It was amazing how the settlers between the Potomac and the Rappahannock Rivers in Virginia progressed. They had not come in any considerable number to that long peninsula until 1640 and after. A few were gentlemen of good descent; most were small farmers, artisans, clerks, tradesmen or adventurous younger sons of the middle classes who believed they would have a better chance in the new world than in the old. Many paid with their lives for their enterprise, but in spite of everything, the families increased fast and with no loss of vigor. The second generation began to buy luxuries from England and enjoyed larger leisure. Men of the third generation considered themselves aristocrats. Within seventy-five years a new and prosperous landed society had been organized.
In every part of the development of the Northern Neck men named Washington had a modest share. The first was John Washington who came early in 1657 as mate and voyage partner, aged about twenty-five, in the ketch Sea Horse of London. The son of an English clergyman who had been ousted from his parish by the Puritans in 1643, John had received decent schooling and, on making the voyage to Virginia, saw possibilities of self-advancement on the Northern Neck. Circumstance favored him. When the time came for the ketch to start home with a cargo of tobacco she ran aground and a winter storm sank her. Her tobacco was ruined, but there was a chance she could be raised, and John helped in getting her above water. During the time he was sharing in this task he made new friends, among them Nathaniel Pope, a well-to-do Marylander who had a marriageable daughter Anne. For this or other persuasive reasons, John prevailed on Edward Prescott, the master of the Sea Horse, to allow him to remain in Virginia. Anne Pope and her father both approved him. The father, in fact, was so hearty in his blessing of the union that when his daughter married John he gave her seven hundred acres of land and lent him £80 or more, with which to get a start.
In the autumn of 1659 a son was born to Anne and John Washington. The next spring Nathaniel Pope died and in his will cancelled the debt due him by John. John promptly began to acquire more land by importing servants whose “headrights” he could claim, by purchase, by original patent, and by taking up grants of deserted land. By 1668 he owned considerably more than five thousand acres. He sought and gained an ascending order of profitable offices and court appointments. His family increased with his honors and his acres, and in 1668, Anne, who had borne him five children, died. She was lamented, no doubt, but not so poignantly that John refused to seek a second wife, Anne Gerrard, who previously had married Walter Brodhurst and, after his death had been the wife of Henry Brett.
John’s eldest son and principal heir, Lawrence Washington, was born in September 1659 on the farm his grandfather had given Anne Pope on her union with John Washington. Apparently the boy was schooled in England. Soon after his father’s death in 1677, Lawrence was back in Virginia and was taking up some of the public duties his parent had discharged. He was Justice of the Peace before he reached his majority; at twenty-five he was a Burgess; thereafter came service as Sheriff. He did not marry until he was approximately twenty-seven, but then he found in Mildred Warner a wife of character and established position. Mildred’s father was Augustine Warner of Gloucester, Speaker of the House of Burgesses and a member of the Council. Economically Lawrence Washington began at a higher level than his father; socially he went further, but it was for a few years only. In his thirty-eighth year, 1698, Lawrence died.
At the time of his death, Lawrence Washington had three children, John, Augustine and Mildred. John was then almost seven years of age; Augustine was three; Mildred was an infant. Provision for them was not lavish but was adequate. Like his father, Lawrence had stipulated that his personal property be divided equally into four parts for his wife and the three children. During their minority, or until their marriage before they became of age, John, Augustine and Mildred were to remain under the care and tuition of their mother, who was to have the profits of their estates in order to pay for their support and schooling.
Mildred Washington probably remained a widow longer than was customary, but in the spring of 1700 she married George Gale. He took his wife, her children, and some of their possessions and migrated to England. Mildred was pregnant at the time and, following her arrival at White Haven, Cumberland, was stricken with a serious malady. A few days after her child was born, she made her will, January 26, 1701, and bequeathed £1000 to Gale. The balance of her estate she divided among him and her children. Care of the three young Washingtons was entrusted to the husband. Upon her demise, George Gale duly filed bond for the proper custody of the children and sent the boys to Appleby School, Westmoreland. There they might have remained, to be reared as young Englishmen, had not questions been raised across the Atlantic. Some of the Washingtons disputed Mildred’s will. They insisted that Lawrence had left to his children estates in which Gale had no legal interest. John Washington, Lawrence’s cousin and executor, put the question to counsel. The opinion of the lawyer was that Mildred could not bequeath the property, the income, or the custody of the children to her husband. As a result, within slightly less than twenty-four months, they were in the custody of the court and under the care of John Washington, the executor to whose diligence may be due the fact that they grew up as Virginians and not as residents of White Haven.
Augustine came of age in 1715. Gus, as he was called, was blond, of fine proportions and great physical strength and stood six feet in his stockings. His kindly nature matched his towering strength. Together, they made it easy for him to select a wife from among the daughters of the planters of Westmoreland. The girl who filled his eye returned his affection, and he was married, in 1715 or 1716, to Jane Butler. With Jane’s lands and other property to supplement his own holdings, Augustine began his married life as proprietor of more than 1740 acres. Like his father and his grandfather, he soon became a Justice of the Peace and took his seat on the bench of the county court; in the energetic spirit of the immigrant John, he began forthwith to trade in land.
Augustine was in the first heat of this acquisition of new land when the reappointment of Robert Carter as agent of the proprietary was followed by the Treaty of Albany. Not only “King” Carter himself, but also George Turberville, Mann Page, who was Carter’s son-in-law, Charles Carter, Robert Carter, Jr., George Eskridge and others of like station and speculative temper, took out patents for large acreage. Washington did not venture as far westward as these rich planters did, nor could he hope to equal the size of the tracts they acquired, but he caught so much of the speculative spirit that he extended himself to the limit of his means and perhaps beyond his resources.
First in interest to Jane and Augustine was the purchase in 1717 of land to add to the farm John the immigrant had acquired. Five years later, Augustine was prepared to build a new residence on the enlarged tract. The structure, finally occupied in 1726 or 1727 and later known as Wakefield, must have been a simple abode. Augustine Washington had too many uses for his money to build extravagantly. Next, a bargain seemed to be offered Augustine in the 2500 acres of land that represented Grandfather John Washington’s share of the land patented at the “freshes” of the Potomac opposite the Indian village of Piscataway. John had bequeathed this to Lawrence; Lawrence had left his holding to his daughter Mildred. Mildred and her husband were willing to sell this “Little Hunting Creek Tract” for £180 sterling. On May 17, 1726, the agreement was signed. By this purchase Augustine advanced his landed interests to a point within twenty-four miles, as the river ran, of the Great Falls of the Potomac, then the dividing line between the old and the new settlements.
The improvement of the Pope’s Creek property and the purchase of the Little Hunting Creek tract were by no means the end of Gus Washington’s enterprises. He bought more land to cultivate or to resell in the region of Potomac shore known as Chotank. More particularly, he began to share in the development of ore-bearing lands and iron furnaces. These were the backward children of Colonial industry and they never had thriven; but they had the attention of several companies of adventurous Marylanders and Virginians, who would not permit themselves to be discouraged. The solid results had been achieved in Maryland. There, as early as 1718, at what later became the Principio Iron Works, John Farmer had produced and sent to England three and a half tons of the metal. England was then at odds with Sweden, whence came the greater part of the island’s best iron. To replace this, Colonial furnaces were encouraged. The Principio partners did their utmost to supply the needed iron and to reap a coveted profit, but they did not have in Farmer a man of requisite vigor and ability. To spur or to succeed him, they sent to Maryland an experienced ironmaster, John England.
Either England’s wide prospecting or Augustine Washington’s own search brought to light what appeared to be rich iron deposits on land patented in part by Washington along Accokeek Creek, about eight miles northeast of Fredericksburg. England was eager to use this ore. By January 1725 he reached an informal agreement for its use with Augustine who was to receive a share in the Principio works as his compensation. This preliminary bargain seemed to England to be so advantageous to Principio that he was anxious the partners across the Atlantic sign at once to bind Augustine Washington. In urging on them promptness and legal care, England suggested that they send the Virginian a small present of wine as evidence of their approval. Augustine, for his part, quickly acquired on Accokeek 349 acres that were desired for the enlargement of the mining enterprise.
The furnace was a profitable venture, but Augustine was equivocal and irresolute in his relations with his associates in England. This was perhaps the prime reason why he determined in the summer of 1729 to go to England and deal directly with his partners. If, in dull days aboard ship, he took occasion to review his career, he had reason to be gratified. At thirty-five, he had a wife and three children, Lawrence, Augustine and Jane. He was not rich, but he was prospering and was discharging the duties and holding the offices that usually fell to a gentleman of the county. In spite of vexations and occasional reverses, Augustine Washington was established and, it would appear, was financially stronger every year.
Augustine’s strange attitude toward a new bargain kept him a long time in England. When he returned to Pope’s Creek May 26, 1730, he had the shock of his life: his wife had died the preceding November 24.
One thing that could not be deferred by the father of three young children was the finding of a new mother for them. Augustine looked about, visited and, on March 6, 1731, married a healthy orphan of moderate height, rounded figure, and pleasant voice, Mary Ball, aged twenty-three. Augustine took her to his home on Pope’s Creek, where it was not for many months that Mary’s thoughts of children were confined to those of her husband’s first marriage. By June 1731 she knew that she was pregnant and that, if all went well, she would be delivered in midwinter. At 10 A.M. on February 22, 1732, Mary Ball Washington was delivered of her first-born child, George Washington.
As George grew to consciousness and learned to walk, there was a new sister, Betty, born June 20, 1733. Before she was a year and a half old, another baby arrived, a brother christened Samuel. In his friendly little neighborhood of Washingtons, Monroes, Marshalls and like-minded folk of the Northern Neck George experienced the first sorrow of his life: On January 17, 1735, shortly before he was three years old, they told him that his half-sister Jane was dead.
Another event of 1735 led George in a new direction. Augustine purchased from his sister Mildred 2500 acres more on Little Hunting Creek. As this property, then called Epsewasson, included land that had never been under the plow, Augustine caught anew the spirit that was carrying settlement up the Potomac and concluded that it would be to his advantage to establish his family on his up-river farm. On the new site, he probably owned a dwelling that may have been built by his father. It was not large but neither was his household. Lawrence and Augustine (familiarly “Austin”) were at school in England, and the family to be sheltered at Epsewasson consisted of five only—the parents, George, Betty and Samuel—until it was increased to six by the birth of Mary Washington’s fourth baby and third son, John Augustine, on January 24, 1736.
