The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association

The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association is a non-profit organization that preserves and maintains the Mount Vernon estate originally owned by George Washington.

After the deaths of George Washington (in 1799) and his widow Martha (in 1802), Mount Vernon remained in the family for three generations. John Augustine Washington, Jr., a great-great-nephew of George Washington, eventually became owner of the property, but had insufficient funds to maintain it. By the 1850s the home was beginning to crumble. However, John Washington would not sell to commercial developers and insisted that the new owner preserve Mount Vernon as an historic site.

He offered to sell the estate to either the Federal government or the Commonwealth of Virginia, but the legislatures declined, saying it would not be proper to spend tax-payers' money to acquire private property.

In 1853, South Carolina socialite Louise Dalton Bird Cunningham saw Washington's home in poor condition. She wrote her daughter, Ann Pamela Cunningham, saying

If the men of America have seen fit to allow the home of its most respected hero to go to ruin, why can't the women of America band together to save it?

She also wrote a letter to the editor of a South Carolina newspaper appealing to American women to come to the rescue of Mount Vernon. She founded the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and invited influential women from each state (there were 30 at that time) to serve as its original Vice-Regents. It was the first nationwide women's organization in America.

Miss Cunningham and the Association launched a nationwide fund raising effort. The initial intent was for the Association to raise the money, which would be deposited in Richmond to allow Virginia to purchase the property and then assign care of the estate to the Association. However, that arrangement proved unworkable. When, in March 1858, Virginia's House of Delegates defeated a bill for the purchase of Mt. Vernon, John Washington agreed to sell directly to the Association and the contract was signed in Richmond on April 6, 1858: the gold pen used by Miss Cunningham to sign remains in the possession of the Association. The agreement was to sell the Mansion, outbuildings and 200 surrounding acres to the Association for $200,000, with an immediate down payment of $18,000 and the balance to be paid in four installments, payable on February 22 (Washington's birthday) each of the next four years.Edward Everett and William Lowndes Yancey went on speaking tours to raise money. The Association raised the capital in about 18-months, announcing it had met its goal in mid-December 1859. The Association, in a symbolic gesture, took formal possession on Washington's birthday, when John A. Washington and his family moved out of the Mansion on February 22, 1860. To demonstrate the nationwide scope of the organization on the eve of war between North and South, the Association appended their name to The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union.

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