Different climates and geographic regions pose their own difficulties for the farmer — challenges related to weather or soil, predators or plants. In much of the east coast of the United States, one of the great challenges facing farmers was the abundance of trees. Unlike the Great Plains, where trees are rare, the east coast was and remains home to many dense forests. For the farmer, trees were valuable for their lumber, of course, but the ornery stumps left behind were an impediment to the cultivation of fields.

As a farmer, George Washington was intimately familiar with the nuisance of stumps. He was also an agricultural innovator who paid close attention to the latest scientific theories and technological advances. So it is no surprise to find among his letters this note, sent from Mount Vernon on February 13, 1764 to Robert Cary & Co., his purchasing agents in London:

We have been curiously entertained of late with the description of an Engine lately constructed (I beleive in Switzerland, and undergone some Improvements since in England) for taking up Trees by the Roots—among other things it is related that Trees of considerable Diameter are forced up by this Engine—that Six hands in working one of them will raise two or three hundred Trees in the space of a day—and that an Acre of Ground may be eased of the Trees and laid fit for Plowing in the same time—How far these assertions have been amply reallized by repeated experiments it is impossible for me at this distance to determine but if the accounts are not greatly exaggerated such powerful assistance must be of vast utility in many parts of this wooden Country where it is impossible for our Force (and labourers are not to be hired here) between the finishing of one Crop and preparations for another to clear Grounds fast enough to afford the proper changes either in the Planting or Farming business—The chief purport of this Letter therefore is to beg the favour of you Gentlemen to make minute enquiries into the Tryals that have been made by order of the Society and if they have prooved satisfactory to send me one of these Engines by the first Ship bound to this River (Potomack)—If they are made of different sizes, I shoud prefer one of a middle Size, capable of raising a tree of 15 or 18 Inches Diameter—The Costs I am pretty much a stranger to 15, 20, & 25 Guineas have been spoké of but the Price (were it dble that) I shoud totally disregard provided the Engine is capable of performing what is related of it, and not of that complicated nature to be easily disordered, and rendered unfit for use, but constructed upon so plain, simple, and durable a Plan that the common Artificers of this Country may be able to set them to rights if any accidents shoud happen to them—If you shoud send one be so good as to let me have with it the most ample direction’s for the effectual using of it, together with a model of its manner of operating.

It isn't clear how Washington heard about the stump-removing machine; nor is it clear whether the machine actually existed. (A machine capable of removing "two or three hundred" trees in a single day would probably require tools, power, and portability that had not yet been invented in his day.) We have no record of his ever having received such a machine, nor any response from his agents.