GEORGE
WASHINGTON
George Washington was one of the greatest presidents ever
maybe even the greatest. George Washington was the first president of the
United States of America
As a
teenager George Washington was very eager to learn a new and important trade,
George Washington read mathematical texts to learn the geometric principles
necessary for surveying. At seventeen years of age and largely through the
Fairfax influence that he had cultivated, Washington secured an appointment as
county surveyor for the newly created frontier county of Culpeper, Virginia. He
was well on his way to a successful and profitable career. Not only did he
receive substantial fees fur surveying, but he discovered firsthand an ability
to identify and select the best plots of land for purchase, an especially
important consideration in colonial America, where land equaled power.
Washington's ancestors were from Sulgrave, England; his great-grandfather, John Washington, had emigrated to Virginia in 1657. George's
father Augustine was a slave-owning tobacco planter who later tried his hand in
iron-mining ventures. In George's
youth, the Washingtons were moderately prosperous members of the Virginia gentry, of "middling rank" rather
than one of the leading planter families. At
this time, Virginia and other southern colonies had become a slave society, in
which slaveholders formed the ruling class and the economy was based on slave
labor.
Six of George's siblings reached maturity, including two older
half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, from
his father's first marriage to Jane Butler Washington, and four full siblings,
Samuel, Elizabeth (Betty), John Augustine and Charles. Three siblings died
before becoming adults: his full sister Mildred died when she was about one, his half-brother Butler died while an
infant, and his half-sister Jane
died at the age of 12, when George was about 2. George's father died when George was
11 years old, after which George's half-brother Lawrence became a surrogate
father and role model. William Fairfax, Lawrence's father-in-law and cousin of Virginia's largest landowner, Thomas, Lord
Fairfax, was also a
formative influence.
The death of his father prevented Washington from crossing the Atlantic to receive the rest of his education at
England's Appleby School, as his older brothers had done. He received the
equivalent of an elementary school education from a variety of tutors, and also a school run by an Anglican
clergyman in or near Fredericksburg. Talk
of securing an appointment in the Royal Navy for him when he was 15 was dropped when
his widowed mother objected. Thanks
to Lawrence's connection to the powerful Fairfax family, at age 17 in 1749,
Washington was appointed official surveyor for Culpeper County, a well-paid position which enabled him to purchase land in the Shenandoah Valley, the first of his many land acquisitions in western Virginia. Thanks also
to Lawrence's involvement in the Ohio Company, a land investment company funded by Virginia investors, and Lawrence's
position as commander of the Virginia militia, Washington came to the notice of
the new lieutenant governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie. Washington was hard to miss: At exactly six feet, he towered over most
of his contemporaries.
In 1751, Washington travelled to Barbados with Lawrence, who was suffering from tuberculosis, with the hope that the climate would be beneficial to Lawrence's health.
Washington contracted smallpox during the trip, which left his face
slightly scarred, but immunized him against future exposures to the dreaded
disease. Lawrence's health did
not improve; he returned to Mount Vernon, where he died in 1752. Lawrence's position as Adjutant
General (militia leader) of Virginia was divided into four offices after his
death. Washington was appointed by Governor Dinwiddie as one of the four
district adjutants in February 1753, with the rank of major in the Virginia
militia. Washington also joined
the Freemasons fraternal
association in Fredericksburg at this time.
