Harrison Howell Dodge (March 31, 1852 – May 20, 1937) was the third resident superintendent of George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon. During his 52 years overseeing the estate, he doubled the facility's acreage, improved the grounds and added many historic artifacts to the collections there. Early and family life Dodge was born on March 31, 1852, in Washington, D.C. Being underage during the American Civil War, he assisted on his uncle's farm in Maryland during the conflict. Dodge graduated from Columbian College, which was later renamed George Washington University. Banking and clerical careers After graduating from college, Dodge worked in the Wall Street banking house of Jay Cooke & Company, until that firmed collapsed during the Panic of 1873. He returned to Washington, D.C., where he spent 1874 indexing the Congressional Record. He worked from 1874 to 1877 with commissioners of a sinking fund before accepting a position at Riggs & Co. (1877-1885). There, the longtime clerk gained a reputation for meticulous accounts, which helped him gain the position which Dodge held for the next five decades. Superintendent In 1885, the regents of The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA) appointed Dodge as the successor of John McHenry Hollingsworth, who had succeeded MVLA founder Ann Pamela Cunningham in 1872. The nationwide depression in 1882-1883 caused tourism to drop. The non-resident Hollingsworth's means of addressing the revenue drop alienated first the staff (which also had to deal with vandalism and natural deterioration of the wet historic site), then the MVLA regents. However, his departure proved messier than Cunningham's exit. Dodge also succeeded Hollingsworth as postmaster for the Mount Vernon post office. President of the United States Grover Cleveland appointed Dodge to the latter position and successive Presidents reappointed him until his death. While managing Mt. Vernon, in addition to his primary duties of handling visitors to the historic site and managing the farm, Dodge reviewed George Washington's writings about the estate. Dodge also visited other Colonial-era gardens, and traveled to England to see gardens there dating from the Georgian period. Using this knowledge, Dodge oversaw the restoration of the site and put in place a number of improvements that Washington had planned but never implemented. Dodge and then-assistant superintendent Charles Wall, who had been hired in 1929, rotated turns sleeping as guard in the manor house. Dodge's 1932 book Mount Vernon: Its Owner and Its Story, with an introduction by Owen