West Ford (ca. 1784-1863)

E-160

West Ford, born enslaved in the household of George Washington’s brother John Augustine, was brought to live at Mount Vernon ca. 1802. Taught to read, write, and do arithmetic, he became a skilled carpenter and was freed at the age of 21. For more than 50 years he was a plantation manager at Mount Vernon, becoming well known in the area. Ford inherited more than 100 acres from Bushrod Washington in 1829; he sold the property and bought 214 acres here in 1833. This land became the nucleus of a vibrant free African American community that continued to expand after the Civil War. Ford, the “Father of Gum Springs” and one of the wealthiest Black men in Fairfax County, died at Mount Vernon in 1863.

Department of Historic Resources, 2022

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Alexandria Gazette, 19 June 1850, 31 July 1863. Harpers New Monthly Magazine, March 1959. Fairfax County Deed Book A-3:331-333. Fairfax County Deed Book E-3: 249. “West Ford,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/west-ford/ Judith Saunders-Burton, “A History of Gum Springs, Virginia: A Report of a Case Study of Leadership in a Black Enclave” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1986). John Terry Chase, “The Triumph of a Black Community” (Fairfax, VA, 1990). Henry S. Robinson, “Who Was West Ford?,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 66, no. 2 (summer 1981), 167-174. Linda Allen Bryant, I Cannot Tell a Lie: The True Story of George Washington’s African American Descendants (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2004). Mary V. Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019).