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
George Washington
George Washington: map
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.
