CHAPTER II

Revolution, and which were regarded with astonishment, ceased to exist. The landed interests, however, remained paramount for several decades after the Revolution by reason of the acceleration which long possession and its profits had given them. Washington's fortune, amounting at his death, to $530,000, was one of the largest in the country and consisted mainly of land. He owned 9,744 acres, valued at $10 an acre, on the Ohio River in Virginia, 3,075 acres, worth $200,000, on the Great Kenawa, and also land elsewhere in Virginia and in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Kentucky, the City of Washington and other places.²⁰ About half a century later it was only by persistent gatherings of public contributions that his very home was saved to the nation, so had his estate become divided and run down. After a long career, Benjamin Franklin acquired what was considered a large fortune. But it did not come from manufacture or invention, which he did so much to encourage, but from land. His estate in 1788, two years before his death, was estimated to be worth $150,000, mostly in land.²¹ By the opening decades of the nineteenth century few of the great estates in