A FARMER'S RECORDS AND OTHER PAPERS Washington was the most methodical man that ever lived.

He had a place for everything and insisted that everything should be kept in its place.
There was nothing haphazard about his methods of business.

He kept exact accounts of financial dealings.
His habit of setting things down on paper was one that developed early.
He kept a journal of his surveying experiences beyond the Blue Ridge in 1748, another of his trip to Barbadoes with his brother Lawrence in 1751-52, another of his trip to Fort Le Boeuf to warn out the French, and yet another of his Fort Necessity campaign.

The words are often misspelled, many expressions are ungrammatical, but the handwriting is good and the judgments expressed, even those set down when he was only sixteen, are the mature judgments of a man.
A year after his marriage he began a formal diary, which he continued until June 19, 1775, the time of his appointment to command the army of the Revolution.

He called it his _Diary_ and later _Where, & how my time is Spent_.