along the left edge. Accompanied by an exceptional provenance and research group, including: a manuscript and typed memorandum by Constance Cary Harrison, New York, 18 February 1889; a note from C. P. Greenough to Thorndike concerning the purchase of “the Washington letter”; a typed letter on Library of Congress, Division of Manuscripts letterhead from J. Franklin Jameson to Albert Thorndike, 19 November 1930; and later Boston newspaper clippings recording the letter’s ownership and public notice.

Provenance: Charles P. Greenough of Boston, Massachusetts (pre-1876); The Thorndike family, Boston, 1876; Samuel Lothrop Thorndike, Boston, by 1898, when the letter was communicated to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts; Albert Thorndike, Boston, by 1930; thereafter with the accompanying historical dossier.

Among the most personal survivals of George Washington’s early life, this 1755 letter reveals an intimate and unexpectedly vulnerable side of the future president. Written from Fort Cumberland during General Edward Braddock’s 1755 expedition, it finds the twenty-three-year-old Washington addressing Sarah Cary Fairfax, the wife of his close friend George William Fairfax, in a tone that is unmistakably bashful. It appears this was at least the third letter he had sent in hopes of drawing her into a private correspondence, and his language is by turns deferential, teasing, and emotionally exposed. 

Of the ten surviving letters Washington is known to have written to Sally Fairfax, two survive only as copies in his letterbooks. Of the eight surviving autograph letters signed, one original each is held by the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Boston Public Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Of the remaining three, one survives only as a letterpress copy at the Library of Congress, and another is known through its reproduction in George Washington Letters from the Collection of Frederick S. Peck (1927). This letter is therefore the only autograph letter signed from Washington to Sally Fairfax known to remain in private hands.

Complete Transcript:

Dear Madam,

When I had the happiness to see you last, you express'd an Inclination to be informd of my safe arrival In camp, with the charge that was entrusted to my care, But at the same time desird it might be communicated in a Letter to some body of your acquaintance: This I took as a gentle rebuke and polite manner of forbidding my corresponding with you: and conceive this opinion is not illy founded, when I reflect that I have hitherto found it impractacable to engage one moment of your attention. If I am right in this, I hope you will excuse the present presumption, and lay the imputation to elateness at my successful arrival: If on the Contrary these are fearful apprehensions only, how easy is it to remove my suspicions, enliven my Spirits, and make me happier than the Day is long; by honouring me with a corrispondance which you did once partly promise to do. please to make my Compliments to Miss Hannah, and to Mr Bryan to whom I shall do myself the pleasure of writing, so soon as I hear he is returned from Westmoreland. I am Madam.

Yr most Obedt
& most Hble Servt
Go Washington
Fort Cumberland at Will's Creek
7th of June 1755

George Washington’s relationship with Sally Fairfax was one of the most intriguing and emotionally charged of his early life. As a young man, Washington became a frequent visitor at Belvoir, the elegant plantation seat of the Fairfax family, after his half-brother Lawrence Washington married Ann Fairfax in 1743. There he came into close contact with Sarah Cary Fairfax- beautiful, cultivated, socially accomplished, and two years his senior. Sally would marry  George William Fairfax in 1748, though Washington’s attachment to her appears to have endured long after her marriage.

Washington wrote at least nine letters to Sally Fairfax between 1755 and 1758, and this June 7, 1755 letter is generally counted as the third in that sequence. In earlier letters he had already attempted to encourage a correspondence; here, however, his tone becomes more pressing and more personal. He teasingly complains that her request that news of his safe arrival be conveyed through someone else amounted to “a gentle rebuke” and “a polite manner of forbidding my corresponding with you.” He then presses further, asking how easily she might “remove my suspicions, enliven my Spirits, and make me happier than the Day is long” by honoring him with the correspondence she had “once partly promise[d] to do.” The letter is playful and unmistakably written with feeling.

