Ambassador George C. McGhee and His Farm at Farmer's Delight

Who was George C. McGhee, and why is a Virginia farm called Farmer's Delight tied to his name? McGhee (1912 to 2005) was a Texas geologist who made a fortune in oil and then became an American diplomat under four presidents. In 1948 he bought Farmer's Delight, a brick house from the 1790s in Loudoun County, Virginia. After he left public service it became his home.

One point needs saying up front. This blog shares the estate's name, but it is not connected to the property or to the McGhee Foundation, and it does not speak for either. Everything below comes from published sources, which are linked.

According to the McGhee Foundation's biography, McGhee was born in Waco, Texas, on March 10, 1912. His father was a bank executive. He earned a geology degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1933. He then won a Rhodes Scholarship, a scholarship that pays for study at Oxford University, on his second attempt, and he finished an Oxford doctorate in 1937.

In 1940 he founded McGhee Production Company, an independent oil exploration firm. "Independent" here means a small company that finds and drills its own fields rather than working inside a major oil corporation. He married Cecilia DeGolyer, and the marriage lasted 63 years, until her death in 2001. They had six children.

During World War II, McGhee served as a naval air intelligence officer under General Curtis E. LeMay. He joined the State Department in 1946 and served under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.

He held two ambassadorships. As ambassador to Turkey from 1951 to 1953, he helped Turkey enter NATO. As ambassador to West Germany from 1963 to 1968, he was in Berlin for President Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. He photographed much of this: his travel slides at the University of Oklahoma number more than 46,000.

The house was old long before McGhee arrived. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources dates it to about 1791 and says it was built for Joseph Lane, a member of the General Assembly. The department ranks it among Loudoun County's oldest brick buildings. Its walls are laid in Flemish bond, a pattern that alternates the long and short faces of the bricks in each row. The Leith family owned the house from 1856 to 1919.

The sources say McGhee made substantial improvements. The Wikipedia entry says he gave the estate back its original historic name, added wings to the house, and laid out the grounds as an English-style garden. It lists 20 acres of formal gardens, 162 trees from 122 species, and a boxwood maze. Journey Through Hallowed Ground says the farm became his principal residence after he retired in the late 1960s. He filled it with books and objects from his travels.

The tree count is the figure a gardener will notice. With 122 species on 162 trees, most species appear only once or twice. A planting like that is closer to a tree collection than a shade row.

The published record on this point is thin. Journey Through Hallowed Ground describes the property as a working farm that still keeps its landscapes and its views to the east and west. Middleburg Life, writing about the Land Trust of Virginia's 2023 awards, reports that Dr. Betsee Parker made "the conservation purchase" of the estate on Mountville Road. Her stated aim was to keep land like this attractive to wildlife that needs refuge.

That article gives no date, acreage or easement terms for the purchase. A recorded conservation easement, which is a legal limit on how land may be developed, would answer those questions. None of the sources above describes one.