Augustine Washington was faced with a serious business dilemma when in 1735 the death of John England raised a question concerning the future of the iron furnace at Accokeek. It was profitable to a reasonable degree but it was not making the partners rich. There was no assurance that the deposits of ore were large enough to support indefinite operation. Could it be continued; should it be suspended? Where could an experienced and diligent ironmaster be hired? How was the quality of the product to be maintained? For an answer to these questions, Augustine concluded to consult his partners. In 1736 or early in 1737 he went again to Britain. When he returned in the summer, he had signed a beneficial contract under which more of the work of the furnace fell to him. On occasion he had to set an example of manual labor. Strong as he was, he could not direct a plantation, look after his other farms and at the same time supervise an iron furnace thirty miles from Epsewasson. If he was to have a continuing personal part in the management of the furnace he had to be closer to Accokeek.
It probably was while Augustine was reasoning towards this conclusion that George made two new acquaintances. One was of a sort no longer to be classed as a surprise. On May 2, 1738, he had his first look at another brother, Charles. This boy was the fifth child of Mary Ball and the ninth of Augustine by his two marriages. Of the nine, only two had died—an unusual record in a Colony of hot summers and hosts of flies. George’s other new acquaintance of 1738 was his elder half-brother Lawrence who, at twenty, returned to Virginia. As a result of his long and careful schooling in England, the young gentleman had grace, bearing and manners that captivated George. The lad quickly made a hero of Lawrence and began to emulate him. Augustine, for his part, entrusted to his eldest son a part of the management of Epsewasson in order both to train the young man in agriculture and to lighten his own load.
There appeared in the Virginia Gazette of April 21, 1738, an advertisement that seemed to offer Augustine a means of continuing as a planter and a manufacturer, too. William Strother of King George County had died in the winter of 1732-33 and had left land which his wife was authorized to sell for her benefit. As she took a second husband who had an establishment of his own, she offered for sale the Strother place of about 260 acres on the left bank of the Rappahannock about two miles below the falls. This property attracted Augustine. It was within easy riding distance of Accokeek. Moreover, its location across the river from Fredericksburg held out the possibility of sending the boys to school there. Investigation deepened Augustine’s interest and led him to acquire the land. In addition, he leased at £4 per annum three hundred acres that adjoined the place he had bought. By December 1 he moved to the new home, which then or thereafter was styled Ferry Farm. In the advertisement the residence was pronounced a “very handsome dwelling house,” but it probably did not deserve the extravagant adjective. With a nearer approach to accuracy it could have been described as a livable residence of eight rooms. The site was high and fine, but there was an unhappy difference from Epsewasson in the width of the water. Compared with the Potomac, the Rappahannock was a mere creek. Pleasant or unpleasant in this particular, Ferry Farm was now George’s home, the third of his seven years, and it was located opposite something the boy had never seen before, a town.
George had his seventh birthday soon after the family established itself at Ferry Farm; that was the age at which boys were taught to read and then to write and to cipher. George was in the first stages of this bewildering but rewarding process when he had a new sister; he was progressing in his reading when the Colony, his father, and particularly his brother Lawrence were stirred by news of war with Spain. On January 11, 1740, the Virginia Gazette reported that Admiral Edward Vernon had carried his British warships to Cartagena on the Gulf of Darien, opposite the Isthmus of Panama, “taken a view of it,” returned to Jamaica, prepared an expedition, and gone back to the South American coast to deliver an attack on Cartagena. Three weeks later, the paper announced that Vernon had proceeded with seven men-of-war to Porto Bello in the hope of burning the Spanish ships there. Actually, these accounts reversed the sequence of events. Vernon, then in home waters, received orders July 19, 1739, to open hostilities against Spain, and on the twenty-third he started for the West Indies. By October 19, when war was declared formally, he was at Port Royal, Jamaica, and ready for action. He descended swiftly on the coast of Panama and boldly assailed the defences of Porto Bello. Finding them feeble, he pressed his attack and within forty-eight hours after his arrival off the town, forced its full surrender. This easy success fired the imagination and fed the pride of Britain.
After the first confused reports were set right, Virginians’ next news was that three thousand troops for the land expedition to accompany Vernon were to be Colonials. All the company officers, except one lieutenant for each company, were to be nominated by the Governors of the Colonies that supplied the men. Virginia’s quota was to be four hundred men. Immediately every wealthy planter’s son who had military ambitions wondered how he could get one of these commissions from Gov. William Gooch or through former Gov. Alexander Spotswood. Spotswood had proposed that an American contingent be raised and was entrusted with the task of recruiting men but death at Annapolis on June 7, 1740, spared him the pain of saying “No” to some applicants and denied him the pleasure of smiling “Yes” to others.
Among those who sought Gooch’s signature on the King’s commission none was more determined than George’s older half-brother. Lawrence had diligent rivals. To procure a captaincy, Richard Bushrod of Westmoreland raised a company at his own expense. So far as the records show, Lawrence did no recruiting, but he must have procured the strongest endorsements from influential Colonials, because when the Governor announced to the Council June 17, 1740, the four leaders he had chosen for the Virginia companies, Lawrence was the first named. Beside him and Bushrod, the fortunate young Captains were Charles Walker and James Mercer. There was much satisfaction at Ferry Farm over Lawrence’s advancement, but, as often happens in war, long delay occurred between the promise of a command and embarkation for foreign service. Although shipping was supposed to be available by August 20, 1740, it probably was not until October that Lawrence said farewell and sailed with his companions in arms.
After Lawrence went away life at Ferry Farm dropped back to its unexciting norm. Only rumor born of rumor mocked the minds of those whose sons had gone. The infant Mildred died October 23, 1740; George continued at school; Augustine probably had more than the usual troubles with the iron furnace. Other such enterprises were closing down or were operating amid continued discouragements. As for Lawrence, he wrote often but the receipt of his letters was uncertain. Summer was approaching, probably, when the family heard that Lawrence had reached Jamaica and then had sailed to Cartagena. While vague snatches of bad news were arriving thereafter, the Washingtons suffered a fire that involved formidable loss; but that soon was made to appear small in comparison with the good news received in another letter from Lawrence: He was safe after a disaster that had shamed British arms.
Lawrence Washington had been denied a part in the operations ashore. For the period of fighting, he had been among those held on the vessels and had been given no more exciting task than acting as Captain of the Marines on the flagship. His view of the disaster was typically that of the young officer who wished to think that his side had inflicted heavy losses to pay for those it had sustained; but he could not make out a case. He had to admit: “. . . the enemy killed of ours some 600 and some wounded and the climate killed us in greater number. Vast changes we have in each Regiment; some are so weak as to be reduced to two thirds of their men; a great quantity of officers amongst the rest are dead. . . . War is horrid in fact but much more so in imagination. We there have learned to live on ordinary diet; to watch much and disregard the noise or shot of cannon.” Finally, word reached Ferry Farm that the American Regiment had been broken up and that Lawrence had sent the Council of Virginia a memorial in which he had set forth a claim to the vacant office of Adjutant General of the Colony. Later he brought back to the Old Dominion some of the survivors of the expedition. It was not a triumphant return, nor did he receive until later the post of Adjutant of Virginia.
When the veteran of Cartagena came back to Ferry Farm, his full brother was there to welcome him. In June 1742 Austin had returned from Appleby, the English school where his father and Lawrence also had been instructed. George soon came to love Austin, but he found his interest and his admiration more than ever fixed on Lawrence—on the brother who had seen the forts of Cartagena, had heard the cannons roar, and had watched the battle. In study for George, and in business activity for Augustine, Lawrence and Austin the winter of 1742-43 passed. With the coming of spring and the approach of Easter, George was permitted to go down into the Chotank district of the Potomac to visit some of his cousins. He was in the full enjoyment of the sports of the farm, when a messenger rode up with instructions for him to return home at once: his father was dangerously sick. George set out as soon as practicable. He had seen little of his father and later was to remember only that his sire had been tall, fair of complexion, well proportioned and fond of children; but, of course, it was a deep grief for George when he reached home. The stricken man had made his will and now faced death in content of soul. It was on April 12, 1743, that he died.
The body of Augustine Washington was carried to the family graveyard on Bridges Creek and buried there. His will was probated by Lawrence May 6, 1743. It divided an estate that included seven or more tracts, of a total acreage in excess of ten thousand. Slaves numbered at least forty-nine. Lawrence, as the eldest son, received much the largest share of his father’s estate. Everything on Little Hunting Creek was to be his, as was land on Mattox Creek. He was to have, also, Augustine’s interest in the iron furnace, subject to the purchase from the profits of three young slaves for Austin and the payment of £400 to Betty. Half of the debts due Augustine were to go to Lawrence on his assumption of a proper share of Augustine’s obligations. To Austin went all the lands in Westmoreland not otherwise bequeathed, together with twenty-five head of cattle, four Negroes and a moiety of the debts due his father, less 50 per cent of the liabilities of the testator.
George received the Ferry Farm, half the Deep Run tract, ten slaves and three lots Augustine had acquired in Fredericksburg. In addition, he was to have his fifth of residual personal property that the father wished to be divided among his wife and her four sons. Samuel, John Augustine and Charles received farms and Negroes besides shares of the personalty. Almost in the language of his own father’s will, Augustine wrote that the estates of all these children of his second marriage were to remain in their mother’s care during the minority of each of them. Protection of their interest was to be assured in the event their mother remarried.
The widow was to have certain slaves in lieu of dower right in the Negroes as a whole. Besides her fifth of the undivided personalty and her tenancy of her sons’ property during their minority, Mary Washington was given current crops on three plantations and the right of working the Bridges Creek quarter for five years, during which time she could establish a quarter on Deep Run.
A businesslike document the will was. If Augustine had not attained to the goal of the rich planters, who sought to have every male heir maintain the baronial style of the family on a great estate, he had assured a living to all his sons who would make discreet use of what he had left them. So far as eleven-year-old George was concerned, the farm he would receive when he became twenty-one was of moderate size, in a district not particularly fertile. His other property was not valuable. The boy was too young at the time to realize it, but his inheritance was just large enough to raise a question: Would he be lulled into contentment as a planter of a second class, or would he be spurred by what he had to seek more?
Circumstance shaped in a natural manner the first approach to an answer. Lawrence was now seated permanently on Little Hunting Creek and was courting Anne Fairfax, daughter of Col. William Fairfax, cousin and agent of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, proprietor of an almost boundless tract in northern Virginia. William Fairfax was fifty-two at the time, and, besides acting for His Lordship in the issuance of land grants and the settlement of quit rents, he held office as Justice, as Burgess and as Collector of Customs for the South Potomac. After a residence comparatively brief on the Potomac he had become the most influential man in that part of the Northern Neck. On a point of land on the southern shore of the river Colonel Fairfax had acquired a pleasant tract and had built a handsome house which justified the name Belvoir.
