sentences:  Although the law did not recognize slave marriages, Washington did, and by 1799 some two-thirds of the adult slaves at Mount Vernon were married.To minimize time lost in getting to the workplace and thus increase productivity, slaves were accommodated at the farm on which they worked.Because of the unequal distribution of males and females across the five farms, slaves often found partners on different farms, and in their day-to-day lives husbands were routinely separated from their wives and children.