John Augustine Washington III and Eleanor Love Selden correspondence

John Augustine Washington III (1821-1861): John Augustine Washington was the great-grandnephew of George Washington and the last Washington to own Mount Vernon before its sale to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (MVLA). He was born on May 3, 1821 to John Augustine Washington II and Jane Charlotte Blackburn Washington. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1840, and returned to Mount Vernon to manage the declining estate with his widowed mother’s permission. In 1843, he married Eleanor Love Selden with whom he had seven children. He sold 200 acres of Mount Vernon to the MVLA in 1858 for $200,000, and he and his family moved to Waveland plantation in Fauquier County, Virginia in 1860. He served as aide-de-camp to General Robert E. Lee, but was shot by a bushwhacker and died one week later on September 13, 1861.

Eleanor Love Selden Washington (1824-1860): Born April 12, 1824 to Wilson Cary Selden and Louisa Elizabeth Fontaine Alexander Selden, “Nelly” married John Augustine Washington III on February 16, 1843. Together, they had seven children: Louisa, Jane Charlotte (“Jenny”), Eliza (“Lily”), Anna Maria, Lawrence, Eleanor (“Nelly”), and George. She died from childbirth October 9, 1860.