On July 19, 1743, a little more than two months after Augustine’s death, Anne Fairfax became the wife of Lawrence Washington. It was both for Lawrence and for George a fortunate day. To Lawrence it meant alliance with the most powerful interests of the Northern Neck and marriage to a girl who already had valuable lands and before many years was to hold patents for a total of four thousand acres. George, in his turn, found new and desirable associations. Increasingly, after Lawrence’s marriage, George visited on Hunting Creek and at Belvoir, where he came under the fine influence of Colonel Fairfax.
George’s brother Lawrence, about fourteen years his senior, stood almost in loco parentis and had developed the character his friendly face displayed. To Fairfax and to all his seniors, Lawrence was carefully courteous and deferential. Among men of his own age and station, he showed energy, ambition and the urbanity of good schooling. His greatest gifts were social, but they did not make him soft. In business, his judgment was average, or better. If he lacked the mathematical mind George was beginning to develop, he was genuinely intellectual. His letters were well reasoned and well written. Lawrence possessed political sense and he had religion without bigotry or pious protestation. Arms were his avocation. He preferred horses to books, apparently, but he had culture and probably gave the impression of wider learning than he had mastered. For the enlargement of George’s mind and the polishing of his manners, Lawrence was almost an ideal elder brother.
At Ferry Farm life had not been stinted or meagre, but neither was it opulent or gracious; on Little Hunting Creek social relations were more polished and discourse was often of larger subjects. The house itself was perceptibly different from the little dwelling in which George had lived on the Potomac in 1735-38. Lawrence either tore down that structure, or else fire had saved him the trouble. A new residence was rising over the cellar and foundations of the original house. The structure was of wood and not of fine interior finish, but it was comfortable and soon well furnished. In this new house George found delight not only because it was new, but also because its master was his beloved Lawrence. There was still another stimulus: In honor of the Admiral of the Cartagena expedition, Lawrence styled his home Mount Vernon and, in so doing, unconsciously made the very name a challenge to the imagination of his younger brother. Lawrence talked, too, of war and of the honors and glories of a soldier’s life—not a distant theme to a boy who lived within two days’ ride of the trail the Indians sometimes followed in their raids.
Conversation at Mount Vernon was of lands as well as of armies. Lawrence had the confidence of his father-in-law, and of course knew of the patents issued from Colonel Fairfax’s office to speculators who were looking eagerly to the west. Everyone hoped, through the years, that Lord Fairfax would win in the long controversy over the boundaries of his domain. Hope there was also, that the Five Nations could be induced to make the Allegheny range and not the Blue Ridge the eastern line they would not cross. If these two uncertainties were resolved favorably, the Shenandoah Valley would be open to settlers, and by their knowledge of conditions there and farther westward, William Fairfax and Lawrence Washington might enrich themselves. If the Indians could be induced to make a larger bargain, the great valley of the Ohio might be tapped.
When George went from Ferry Farm or from Lawrence’s home to his brother Austin’s plantation on Pope’s Creek, he found the chief interests of that household to be farming and horses and the life of the river. Austin, like Lawrence, had found himself a bride of birth and station. This new mistress of the older Washington home on the Potomac was Anne Aylett, a daughter of Col. William Aylett of Westmoreland. In the household of Anne and her husband, George doubtless spent many pleasant weeks, though his mother probably kept him at Ferry Farm during the months of his schooling. He was developing fast, both physically and in knowledge of “ciphering” which soon became his absorbing interest.
West of the fall line, near which George had his home, the settlements fringed towards the frontier of the Blue Ridge and the Valley of the Shenandoah. Democracy was real there where life was raw, but in the Tidewater, the flat country east of the fall line, there were no less than eight strata of society. The uppermost and the lowliest, the great proprietors and the Negro slaves were supposed to be of immutable station. The others were small farmers, merchants, sailors, frontier folk, servants and convicts. Each of these constituted a distinct class at a given time, but individuals and families often shifted materially in station during a single generation. Titles hedged the ranks of the notables. Members of the Council of State were termed both “Colonel” and “Esquire,” Large planters who did not bear arms almost always were given the courtesy title of “Gentlemen.” So were church wardens, vestrymen, sheriffs and trustees of towns. The full honors of a man of station were those of vestryman, Justice and Burgess. Such an individual normally looked to England and especially to London and sought to live by the social standards of the mother country. Men of this level of society were fortunate and were not unmindful of it.
The wealth of such men assured Virginians the reputation of living nobly. One of their own historians wrote of “the families” as if all of them flourished opulently on great plantations. In reality, owners of expansive estates dominated completely the political life of the Colony in 1750 and gave its society a certain glamour, but these men were a minority. The majority of the white population was composed of farmers whose holdings of land were small in comparison with those of the great planters. Racially, in background and in native intelligence no line could be drawn between the owners of the larger and the lesser properties.
Economically the gradation was downward from great estates to self-dependent farms and then to small holdings. Almost 40 per cent of the 5066 known farms in the older Tidewater counties of the Colony, outside the Northern Neck, contained 200 acres or less in 1704. Farms of 100 acres or less represented 13 per cent of the total. The mean of all farms at that time was about 250 acres. Those agricultural properties with an acreage between 1000 and 5000 numbered only 448. Again with the exception of the Northern Neck, Tidewater plantations of more than 5000 acres are believed to have numbered eighteen. Later acquisitions swelled the holdings of the rich planters who speculated in western lands, but these additions did not affect greatly the size of farms east of the fall line. Where change occurred there between 1704 and 1750, it involved a substantial reduction in the mean.
The houses of Virginia exhibited the emergence of the wealthy and the lag of the poor in a Colony now almost 150 years old. Habitations, like their residents, were, so to say, in their second or third generation. The settlers’ first homes had been succeeded by stouter buildings. Some of these—notably William Byrd’s Westover and Thomas Lee’s first home in Westmoreland—had been burned. Newer and still finer structures were rising. Most of the “great houses” erected after 1710 were of brick without portico and contained large but not numerous rooms. The favored design was a rectangular building, two storeys high, with a central hall from front to rear. On either side were two rooms. The same arrangement usually was made on the second floor. One chamber was that of the master and mistress. Another usually was described as “the boys’.” A third was “the girls’.” In the fourth guests or parents might be accommodated. If a dwelling of this size and type was outgrown, wings were added, but not to the satisfaction of the aesthetically minded. Opposite the angles of some of the more imposing residences, four smaller brick houses were constructed. If four were too many or too expensive, there might be two outbuildings at the same angle to the front or rear of the main structure. Often these corner buildings served to set off the “great house.” Behind it were wooden sheds, barns and workshops so numerous that a stranger might think, from a distance, he was approaching a village. Such places always were few.
In almost every item of lighting, furniture and equipment, George’s own home at Ferry Farm was typical of the second order of Virginia houses: it was far below the level of luxury that prevailed on the greatest estates, but it was adequate. The hall, which had a bedroom in rear of it, was painted and was not adorned with pictures. A mirror hung on one wall. Most of the eleven leather-bottomed chairs probably were arranged around the larger of two tables. The arm chair doubtless was that in which Augustine Washington had rested near a fireplace supplied with screen and fire-irons. This hall served, also, as dining room. Its china, modest in value, was ample in quantity. The linen was in keeping with the china. Glasses were few, because of breakage. There was no plate, but the silver spoons numbered twenty-six. The room intended for a parlor had been made to serve as a chamber in which were three beds. Four other bedrooms contained a total of eight beds, two of which were old. The dairy was well equipped and was used, also, for washing clothes. Ironing was done in the kitchen. Numerous old tubs were kept in the storehouse. There, too, were the reserve pots and pans and cloth for making garments for the Negroes. To George’s eyes, doubtless, none of these things was comparable in interest to a tripod and certain boxes that Augustine Washington himself had put carefully away in their appointed place. These were the surveying instruments which, with the rifle and the axe, were the symbol of the extending frontier.
The food of Ferry Farm, as of every plantation, was supplied almost entirely from its own acres. To some visitors the consumption of bread and meat seemed incredible. A large family, servants included, disposed daily of fifty pounds of fine flour and a like weight of “seconds” at the master’s house alone. On a plantation with approximately 250 slaves, the consumption of food and drink in a year was estimated by one owner at 27,000 pounds of pork, 20 beeves, 4 hogsheads of rum, 150 gallons of brandy, 550 bushels of wheat and an unreckoned quantity of corn, which was the principal food of the field-hands.
In dress, as in almost all else, London was the model for the wealthy. The wives and daughters of the great planters were forever sending to England orders that must have been in complexity and particularity the despair of the merchants. Men’s dress was elaborate on high occasions. Fortunately, for persons not of exalted social station, dress did not have to be formal except on the King’s birthday and then only in Williamsburg where every Englishman—of office or of station—was supposed then to put on “handsome, full-dress silk clothes” and call on the Governor. At other times the individual could dress much as he pleased. Fashions did not change rapidly. A male might “wear the same coat three years.” Men shaved almost universally and much esteemed their collections of razors. The dress sword was the main appurtenance of the gentleman’s attire when, for example, he called at the Governor’s Palace. A Virginian of station was content to have one such sword or to borrow one; a landed lord as careful in such matters as was King Carter might own several swords and might protest he had “never a belt that’s fit to wear.” Jewelry was frequently but not generally used. Women often wore rings but they seldom had necklaces. Men had gold shirt studs, carried seals or snuff boxes, or wore wedding or mourning rings.
The pride of the Colony was its capital, Williamsburg, the seat of the Governor and the meeting place of the General Assembly, Council, and General Court. Rivaling any of these was the College of William and Mary, chartered by the Crown in 1693. The town took on the dignity of a city by royal letters patent of July 28, 1722. By 1759, Williamsburg consisted of about two hundred houses, ten or twelve of which were rated as permanent residences of gentlemen’s families. The principal, though often dusty, street was proclaimed one of the most spacious in America; the appearance of the town was handsome; its population was about one thousand.
Most of the other important towns of the Colony were close to Williamsburg. Across the narrow Peninsula between the York and the James was Yorktown. Its rise had been due to the depth of the York at that point and to the proximity of Chesapeake Bay. Many vessels made it their destination. Merchants built large stores there. No town in all Virginia had a fairer site or an appearance more picturesque. Above the masts and yards of the ships in the sparkling river, houses were perched along the hill-mounting road as if they merely were resting in their climb. On the flat and cheerful cliff were the homes of the merchants, the Court House and the better ordinaries.
Farther down the Peninsula, almost at its tip was Hampton. This was next to Jamestown in age among the Virginia outposts and, after the abandonment of Jamestown, it was to be the oldest English settlement of continuous existence in America. Across Hampton Roads, and a few miles up the tolerant and hospitable river that bore the name of Queen Elizabeth, the town of Norfolk was thriving in the 1750’s. It enjoyed a brisk trade with the West Indies from which it imported more of throat-searing rum than was good for the Colony.
Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Norfolk were within a circle of twenty-five miles from Hampton. The Colony’s next town of rising dignity was Richmond, more than fifty miles up the James from Williamsburg and at the falls of the river. It was laid out in 1737. Five years later, it was incorporated as a town and in 1751 was chosen as the site for the Court House of Henrico County. The population of Richmond at the middle of the century probably did not exceed 250 or perhaps 300.
The magnitude of the domain inhabited by the Virginians was their pride, the basis of much of their hope and speculation. The Tidewater was well settled, the Piedmont was being occupied, the realm beyond the mountains lured and excited. In 1744-45, precisely when George was beginning to understand something of the life around him, two events widened the frontier of Virginia. After the signing of the Treaty of Albany in 1722, there had been doubt whether the Five Nations had relinquished title as far westward as the crest of the Blue Ridge or the higher saddle of the Alleghenies. The preamble of the Virginia ratification of the preliminary treaty had mentioned only the “great ridge of mountains.” The “greater” ridge was that west of the Shenandoah, but the term “ridge” was used primarily for what previously had been called the “Blew Mountains,” east of the rich Valley of the Shenandoah. The Colonials interpreted the treaty to cover everything as far westward as the crest of the Allegheny Mountains; the Indians were not willing to allow this extended claim otherwise than for solid gifts.
Patient maneuvering finally brought together at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the representatives of the Five Nations and the emissaries of Virginia and of Maryland. From June 22 until July 4, 1744, the negotiations continued. Final agreement, stoutly compensated by gifts from the white men, gave the Colonials the land they sought and more. The Shenandoah Valley was not to be entered by Indians. Settlers could open in peace its fat lands and those beyond it.
Announcement of this treaty was news to whet the appetite of every land-hungry Virginian, but the extent to which princely patents could be issued through the King’s office in Williamsburg depended, in part, on the outcome of the contest over the boundaries between Virginia and her sister Colonies. The argument with North Carolina could wait because most of the disputed lands were far from navigable streams. With Maryland, the issue was narrow. A doubt of a singular nature existed concerning the line between Virginia and Pennsylvania. West of the boundary of Maryland, the contention of the authorities of the Old Dominion was that “Virginia resumes its ancient breadth and has no other limits . . . than what its first royal charter assigned it, and that is to the South Sea, including the island of California.” Part of this domain manifestly was taken from Virginia by the charter given William Penn in 1681, but subsequently there was dispute whether the western boundary of Pennsylvania, which was to be five degrees west of the Delaware River, conformed to the windings of that stream or was a straight line drawn directly north and south at a distance of five degrees from some fixed point on the Delaware. This rendered doubtful a district small in area but valuable for its streams, even though the wealth of its minerals was not then realized.
Controversy over the boundary of Lord Fairfax’s proprietary, the Northern Neck, was on a vast scale. If his contention were denied by the Privy Council, then almost the whole of the new country acquired from the Five Nations would be royal domain; but if Fairfax prevailed, all the finest land close to the Potomac and as far west as the South Branch of that river would be his, to patent or to withhold, to sell to all comers or to parcel to his family and among his friends. The case was a close one. The Governor and Council maintained that the Northern Neck extended from the forks of the Rappahannock, above Fredericksburg, to the junction of the Shenandoah and the Potomac. With this western limit, the estimated area between the Rappahannock and the Potomac was 1,470,000 acres. By assuming the northern fork of the Rappahannock to be the base of the western line, acceptance of the same northern limit, where the Shenandoah entered the Potomac, would make the proprietary consist of 2,053,000 acres, as nearly as the Governor could compute. If Fairfax’s contention were upheld in full, his boundary would run from the headwaters of the Rapidan, the southern fork of the Rappahannock, all the way to the “head springs” of the Potomac, far in the mountains west of the Alleghenies. The proprietary then would include approximately 5,282,000 acres, or as much land as that on which quit rents were paid the Crown in the remainder of the Colony.
An order in Council for the determination of the boundaries had been issued in November 1733; the report of Fairfax’s surveyors and that of boundary commissioners named by the Colony had been completed in August 1737. Thereafter, year on year, the peer had attended the meetings of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations and had sought to get favorable action on his plea for the widest boundaries of the Northern Neck. Finally, in the winter of 1744-45, he received permission to appear before the Privy Council and offer a compromise: If his contention regarding boundaries was allowed and quit rents for lands within those limits were paid him in the future, he would confirm all royal patents issued in the disputed area, would waive all accumulated quit rents on his own account there, and would pay to the Crown all arrearages he collected of rents due under the King’s patents. In the early summer of 1745 word reached Belvoir that on April 11 the Privy Council had taken final action in the case of Fairfax vs Virginia. The Proprietor’s compromise was accepted; his title was recognized in toto.
George was then thirteen and, though he was precocious in all that related to business, he still was too young to understand the full meaning of Fairfax’s victory and of the vast speculative movement that began as soon as the Colonials knew where the Proprietor would set his stakes. Around young George whenever he was at Mount Vernon, the talk was of patents, of surveys, of trails, of settlements and of the profits that might be made by organizing land enterprises beyond the farthest bounds of Fairfax’s grant. Much of this was dream, much was speculation, though a few bold men already had penetrated from Virginia to the Mississippi and had descended it. There was admiration for the explorers, but there was envy of the speculators where their plans were known. Rivalry was stirred among different patentees; ugliness showed itself; but Fairfax’s following, which included the Washingtons, had both content and ambition. Under the decision of the Privy Council, lands taken out by them within the western reaches of the proprietary would have secure title. Beyond those lands was the unclaimed Valley of the Ohio—with the promise of a fortune for young men of enterprise and courage.
George appeared to have in 1746 small prospect of any part in exploring the domain the decision of the Privy Council awarded Fairfax. In fact, Lawrence did not believe it was to George’s best interest to become in time another of the young speculators who were looking to the Shenandoah Valley and beyond. Aboard Vernon’s flagship in the Cartagena expedition Lawrence had seen something of the better side of life at sea, and he could think of no finer career for his tall young brother. George was not averse to this, but he was dependent on his mother’s will, whim and judgment. As his guardian, she could approve or she could veto. Short of running off, there was no way of starting a sailor’s life otherwise than with the acquiescence of a lady who seemed to have little of the Balls’ ancestral interest in shipping and the sea.
Mary Ball Washington was positive. A thousand trifles were her daily care to the neglect of larger interests, but mistress of much or of little, mistress she was resolved to be, and in nothing more certainly than in deciding what should be done by her first-born, her pride and her weakness. Lawrence might counsel and plan, but she would decide. This must have been plain to her elder stepson. He realized that any dealings with her and any effort by him to persuade her to permit George to go to sea had to be conducted with high caution and superlative diplomacy.
So, on September 8, 1746, George went across the ferry from the farm to Fredericksburg and there met Col. William Fairfax, who was preparing, with William Beverley and Lunsford Lomax, to mark the newly established boundaries of the proprietary. Colonel Fairfax had come directly from Belvoir. He brought news of Mount Vernon and, more particularly, he put into George’s hands two letters from Lawrence. One was addressed to George himself; the other was to Lawrence’s stepmother. Fairfax explained that Lawrence wished George to ponder the letter meant for him but not to mention to his mother that he had received it; the letter to Mrs. Washington doubtless was deferential and probably did no more than mention the benefits that might come to George from service on the deck of a good ship. George understood the diplomacy of this approach. He promised Fairfax to follow the advice of Lawrence, who, he said, was his best friend.
Either from George or from an acquaintance in Fredericksburg, Colonel Fairfax learned that a Doctor Spencer was visiting often at Ferry Farm and exercising some influence over Mrs. Washington, then not older than thirty-seven and consequently not beyond thought of remarriage. The Doctor was urged to influence the widow to look favorably on the plan for George to go to sea. Mrs. Washington was half-converted, but within a few days was back to her original state of mind. As a friend of the family, Robert Jackson, wrote Lawrence about a week after the delivery of Lawrence’s letter, “she offers several trifling objections such as fond and unthinking mothers naturally suggest and I find that one word against [George’s] going has more weight than ten for it.”
There, for the time, the matter rested, though it continued to be discussed in family letters and eventually in one from some of the kinsfolk to Joseph Ball, Mary’s half-brother in England. Mary had plans of her own that involved Joseph. She had to look forward to 1753 when George would be of age and would come into possession of Ferry Farm. Not far down the Rappahannock was the property that Mary’s father had divided between her and Joseph. If the brother would permit her to cut timber and collect stone from his part of the property, she could assure herself a home there when she should leave Ferry Farm. Joseph was the wealthy member of the Ball family. Mary thought he should give her the timber and the stone for foundations and chimneys and that he could afford, indeed, to make a handsome present to his niece, Mary’s daughter Betty. To solicit these gifts Mary wrote her brother on December 13, 1746.
If George was not to go to sea until his mother had made up her mind, he had abundant, nearer activities. He seemed to pass in a single year from boyhood to young manhood. Strong of frame and of muscle, he still was studying mathematics and he was learning to write a swift, clear hand that made copying less tedious than for most boys. Among young Virginians of his class there was circulating an abbreviated version of Francis Hawkins’s Youth’s Behaviour. George read this and transcribed the rules with boyish lack of discrimination. He did not attempt to discard those intended for urban English or Continental life rather than for the Colonies; as the text was, so was it copied. At the end he transcribed: “Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Cetial fire Called Conscience.” He did so well with his copying that he scarcely deserved a black mark for writing “Cetial” instead of “Celestial.” He was to apply the maxim though he marred the word.
Of religion, there was at Ferry Farm an acceptance of belief in God and a compliance with the ritual of the church, but no special zeal or active faith. Such religious instruction as George received was of a sort to turn his mind towards conduct rather than towards creed. He was beginning to reason that there were certain principles of honesty and fairplay by which a man ought to live. In his small world he tried to practice those principles, but already he was looking beyond Ferry Farm and the Rappahannock. Everywhere the talk was of surveys and of the designs Lawrence and some of his friends were formulating for a company to develop the Ohio country that was accessible under the new Treaty of Lancaster. Whatever career the sea might hold later, the land was full of interest and of promise. George was developing an ambition to share in the profits his seniors were predicting.
The means of advancement were at hand—the surveyor’s instruments that had belonged to George’s father. George quickly learned the elements of surveying and began to run lines at Ferry Farm or on the plantations of his kinsmen. The work entranced him. By August of 1747 he had attained to the required standard of accuracy on simple assignments. Soon he was proficient on surveys that were not unduly complicated. One batch of surveys at the beginning of October brought the boy £2 3s. It was welcome coin to a boy who already had money-making as one of his ambitions. Surveying not only was excellent training, but it also had interest and yielded a profit.
