Twine, Sall

George first came to Mount Vernon in the 1770s. He was owned by Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, who lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia. For a decade, Washington rented him, paying his mother for the use of the young man’s labor. While living at Mount Vernon, George married Sall Twine, a field-worker who worked Dogue Run Farm. She was owned by the estate of Martha Washington's first husband. By 1786 the couple had three children together.

All enslaved people lived with the knowledge that they could be separated from family at any time, but George’s position since he was rented was especially tenuous. In 1787 Washington wrote to his mother that he hoped to stop hiring any of her enslaved workers except for George, who, Washington wrote, “will not, as he has formed connections in this neighborhood, leave it, as experience has proved him I will hire.”3 By this point, Washington’s moral qualms made him reluctant to separate enslaved families, and so he acquiesced to George’s request.

When she died in 1789, Mary Ball Washington left her “Negroe Boy George” to her eldest son in her will, ensuring that George and Sall’s family would stay together, at least temporarily.4 Proximity was relative, however. Because George was stationed at Mansion House Farm and Sall was a field-worker at Dogue Run, the couple lived apart during the week. George was allowed to visit his wife and children on Sundays.

The couple went on to have seven children: Jesse, Kate, Lawrence, Barbary, Abbay, Hannah, and George.