Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1877 — The Shortest Deed on Record. [ARTICLE]

The Shortest Deed on Record.

Scrihnkr, for May, contains a paper of " Reminiscences of Washington,” train unpublished family records. Among the anecdotes of Washington there related is the following : In August, 1796, after a few delightful days spent with their distinguished relatives, Capt. Lewis relates that the following conversation took place at the breakfast table the morning fixed for their departure. % Washington was, as all the world knows, a man of few words, aod, while he quietly partook of his frugal meal, tho conversation flowed cheerlully on between the other members of the family (iresent. Suddenly his nephew turned, augbing, to him, and said: “ Uncle, what do you think I dreamed last night 7” The General replied he could not guess, and asked to be told. Oapt. Lewis, continuing to laugh merrily, replied; “ Why, I dreamed you gave me your farm on Deep Run." “Humph!” ejaculated his uncle. “You had better have dreamed I gave you Mount Vernon.” No more was Baid on the subject, and Capt. Lewis had quite forgotten his unmeaning dream as he placed his wife in the carriage, and bade his uncle and aunt good-by. Washington followed him to the carriage, and handed him a folded paper, saying, as lie did so: “You can look at that when you reach home.” Capt. Lewis received the paper in astonishment, but could make no reply, as the carriage now rolled swittly afvay. He might have felt in duty bound to suffer the pangs of curiosity until he reached home; but his wife bad no such conscientious scruples; she had not been forbidden to open it, and so she soon succeeded in gaining possession of tbe mysterious paper, and before Mount Vernon was lost in the distance she discovered the fact that they had left that modest dwelling much richer than they were when they entered it. Whether Washington had intended to bestow the Deep Run farm in his will upon his nephiviid u*ily hofliCiiGd ifet £***} or whether, with the quiet humor in which he rarely indulged, he thus proved the dream of which he had been told a practical reality, was never known. The deed is said to be the shortest on record, and is as follows: “ I do by these presents give, and (if Deed of Conveyance should notliave been made before) hereby oblige my heirs, Executors and Administrators to fulfill, all tbe Lands which I hold on Deep Run, or its branches in the County of Fauquier, unto my Nephew Robert Lewis and to his heirs or assigns forever. “Given under my hand and seal this 13th day of August, 1796. “ Go. Washington.” [szal.]