Young Washington was in the first excitement of this engrossing work and of his first acquisition of earned money when his mother received a somewhat strange reply to the letter she had written her brother Joseph concerning the use of timber from his woods. Joseph wrote (in part) on May 19, 1747:
I think you are in the Right to leave the House where you are, and to go upon your own Land; but as for Timber, I have scarce enough for my own Plantations; so can spare you none of that; but as for stone, you may take what you please to build you a House. . . .
I understand you are advised, and have some thought of sending your son George to sea. I think he had better be put aprentice to a tinker; for a common sailor before the mast has by no means the common liberty of the Subject; for they will press him from a ship where he has 50 shillings a month and make him like a Negro, or rather, like a dog. And as for any considerable preferment in the Navy, it is not to be expected, there are always too many grasping for it here, who have interest and he has none. And if he should get to be master of a Virginia ship (which will be very difficult to do) a planter that has three or four hundred acres of land and three or four slaves, if he be industrious, may live more comfortably, and leave his family in better Bread, than such a master of a ship can . . .. beforehand, let him begin to chinch, that is buy goods for tobacco and sell. . . .
The arguments against a mariner’s life for George probably were decisive with Joseph’s half-sister. Nothing more was said in advocacy of such a career at a time when to Mrs. Washington’s refusal were added George’s profitable employment and a further event that might open many opportunities: Lord Fairfax—the Proprietor himself!—had arrived in Virginia and had established himself at Belvoir. It probably was in February 1748 that George journeyed to Mount Vernon and soon afterward went down to the next plantation to pay his respect to the great landlord. Lord Fairfax was fifty-four in 1748 and was not conspicuous either for good looks or for ugliness. Doubtless in the eyes of the youthful visitor, who was of the age and temperament to admire dress, the strangest characteristic of the owner of the Northern Neck was a disdain of fine apparel. Fairfax would buy of the best and the newest and never wear what he purchased. Year by year his unused wardrobe increased, while he went about in the plainest garments. Another peculiarity was Fairfax’s dislike of the company of women. Even among men, as his Virginia kinspeople were to find, he occasionally was silent and sullen; in the presence of ladies he almost always was reserved and embarrassed. If these were peculiarities discernible to young Washington, there was about Fairfax nothing that barbed antagonisms. His intellect was far from brilliant, but he was sufficiently wise to employ competent counsel when he needed to supplement his own. If some accounted him dull, none accused him of being vicious. He never was to have—and never undertook to have—an influence on George comparable to that exerted by Colonel Fairfax or by Lawrence.
Among the Fairfaxes were young women who had grace and good manners and wore fine clothes as if born to them. The resplendent young man of the circle was Colonel Fairfax’s oldest son, George William, born in the Bahamas but well-schooled and well-polished in England. He was twenty-three in 1748, seven years older than George, and already a Justice of the County and a newly elected Burgess. With these acquisitions would be coupled a great fortune in land. What finer model could there be, or one more certain to arouse emulation in the heart of George Washington?
Chance offered George in the spring of 1748 an opportunity of being in the company of this young gentleman in circumstances that would permit George to be useful at the same time that he was having a fascinating experience. A surveying party was about to start for the remote South Branch of the Potomac. James Genn, the commissioned County Surveyor of Prince William, was to be in charge; the Proprietor was to be represented by George William Fairfax. Chairmen and other helpers were to be recruited on the frontier. If George cared to do so, he could go with the party. Somewhat surprisingly, permission was given by George’s mother.
March 11, 1748, was fixed as the date for leaving Mount Vernon and Belvoir. An important date it was in George’s life, because it marked his farthest journey from home and brought his first personal contact with the frontier. George was not unequipped for the enterprise; although he had just observed his sixteenth birthday, he was physically his father’s son and, in strength, almost a man. He was systematic, he had achieved his ambition of learning to write swiftly and clearly, and he could perform readily enough the simple mathematical problems of surveying. His mind found interest chiefly in matters of business, concerning which he was mature beyond his age, though he had little imagination except for planning how he could advance himself. On nearly all aspects of farm life, he had the information and the attitude of the plantation owner. For good land he was developing a critical and appraising eye. He rode admirably. He made on adults an excellent impression of vitality, courtesy and integrity at the same time that he won the good will of the young. Along with these excellencies he had the softness of the young gentleman who would ride horseback by the hour but always would come back to a comfortable house and a good bed. Although he was far from rich, he was accustomed to an ease quite different from the life of the frontier. Instead of wearing a hunting shirt and telling time “by sun,” he carried a watch and enjoyed some of the clothes of fashion.
Thus apparelled, George and “Mr. Fairfax” set out. Soon, instead of riding past plantations that were taking on something of the appearance of established estates, they turned northwest, at the Occoquan, and traveled through a country which, in part, was one stage only in development from the primal wilderness. Farms were few and trails were dim. Twenty miles the young men had to journey in woodland and new ground, by way of the recently established second Court House of Prince William County; and forty miles they had covered for the day when, at last, they drew rein at the ordinary of George Neville, located about two-thirds of the way to Ashby’s Bent on the trail from Fredericksburg.
The next morning, March 12, up rode Genn, who lived on the road to Falmouth. He had been one of the men responsible for the survey in 1746 of the boundaries of the proprietary and had been employed, also, on other work for Lord Fairfax. A more experienced surveyor for drawing lines in the frontier scarcely could have been George’s good fortune to find in Virginia. Under Genn’s guidance, the two young gentlemen passed northwestward, at times almost northward, until they reached the crest of the Blue Ridge at Ashby’s Bent. Ahead of George then, almost directly under the mountain, was the beautiful Shenandoah, the valley of which was a vast plain that spread almost to the horizon on the south. Beyond the plain, to the west and northwest, were lofty, enclosing mountains. For the splendor of this scene, George did not have imaginative eyes. With his companions he rode down from the mountain top by the road to Ashby’s Ferry. There, at the house of Captain John Ashby, the travelers spent the night. In a little blank book George had brought with him he wrote down briefly the details of the day’s journey and concluded: “Nothing remarkable happen’d.”
George perceived quickly why the country was exciting gamblers and attracting settlers. About four miles south of Ashby’s Ferry, beyond the western bank of the Shenandoah was the tract of some thousands of acres that Lord Fairfax had established as a “quarter” the previous year. This land, which became known as Greenway Court, George William Fairfax and George Washington set out to examine on March 13. After he got back to Captain Ashby’s he wrote in his journal with the enthusiasm of a planter and land speculator: “We went through most beautiful groves of sugar trees and spent the best part of the day in admiring the trees and the richness of the land.”
The first surveying of the expedition was not to be at Greenway Court but about twenty miles northward, down the Shenandoah, on tracts known as Cates Marsh and Long Marsh. For men working there the vicinity of Frederick Town, subsequently Winchester, was better suited as headquarters than was Ashby’s Ferry. On March 14 Genn, Fairfax and George proceeded along the river bank where early settlers had cleared some of the finest land and had planted it in grain, hemp and tobacco. George saw and admired. George observed a survey of lands that George William Fairfax had patented in the two “marshes” where the party was working. It was a commonplace survey and it may have made no impression on Washington; but like many a similar incident that was to come under his eye, it was typical of what the enterprising young men of the Colony were doing: they were moving ahead of actual settlement and were buying up some of the best of the lands. When George could, he would too. That was so natural a way of making money that he probably never became conscious of reaching any formal decision to share in land speculation.
Next ahead of the party was the task of reaching by the easiest practicable route the upper waters of the South Branch of the Potomac, where a large and almost inaccessible tract was to be divided into small parcels. Had the ride been directly from Frederick Town to the designated part of South Branch, the distance would not have been more than forty miles; but that would have involved a battle with roadless mountains, through muddy bottoms and across unbridged, swollen streams. A roundabout way was selected. The start for the South Branch of the Potomac was delayed by rain the morning of the seventeenth, but George and his companions, by the day’s end, reached the residence of Andrew Campbell, about twenty-five miles from town.
As the trails ran, the ride the next day to the Potomac was thirty-five miles and was disappointing besides. On the Potomac northwest of the mouth of the Shenandoah the water was six feet above normal and rising. As Genn planned to cross the river and proceed on the Maryland side, he was balked. The surveyors had to go back to Frederick Town and wait, or stay impatiently where they were, or find some occupation of their time till the flooded Potomac fell. Their decision was to visit the Warm Springs about twenty-five miles upstream. It was large labor to small end. George had to write again that “nothing remarkable happen’d.”
March 21 found the surveyors across to the Maryland shore and plodding westward. In continuous rain they pushed their mounts forward over what George pronounced the “worst road ever trod by man or beast.” The riders escaped accident and came at last to the well-stocked trading post and the sizeable residence—half home, half fort—of Thomas Cresap, a renowned frontiersman.
All day March 22 the rain fell; the next morning it still mocked the young gentlemen from Fairfax. After noon, the downfall ended and the skies cleared; but the Potomac still was too high and the road too wet for Genn to think of riding farther towards the point where he intended to recross to the Virginia side. There was the prospect of continued boredom when thirty Indians appeared from nowhere. They were a war party, they told their friend Cresap, but they were somewhat chagrined to own that their expedition had been unprofitable. One scalp was all they had to show for their hardships and their journey.
George never before had seen so many savages together nor encountered a war party that had a contingent of young braves. He watched them with charmed eyes. Presently, from the store of liquor the surveyors carried with them, a friendly offering was tendered the Redmen. It raised their spirits and stirred them to preparations for a dance. Some of them borrowed one of Cresap’s pots and half filled it with water. Then they stretched a deer skin over it to make a drum. Another savage brought out a dry gourd to which was attached a part of a horse’s tail. In this gourd were shot enough to yield a rattle. Other natives, all the while, were clearing a piece of ground and fetching wood. Damp as was the day, they soon had a roaring fire around which they seated themselves in a circle. One of their leaders then launched into a speech unintelligible in every grunt but manifestly done in the best manner of sylvan eloquence.
As to all speeches, there was an end at last. No sooner had the speaker emitted his liberating grunt than a lithe savage jumped into the circle as if he still were dazed with sleep. Whether that was part of the ceremony or a pantomime of the somnolent effect of the speech, George could not determine, but the comedy of it was entrancing. Other Indians joined the first performer; the drummer and the man with the rattle began their accompaniment of the dance. George watched closely and later wrote carefully in his journal a brief account of the whole occurrence. It would be something to tell the household at Mount Vernon and friends in Chotank, and, of course, if it was to be described at all, it must be recorded accurately. That already was part of George’s code.
