George Washington

PLAN:

1. 
   George Washington's life
   
2. 
   Childhood and youth
   
3. 
   The Farmer, George Washington
   
4. 
   Prerevolutionary military and political career of George Washington
   

George Washington, also called Father of
His Country, (born February 22 [February 11,
Old Style], 1732, Westmoreland county, Virginia
[U.S.]—died December 14, 1799, Mount Vernon,
Virginia, U.S.), American general and
commander in chief of the colonial armies in the
American Revolution (1775–83) and
subsequently first president of the United States
(1789–97).
Washington’s father, Augustine Washington,
had gone to school in England, tasted seafaring
life, and then settled down to manage his
growing Virginia estates. His mother was Mary
Ball, whom Augustine, a widower, had married
early the previous year. Washington’s paternal
lineage had some distinction; an early forebear
was described as a “gentleman,” Henry VIII
later gave the family lands, and its members
held various offices. But family fortunes fell with
the Puritan revolution in England, and John
Washington, grandfather of Augustine, migrated
in 1657 to Virginia. The ancestral home at
Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, is maintained as a
Washington memorial. Little definite
information exists on any of the line until
Augustine. He was an energetic, ambitious man
who acquired much land, built mills, took an
interest in opening iron mines, and sent his two
eldest sons to England for schooling. By his first
wife, Jane Butler, he had four children. By his
second wife, Mary Ball, he had six. Augustine
died April 12, 1743.
Childhood and youth
Little is known of George Washington’s early
childhood, spent largely on the Ferry Farm on
the Rappahannock River, opposite
Fredericksburg, Virginia. Mason L. Weems’s
stories of the hatchet and cherry tree and of
young Washington’s repugnance to fighting are
apocryphal efforts to fill a manifest gap. He
attended school irregularly from his 7th to his
15th year, first with the local church sexton and
later with a schoolmaster named Williams.
Some of his schoolboy papers survive. He was
fairly well trained in practical mathematics—
gauging, several types of mensuration, and such
trigonometry as was useful in surveying. He
studied geography, possibly had a little Latin,
and certainly read some of The Spectator and
other English classics. The copybook in which
he transcribed at 14 a set of moral precepts, or
Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in
Company and Conversation, was carefully
preserved. His best training, however, was given
him by practical men and outdoor occupations,
not by books. He mastered tobacco growing and
stock raising, and early in his teens he was
sufficiently familiar with surveying to plot the
fields about him.
At his father’s death, the 11-year-old boy became
the ward of his half brother Lawrence, a man of
fine character who gave him wise and
affectionate care. Lawrence inherited the
beautiful estate of Little Hunting Creek, which
had been granted to the original settler, John
Washington, and which Augustine had done
much since 1738 to develop. Lawrence married
Anne (Nancy) Fairfax, daughter of Col. William
Fairfax, a cousin and agent of Lord Fairfax and
one of the chief proprietors of the region.
Lawrence also built a house and named the
2,500-acre (1,000-hectare) holding Mount
Vernon in honour of the admiral under whom
he had served in the siege of Cartagena. Living
there chiefly with Lawrence (though he spent
some time near Fredericksburg with his other
half brother, Augustine, called Austin), George
entered a more spacious and polite world. Anne
Fairfax Washington was a woman of charm,
grace, and culture; Lawrence had brought from
his English school and naval service much
knowledge and experience. A valued neighbour
and relative, George William Fairfax, whose
large estate, Belvoir, was about 4 miles (6 km)
distant, and other relatives by marriage, the
Carlyles of Alexandria, helped form George’s
mind and manners.
The youth turned first to surveying as a
profession. Lord Fairfax, a middle-aged
bachelor who owned more than 5,000,000 acres
(2,000,000 hectares) in northern Virginia and
the Shenandoah Valley, came to America in
1746 to live with his cousin George William at
Belvoir and to look after his properties. Two
years later he sent to the Shenandoah Valley a