That feeling did not dissipate quickly. In later letters to Sally Fairfax, Washington wrote in even more suggestive terms. Writing again from Fort Cumberland in September 1758, he confessed himself “a Votary to Love,” acknowledged that “a Lady is in the Case,” and declared that she was “known to you.” Whether those lines referred to Sally herself or to Martha Custis, whom he would marry a few months later, has long been debated. Yet Washington’s final surviving letter to Sally, written in May 1798, leaves little doubt as to the depth of her place in his memory. Reflecting on decades past, he told her that none of the events of his life had been able to erase “the recollection of those happy moments—the happiest of my life—which I have enjoyed in your company.”

This letter was written at a dramatic moment in Washington’s early military career. In the summer of 1755, General Edward Braddock led a force of British regulars and colonial troops westward in an effort to seize the French stronghold at Fort Duquesne, at the forks of the Ohio. As commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, Braddock was mounting the principal British offensive in what became known in America as the French and Indian War, the North American theater of the global Seven Years’ War.

Washington, recently promoted lieutenant colonel of the Virginia Regiment, served on the expedition as a volunteer aide-de-camp to Braddock. On May 15, 1755, Braddock sent him from Fort Cumberland to eastern Virginia to secure funds for the campaign from deputy paymaster William Johnston. During that journey, Washington passed through Fairfax County and saw Sally Fairfax. By the end of May, he had returned to Fort Cumberland. Three days after writing the present letter, he marched west with Braddock’s army.

The campaign soon turned disastrous. On July 9, 1755, near the Monongahela River, Braddock’s column was ambushed by French forces and their Native allies. Braddock was mortally wounded, and the British force collapsed into chaos. Washington, despite illness during the march and despite having two horses shot from under him and four bullets pass through his coat, helped rally a rear guard and organize the retreat, earning lasting fame for his conduct under fire. The experience transformed his reputation and formed one of the foundational episodes of his public life. This letter, written only weeks before that catastrophe, captures Washington at a far more intimate remove: not yet the marble figure of national memory, but a young provincial officer in the field.

Sarah “Sally” Cary Fairfax (1730–1811) was born into one of Virginia’s most distinguished families. In 1748 she married George William Fairfax (1724–1787), heir to Belvoir and one of Washington’s closest early companions. The Fairfaxes played an important role in Washington’s social ascent in colonial Virginia, introducing him to the manners, expectations, and connections of the colony’s highest circles. Sally, in particular, seems to have exercised a singular hold over Washington’s imagination. Some have even suggested that it was his hope of making himself worthy of Sally’s notice that motivated him to improve his station.

The present letter also references Miss Hannah Fairfax and Mr. Bryan Fairfax. Hannah Fairfax (1742–1804), the youngest child of William Fairfax and Deborah Clarke Fairfax, later married Warner Washington, George Washington’s first cousin. Bryan Fairfax (1736–1802), Sally’s brother-in-law and another intimate of Washington’s early life, remained his lifelong friend despite political differences during the Revolution. He would eventually inherit the title of 8th Lord Fairfax of Cameron.

Altogether, this letter offers a striking glimpse into the emotional life of a young George Washington at the outset of his rise: a rare private document of longing and restraint, written on the eve of one of the most consequential military disasters of the colonial era. As the only autograph letter signed from Washington to Sally Fairfax still known in private hands, it is a manuscript of the highest personal and historical interest.

Selected references:

Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 2: Letterbooks 1754–1799, letterbook copy of “To Mrs. George William Fairfax,” 7 June 1755.

Abbot, W. W., et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 1: 1748–August 1755. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Fitzpatrick, John C., ed. The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. 39 vols. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1931–1944.

Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 5 (1897–1898), “Communication by Samuel Lothrop Thorndike, of an early letter of Washington, hitherto unpublished,” with “Memorandum by Constance Cary Harrison.”

Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia: “Sally Fairfax,” “Fairfax Family,” “George Washington’s Friends,” and “Battle of the Monongahela.”

Preston, David L. Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Henriques, Peter R. Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.

Fraser, Flora. The Washingtons: George and Martha, Partners in Friendship and Love. New York: Knopf, 2015.