The current of the river west of the mouth of the South Branch did not seem to be swift enough on the twenty-fifth to endanger a horse that undertook to swim to the Virginia shore. The men, it appeared, could get across in a canoe. The party left Cresap’s and rode upstream to a point opposite Patterson Creek. There the crossing was made without incident. On the south bank, the caravan proceeded up Patterson Creek. Nightfall found the party at the farm of Abram Johnston, fifteen miles up the creek. The twenty-sixth brought the surveyors to the settlement of Solomon Hedges. On the twenty-seventh the men left the creek, turned east and reached the long-sought middle stretches of the South Branch of the Potomac at the cabins of Henry van Meter, an Indian trader. At van Meter’s, the surveyors were about thirty miles from the district where they were to undertake some surveys for James Rutledge. On March 29, eighteen days after the start from Belvoir, the first tract of Rutledge’s was surveyed, and, on March 31, George himself ran the lines of one of the surveys.
Interesting experiences crowded the next week. George found the wild turkeys of the region a difficult target for his rifle; he had the excitement of a fire in the straw where he and his companions were asleep; the tent was blown down twice. On April 3, some German settlers came to visit the camp, and on the next day the surveyors were followed through the woods by a great company of men, women and children. Young Washington observed these Germans with amazement. Their lack of acquaintance with English seemed to him positively perverse. Said he: “I really think they seemed to be as ignorant a set of people as the Indians. They would never speak English but, when spoken to, they speak all Dutch.”
Fairfax left the party temporarily on April 4, perhaps to arrange for new supplies. His absence deprived George of most of the fun of the expedition; Genn and his assistants were not companionable, nor was the weather of a sort to comfort young Washington. On the sixth the party started back to van Meter’s, only to be caught in so violent a rain that refuge had to be taken. The rain continued until about 1 P.M. on the seventh. A little later, George heard the good news that Fairfax had returned and was at Peter Casey’s, two miles away. Off went Washington to see his friend. That night they spent at Casey’s—”the first night I had slept in a house,” George proudly wrote in his journal, “since I came to the Branch.” He doubtless felt he was getting to be a pioneer.
Although the young gentlemen would do their own cooking where they must, they at least wanted something to cook and did not relish what they had the next day, empty stomachs. The man who was to bring supplies did not appear. While an all-day quest for food was being made, George and Fairfax remained at the camp, under the canvas, and none too happy; novelty and excitement were giving place to hunger and discomfort. They decided they had had enough of the wilderness, or else their designated time was up. In any event, they ate some of the food that reached the camp between 4 and 5 P.M. and then said good-bye and headed for the lower Potomac.
They lost no time on the road. When that journey ended April 13, their expedition to the Valley could not be described as an adventure of frontier hardship unflinchingly borne, but it could be written down as compassing the most useful thirty-three consecutive days that George ever had spent. All the milder, less arduous experiences of the frontier had been crowded one upon another. Some days had been wet and tedious and some nights long and smoky, but George had learned that he could run a line in the wilderness. He had camped out, though neither with skill nor to his satisfaction; he had cooked his food over the flames, and he had slept by a fire in the open; he had been among Indians, and he had observed as much of their ways as he could in two days. He had seen with his own eyes the fine western lands. He had felt the frontier.
The story of George’s half-amusing, half-instructive experiences beyond the mountains was one, of course, that all his kinsmen wished to hear. After telling it at Mount Vernon to Lawrence and Nancy, the young gentleman who had been to the frontier had to repeat his narrative at Ferry Farm, probably at Pope’s Creek and, in June, among the pleasant families of Chotank. After some enjoyable days there, George paid a visit to the Turner plantation, on the north bank of the Rappahannock, opposite Port Royal. Another journey of the summer carried him on his first visit to Yorktown, where he did some shopping for his mother. There was more ready cash in the family that summer because the active executors of Augustine Washington’s estate—Lawrence Washington and Nathaniel Chapman—had sold on George’s account about 165 acres of the Ferry Farm to Anthony Strother.
In August George rode to the falls of the Potomac with Lawrence, whose continuing interest in western lands was evidenced by his purchase during 1748 of more than thirteen hundred acres in the Shenandoah Valley. Promising a profit was a plan in which Lawrence, Austin and others were engaged, to move the Colonial capital from Williamsburg to a more convenient, healthier site in the region where the Washingtons and their friends were large landowners. The plan was an old one but it had a new argument behind it that year: Williamsburg was suffering from an epidemic of dysentery so serious that a postponement of the meeting of the House of Burgesses was advocated.
This proposal to change the seat of government interested George as a young man of business but it did not excite him. He was making occasional surveys and he was reading the Spectator and a little of English history, but, above all, he was enjoying life. Besides billiards, George had learned whist and loo by the autumn of 1748, and he did not object to playing for stakes that were worth winning. George was enjoying other social pleasures, too. His clothes and his appearance became increasingly his concern. Another new acquirement was dancing. In the acquisition of social graces, George’s model and mentor continued to be Lawrence, who was acquainted with the best usages as well as with the best families of the Colony.
Sickness now was interfering with Lawrence’s service to the public. From the time Fairfax had separate representation in 1744, George’s older half-brother had been a Burgess and a member of the important committee on propositions and grievances. Seniority and influence were rising when, in December 1748, he had to ask leave of absence because of ill-health. He returned to Mount Vernon, where George remained with him for part of the cold season.
If this was a time of solicitude on account of Lawrence, it was a time of pleasurable excitement, also, because of a shining event at Belvoir. George William Fairfax had wooed and won Sarah Cary, daughter of Col. Wilson Cary of Ceelys, an excellent estate on James River about three miles from Hampton. The marriage had been solemnized December 17; the proud young Fairfax had brought his bride immediately to his father’s house and had introduced neighbors who, of course, were eager to see her. As George observed her that winter of 1748-49, Sally was an altogether charming and somewhat tantalizing person. She was eighteen, not two years older than George, and she had much grace. Belvoir, indeed the whole sweep of that part of the Potomac, was the brighter for her presence. Having met her, it was difficult for George to go back to Ferry Farm, even for a brief period, or to find full pleasure in visits elsewhere.
The spring of 1749 found Lawrence plagued with so stubborn a cough that he talked of leaving Virginia. He took up his duties when the House of Burgesses was convened, but in May he had again to be excused from attendance. The distress created by this illness was deepened by loss of one after another of Nancy’s children by Lawrence. Three times the mother had seen the body of her only child carried to the grave. There was the unhappy prospect that if Lawrence yielded to his malady, which looked more and more like consumption, he would have no heir of the body. Augustine had provided that in this event, the land and mill left to Lawrence should pass to George unless Austin desired the Hunting Creek property. Should Austin wish to own Hunting Creek, if Lawrence died without issue, then, Augustine had stipulated that his second son must transfer the Mattox-Pope Creek estate to George.
Lawrence’s illness and loss of his children were the saddest but not the only concerns of the family in 1749. Mary Washington had abandoned her plan for building a house on her lower farm. Mrs. Washington simply “stayed on” at Ferry Farm as if the property were her own and was not to pass to George when he became twenty-one. Besides there was a threat that a ferry might be authorized across the Rappahannock at her lower tract—in George’s indignant words, “right through the very heart and best of the land.”
George explained this to Lawrence in May 1749, at a time when the younger brother was busy as a surveyor and was planning still larger things in that profession. The long-desired town at Belhaven, on the Potomac, was about to become a reality. The General Assembly had authorized the establishment of the town on sixty acres of land that belonged to Philip and John Alexander and to Hugh West. The place was to be “called by the name of Alexandria,” in honor of the owners of the greater part of the tract. The trustees, all three of the Fairfaxes among them, were resolved to establish the town at once. On May 27 the Maryland Gazette announced that lots would be sold to the highest bidders July 13. To have all the parcels laid off by that time, the regular surveyor, John West, Jr., used young Mr. Washington as an assistant. George worked fast. By approximately July 17, he had finished his part of the survey and had drawn a plan of the town.
Lawrence was in bad condition physically. His cough defied local doctors and home treatment. In growing concern, he determined to consult physicians in London and while there to advance a business enterprise that was exciting him and some of his neighbors. With toasts for a pleasant voyage and prayers for a sure and swift recovery, he was bidden farewell shortly before the vendue at Alexandria.
This was the grief of the summer of 1749. The gratification was the success of George in his application for the surveyorship of Culpeper. On the last day of July, he completed the long ride to the temporary quarters of the Court and received his commission from the President and Masters of the College of William and Mary. George proceeded immediately to exercise his new authority. He surveyed four hundred acres in Culpeper for Richard Barnes of Richmond County on July 22 and received promptly his fee of £2 3s. Soon, too, George was copying for customers deeds already recorded. Of other work in the proprietary, there was little during the summer. The principal reason was controversy regarding the title of Jost Hite to certain lands he had acquired in the Shenandoah Valley and then had resold in part. Because of Hite’s threat, Lord Fairfax closed the land books of Frederick County to most applicants in 1749. This action denied George any surveying of new tracts in Frederick, where business Otherwise would have been brisk. He scarcely could have undertaken to ride over the mountains, even had the land office been open, because of an attack of malaria, which, said he, “I have had to extremity.”
With the return of Lawrence, a short time prior to November 7, interest shifted. As a student of the art of making money, George now had a new lesson. Although Lawrence had not improved in health and had not even learned the nature of his malady, he displayed the energy of renewed interest in a project that had been shaping itself ever since the completion of the Treaty of Lancaster. Thomas Lee, Lawrence Washington, and some of their speculating friends planned a bold project for an “Ohio Company.” With the help of the Duke of Bedford and of John Hanbury, a wealthy London merchant, the company received a grant of 200,000 acres from King George on February 23, 1749. If the terms attached to that grant were executed, an additional 300,000 acres were to be allotted.
Lawrence and his associates were convinced they could attract settlers and secure the frontier against the possibility of occupation by French who might come down from Canada. Lawrence reasoned that a fort and an Indian trading post in the western country could be supplied from the upper Potomac far more readily and regularly than would be possible for the French from the St. Lawrence River and the Lakes. Thus a larger part of the fur trade might be captured. The Indians, getting the goods they wanted, might be more firmly the friends of England. Nor could Lawrence overlook the fact that if the upper Potomac became the base for this new trade, land owners in that region might profit handsomely. The immediate task was to establish the trading post. All advice to the stockholders of the company from frontiersmen indicated that the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers would be the ideal site for the post. Until it could be established, a warehouse was to be maintained on Wills Creek, forty-five miles northwest of Frederick Town.
The prospect had appeared bright early in 1749, but it had been clouded somewhat by the time of Lawrence’s return from England. “Those very Indians that had encouraged [the company] at first,” wrote Thomas Lee in disgust, “had been persuaded that our design was to ruin, not to trade with them.” In addition, on the day that the Governor and Council had confirmed the grant to the Ohio Company, they had allotted 800,000 acres to a somewhat similar enterprise, that of the Loyal Company. The lines of the two companies were far enough apart to avoid direct conflict, but rivalry was stirred. Neither company was willing to trust the other or to withhold a blow that could be delivered secretly.
These matters were vexing to Lawrence and exciting to George. As a qualified County Surveyor, he could work anywhere he was engaged, and he accepted gladly an invitation from Fairfax to meet the Proprietor in Frederick at the November term of Court. The ground Fairfax now wished surveyed was to be similar, in general, to that George had seen in 1748, but there was a most material difference: On this new expedition Washington was to be responsible for surveys, not merely a volunteer assistant.
Work began November 2, 1749. For a few evenings, George was close enough to Frederick Town to go to the ordinary and sleep in a bed. The other nights he spent by a fire on straw or bearskin. The dwellers in the Valley he disliked as acutely as on his previous visit. “A parcel of barbarians . . . an uncouth set of people,” he termed them. He said of his life among them, “There’s nothing would make it pass off tolerably but a good reward.” He confided with pride: “A doubloon is my constant gain every day that the weather will permit my going out, and sometimes six pistoles.” This was fine compensation for a young man not yet eighteen but it could not be earned for long. His last surveys for the season were made November 11.
When George came back to Mount Vernon, he continued to hear discussion of business ventures and speculative enterprises. Contact with Lawrence and the Fairfaxes was itself a business education for the younger Washington. Although the health of Lawrence was no better, he discharged patiently his duties as one of the trustees of Alexandria, engaged in additional land transactions, and sought to hasten the dispatch of goods to the frontier for the Ohio Company. Its affairs were not developing as rapidly or as favorably as the Virginia promoters had hoped. The suspicions on the part of the Redmen were unrelieved. In addition to the threat presented vaguely by the French, moving from Lake Erie southward, there was nearer rivalry by Pennsylvanians who showed every intention of competing for the fur trade and asserted title to part of the territory given the Ohio Company.
George went to Fredericksburg in January 1749-50 and spent some time at Ferry Farm. Conditions there had not changed greatly. Death had taken none of the family, though Catherine Washington Lewis, wife of Fielding Lewis, was near the end of her brief years. George’s mother continued busy with many small things and was charged with three young sons as well as with Betty, who was now sixteen and, naturally, would soon be marrying.
He went back to the Potomac early in the year. George now had to be regarded as a serious young man of business. Pleasure had its place; making a fortune came first. Pistoles and doubloons were to be sought in strict accordance with the code of honorable conduct that George was developing steadily, but within the limits that character and honesty imposed, gold was to be pursued and caught. Settlers were increasing rapidly on the lower stretches of the Shenandoah; there was work enough there for George, highly profitable work that would reconcile him to sojourning among the “barbarians.” He rode over the mountains to the Valley, made on March 30, 1750, his first survey of the spring and continued to use his compass and Jacob’s staff, with scant interruption, until April 28. Before George had gone to the Valley, he had bought himself a handsome set of pole-chair harness at £10 15s. On his return, he had money for the enjoyment of his equipage, and he likewise had the consciousness that when he came upon a particularly good piece of unpatented land, he could afford to pay the quit rents on it.
Much had happened on the well-settled part of the Northern Neck while George was in the Valley. Catherine Washington Lewis had died February 19 and had left a son, John, about three years of age. Her husband, Fielding Lewis, turned at once to George’s sister Betty. The siege was brief; on May 7 Betty was married to him. That event was pleasant, if somewhat precipitate; but at Mount Vernon and at Belvoir, there were troubles. Sally Fairfax Carlyle, Nancy’s sister and the wife of the rich merchant and shipmaster, John Cariyle, was pregnant and had symptoms that suggested cancer of the breast. Col. William Fairfax had gone to England. Most of these clouds were swept from the sky in the spring and summer of 1750. Betty’s venture in matrimony was manifestly a happy one; Sally Carlyle improved in health; George made some remunerative surveys in Culpeper and had a round of visits that extended from Yorktown to Pope’s Creek.
The continuing distress of the Washington-Fairfax circle was Lawrence’s physical condition. Warm weather brought him no relief. Another change of climate seemed desirable. As the springs of Berkeley, which George had visited in 1748, were gaining in reputation, it was thought that a visit there might invigorate Lawrence. George gladly agreed to go as companion and, if need be, as nurse. By July 25 the brothers were en route to the primitive resort. With a great bend of the Potomac lying to the north, the approaches to the baths were interesting, but the immediate surroundings were commonplace or worse. While the benefit to Lawrence was transitory if perceptible at all, the sight of much good land in the region of the Shenandoah revived his speculative impulse. Either on the basis of patents already issued to him, or else in the knowledge that his father-in-law would approve grants for any unoccupied land he desired, Lawrence had George survey three tracts.
George’s departure from the Shenandoah Valley was not earlier than the afternoon of August 26, but he lost no time in getting home and in picking up a few honest pounds. Work alternated with play. Late in September or early in October there was an excursion to Yorktown. From October 11 to October 24, he ran the lines of approximately sixteen tracts. Then, on October 25, George had a new and delightful experience. He had saved much the greater part of his earnings as a surveyor while cherishing ambition to buy good land when he found a tract that appealed to him in price and quality. The time now came. On October 17 he had the satisfaction of asking transfer of patent for a tract of 453 acres which he bought of Capt. John Rutherford—the first spread of friendly Shenandoah land to become his. This was not all: on the twenty-fifth he submitted to record a deed from Lord Fairfax for 550 acres of land in Frederick.
Back George went to his work. Now that he was buying land, cold and adverse weather were less of a deterrent to surveying. Not until November 26 did Washington make his last survey west of the mountains for that season. This done, George rode back over the Blue Ridge, but he was not quite through with his investments for the year. On Bullskin Creek were 456 acres of James McCracken’s that would make a most desirable purchase. As soon as George was at Mount Vernon and could arrange the details, he paid McCracken £45, took a deed, and promised to tender the balance of £77 within a few months. George duly met this second payment to McCracken and could list the farm as his unencumbered own. Surveying was profitable! Besides a handsome income, it had yielded him 1459 acres of good land, part of which he soon leased to a tenant.
George found the household at Mount Vernon busy with a different balance-sheet. While he had been absent in the Valley, his sister-in-law Nancy had given birth to her fourth child, another girl. The new baby was named Sarah, in honor of her grandmother Fairfax. If Lawrence was disappointed that the child was a girl, no record survives. Nancy was young and strong enough to bear him other children, but the condition of the health of Lawrence raised more acutely than ever the question whether he would live to look into the face of a boy who would bear his name and inherit his property. George must be, in a sense, son as well as younger brother.
Lawrence’s work that winter of 1750-51 was not a sort to improve his physical condition. In November Thomas Lee, president of the Ohio Company, came to the end of his career; the direction of much of the business of the company devolved on Lawrence Washington. Harassment over the affairs of the Ohio Company and a further decline in health forced Lawrence to return to the Warm Springs early in 1751. George preceded or escorted him. While Lawrence “took the cure” and told German settlers about the riches of the Ohio country, George undertook the usual round of surveys in Frederick. By March 26 Lawrence was ready to leave.
Travel was more and more difficult for Lawrence. Although he remained courageous, it did not appear wise to subject him to another winter in Virginia. A few months in a balmy climate might stay his malady and perhaps restore his health. Barbados Island had a reputation as a haven for persons with diseases of the lungs. Lawrence could not take Nancy there with him; she could not leave her baby. If Lawrence was to make the journey and to have companionship, which was almost essential, the arrangement made for the visits to the springs must be repeated; George must accompany his half-brother.
In a measure the voyage would be a fascinating experience for a young man who once had thought he would be a sailor. Financially, long absence from Virginia would involve the loss of the autumn season of surveying and the sacrifice of the chance of finding some new bargains in frontier lands. No hint of any balancing of loss against gain or of cost against duty appears in anything George is known to have said then or afterward. Family obligation came first; Lawrence needed his company. That was enough. Everything else could wait.
Their vessel left the Potomac September 28, 1751, and by October 4 had gone far to the southeast of the Virginia capes and was standing eastward in the latitude of the Bermudas. At the end of the voyage, beating inshore and entering shallow Carlisle Bay was slow work but was completed November 3. Lawrence and George went ashore to a tavern in Bridgetown, the principal settlement on the island. Arrangements were made for an examination of Lawrence the next day by Dr. William Hilary, a physician of much experience in treating diseases of the lungs.
George must have waited in affectionate anxiety as Dr. Hilary talked with Lawrence on the fourth, and he must have felt relief when he heard the physician’s conclusion: Lawrence’s disease was not so deeply seated that it could not be cured. This encouragement led the two young men to start in quest of lodgings, which the doctor urged them to take outside the town. As there were no inns or taverns in the rural parts of the island, inquiry had to be made at private homes. No suitable quarters were found that evening; but if this was a disappointment to Lawrence, the ride was exciting to his younger brother. George was almost overwhelmed by the beauty of the tropical landscape. Letter writing on the sixth and much hospitality on the seventh were followed the next day by conclusion of a bargain for board and lodging at the house of Captain Crofton, commander of Fort James. The price was outrageously high—£15 a month exclusive of liquors and washing—but to George the site was almost ideal. It was close to the water and not more than a mile from the town. “The prospect,” George wrote, “is extensive by land and pleasant by sea, as we command the prospect of Carlisle Bay and all the shipping in such manner that none can go in or out without being open to our view.”
The delights of the view were equalled by the cordiality of the residents of the island. Except for the Governor, Henry Grenville, who kept himself aloof from nearly all society on the island, each of the dignitaries seemed anxious to entertain the Virginians. One of George’s visits was to Fort James, which he viewed as critically as if he had been a military engineer. “It’s pretty strongly fortified,” he wrote in his diary, “and mounts about 36 guns within the fortifications, but [has] two fascine batteries mg. 51.”
On the morning of November 17 the younger Washington felt a curious rigor and then had a high fever. Before evening he was seized with a violent headache and with pains in his back and loins. The next day the debilitating symptoms were the same. By the twentieth, red spots were discernible on the young man’s forehead and among the roots of his hair. In a few hours, these spots became thickly set papules. George had the smallpox. He was busy with his painful battle against the disease until about the twenty-eighth. Then the “suppurative fever” diminished and disappeared. Soon the scabs began to fall off. Underneath were reddish brown spots. George knew that these would leave “pits” which he would carry with him through life, but he had won the fight that almost every man of his generation expected to have to wage. On December 12 Washington was dismissed by his physician.
George and Lawrence attended a succession of dinners every day, except one, between the thirteenth and the twentieth. In private, discussion concerned their own plans. Lawrence was discouraged. He gave no indication of sudden or swift decline, but he had not gained in health and he greatly missed Nancy and their little girl. The sameness of the climate depressed him. No diversion was offered other than dancing, which was supposed to bring on yellow fever. Although not quite prepared to call his visit a failure, he was close to a decision that if he did not improve soon, he would go to the Bermudas. If that did not help, he would return home and try once more the dry air of Frederick County. All this would involve more months away from Mount Vernon. During that time, George could be of small assistance to his brother; he might as well return to Virginia. This was agreed. On December 21 George said farewell to Lawrence and the friends he had made on the island.
After landing at Yorktown, January 28, 1752, George hired a horse and rode over to Williamsburg to call on the Governor and present letters entrusted to him. Governor Dinwiddie had gone to Green Spring, but he was expected back later in the day. When the Governor returned he received George cordially, invited him to stay and dine, and inquired concerning the health of Lawrence. It was George’s first chat with a man he was to know much better. From Williamsburg, George returned to Yorktown. There he found Col. John Lewis, who had come to town, along with the gentry of that region, to witness a great main of cocks. The two left together in Lewis’s chariot and rode to that gentleman’s home. Thence George went to Hobbs Hole and on to Layton’s Ferry. It probably was on February 5 or 6 that he reached Mount Vernon and reported to Nancy on Lawrence’s condition and plans and on his own experiences.
Besides giving him some acquaintance with the economy of the island, George’s visit to Barbados had shown him something of the markets offered Virginia in the British West Indies. More personally, he had demonstrated on the island what he probably had no reason to doubt—that he could go into new society and, when he accepted an invitation, could so conduct himself that he received new invitations from guests he met. That was not the sole gain from the voyage. The worst feature of the stay on the island proved to be the best: That pain, that burning fever, that ugly eruption of smallpox had left George immune. He could go now to frontier, camp, or barrack without fear. The ancient foe could not strike him down.
The six months that followed George’s return from Barbados were crowded with incident. After rest and visits to kinspeople, he went to Frederick County in March and undertook new surveys that occupied his time until nearly the first of May. In gross receipts, the work was as profitable as ever, but it was subject, at least in theory, to a deduction not previously made. Under the charter of 1693, which gave the College of William and Mary exclusive authority in Virginia to commission county surveyors, the institution received one-sixth of the fees those officers collected. Lord Fairfax and his surveyors apparently had ignored the law. Governor Dinwiddie tactfully admonished Lord Fairfax to have the suveyors procure commissions and pay the College the stipulated one-sixth of their receipts. The first of these two requirements did not trouble George, but compliance with the College’s share of his fees would reduce his gross income by 162/3 per cent. In spite of this, George’s thrift and diligence yielded money enough in 1752 for him to increase his holdings on Bullskin Creek. Both he and Lawrence regarded that part of Frederick County as particularly desirable.
On his return from Frederick, George was stricken with pleurisy. This embarrassed him and irritated him because, at that particular season he was engaged in what he considered a most important negotiation. George was in love. From early youth he had been confident in all his work and all his pleasure, so long as men were involved; with girls, he must have been self-conscious. Occasionally he wrote vague, sighing poetry to them, or about them. More direct associations had not been lacking, though they had not been taken too seriously. He had sighed over a “Low Land Beauty” when he still was too young to marry, and he had found attraction in an unidentified “Sally” when he was a little older. The girl with whom he was most frequently thrown at Belvoir and at Mount Vernon was Mary Cary, younger sister of the tantalizing Sally Cary, whom George William Fairfax had married. He might have fallen in love with Mary had he not been in a tangle of affection for other girls.
Now, in the spring of 1752, he turned seriously in another direction. At Naylor’s Hole in Richmond Country lived William Fauntleroy. Faunt-leroy was of the established, dominant class, though not of the wealthiest or most eminent. By his first wife, Elizabeth, he had a daughter of the same name. Familiarly “Betsy,” this girl was in her sixteenth year when she dazzled the eyes of George. As befitted a young gentleman who had examined critically the fortifications of Barbados, he undertook the siege of Betsy’s heart by formal approaches. Repulsed in his first attack, he had to wait until he had recovered from the pleurisy to make a second. Diplomacy and persistence alike were unrewarded. Betsy’s answer again was in the negative, so strongly negative that George abandoned the siege.
If George felt grief over his rejection by Betsy, he now had a deeper, absorbing concern over his elder half-brother. As previously planned, Lawrence went to Bermuda. His letters from that island indicated that he had moved too early in the year. The chill of the spring had renewed the worst of his symptoms. After a time he showed some improvement but, as he wrote, he was “like a criminal condemned, though not without hopes of reprieve.” Lawrence’s next letter was grimmer in tone: “The unhappy state of health which I labor under makes me uncertain as to my return. If I grow worse I shall hurry home to my grave; if better, I shall be induced to stay here longer to complete a cure.” Sometime prior to June 16 Lawrence landed from Bermuda—with his death sentence written on his face. He knew his end was at hand and proceeded hurriedly to put his affairs in such order as was possible. “In consideration of love and affection,” he transferred to George his share in the reversion under his father’s will of the three lots in Fredericksburg, and he had his mother and his younger half-brothers witness the paper. On June 20 he hastily completed and signed his will; and on July 26, 1752, he breathed his painful last. George had the sombre duty of arranging for the funeral and for the construction of a burial vault. His, too, was much of the early work in the execution of Lawrence’s will.
The master of Mount Vernon bequeathed his wife a life interest in that property and in his lands on Bullskin Creek, together with half his slaves; and he provided that all his estate, exclusive of specific bequests, should descend to his infant daughter, Sarah. Were Sarah to die without issue, part of her estate was to go to her mother, if alive, and part of her lands were to be divided equally among Lawrence’s brother and half-brother. George was to share equally in the real estate that was to go to Lawrence’s brothers in the event of Sarah’s childless death. Further, if Sarah died without issue, George was to have Mount Vernon and all of Lawrence’s other real estate in Fairfax County when Nancy’s life ended. Executors named by Lawrence were Col. William Fairfax, George Fairfax, Nathaniel Chapman, John Carlyle and Austin and George Washington.
The settlement of Lawrence’s affairs was slow and complicated. It was December 23 when the inventory was completed and was copied by the young surveyor. A sale of personal effects was held that month, when George, one of numerous purchasers, bought live-stock to the value of £33. Final balancing of his accounts with the estate of his brother was to be delayed thereafter for more than three years.
Lawrence’s death involved the transfer of his varied duties as a trustee of Alexandria, as a stockholder in the Ohio Company and as Adjutant of the Colony. This last office either had been vacated before Lawrence’s death or else had been held with the understanding that Lawrence would resign when a successor was chosen. To seek to succeed his brother was, for George, a natural ambition. Even before Lawrence’s death it had been understood that the adjutancy would be divided among three men, to each of whom would be assigned a district. George knew that if Col. William Fitzhugh would accept it, that gentleman could have direction of the district in which the Northern Neck was to be included, but, as his second wife had large property in Maryland, Fitzhugh had moved his residence to that Colony.
George had been anxious to know if this change of abode meant that Fitzhugh would forego the office of Adjutant of the Northern Neck. A short time before Lawrence’s return, George had ridden to Williamsburg, had seen the Governor, and then had gone to Maryland to consult Fitzhugh. Apparently Fitzhugh would accept the office if he could discharge the greater part of his duties from the Maryland shore and, when circumstance admitted, would erect a house in Virginia and reside there “sometimes.” Fitzhugh gave George a letter in which he told the Governor of the terms he would have to impose if he took the office. George went back to Ferry Farm, wrote the Governor of his visit and enclosed Fitzhugh’s letter.
George had pending, in a short time, application of a different sort. On September 1, 1752, a new lodge of Masons held its first meeting in Fredericksburg and soon attracted members. Under Daniel Campbell as Master, a class of five was initiated on November 4. George, one of this group, paid his initiation fee of £2 3s. as an Entered Apprentice.
Two days afterward, the situation created by the death of Adjutant Lawrence Washington was reviewed by the Council of Virginia. Governor and Council agreed that one man could not discharge the duties of the office. Virginia consequently was divided, not into three districts, but into four—each of which was to have an Adjutant. For the frontier, Thomas Bentley was chosen; the “Middle Neck” between the Rappahannock and the York was assigned to George Muse; the Northern Neck was made the district of William Fitzhugh. To George was allotted the southern district, the most remote and least interesting. It extended from Princess Anne County to the western fringe of settlement and covered the entire region between James River and the North Carolina boundary. It was a distinction for George to be named Adjutant before he was twenty-one, and to be allowed pay of £100 per annum. On February 1, 1753, he presented his commission to the Court of Spotsylvania and took the various oaths; but, meantime, he sought and procured the influence of the powerful William Nelson for the vacancy that might occur if Fitzhugh found himself unable to serve.
When George took the oaths as Adjutant, he became officially Major Washington. He might have regarded the title as a present for his twenty-first birthday. How well he had advanced during the ten years that had passed after his father’s death! The younger son of a second marriage, he had received as his inheritance ten slaves, the small Ferry Farm, three Fredericksburg lots and half of the Deep Run tract. He now had a remunerative profession as County Surveyor and from his own earnings he had bought ample clothing and good equipage. In the rich Shenandoah Valley he held two thousand acres of excellent land. If he counted his moiety of the Deep Run tract and what remained of Ferry Farm, he already was the owner of 4291 acres of unencumbered land and thus was in the class of the larger proprietors. With the advantage of immunity to smallpox, he could travel freely. He was strong and was able, without complaint or great discomfort, to sleep out of doors, in his clothing and on the ground. The softness of 1748 was gone, but without the loss of his love of good apparel and comfortable living. Fixed in his methodical habits, he kept his accounts carefully. If his English grammar and composition still were poor, he was progressing in these, too. Socially, he was capable of entering the best of Colonial society. He could dance, and he had proficiency in cards and billiards. While not particularly accurate as a marksman, he squared accounts by the superlative excellence of his horsemanship. Now, with the thoroughness that marked his every performance, he was to learn the duties of District Adjutant of Virginia.
George had to instruct himself in order that he might train the county officers. Study must in consequence have occupied much of his spare time during the spring and summer of 1753. Available books on tactics were hard, complicated reading for a man who did not have opportunity of drilling and exercising soldiers. As far as surviving records show, he did not visit in 1753 any of the counties under his care. George’s interest shifted as his duties changed. His few letters of later boyhood contained not one line on public affairs and not a single reference to the duty a Virginian owed King and Crown. Now, as Major Washington, Adjutant of the Southern District, he began to learn more about the political aspect of dealings on the frontier, and, in particular, about the advance of the French.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, October 18, 1748, had ended the war of the Austrian Succession; but, so far as England and France were involved, the settlement merely provided for restitution of the territory each had taken from the other. Like wrestlers well matched, the two ancestral adversaries broke off their struggle in order to get a new hold when an opening was offered. No boundary was drawn on the watershed of the Ohio, which both countries claimed. The French thought the English planned to separate Louisiana from Canada and to conquer the two Colonies separately; the British suspected that the French intended to cut them off from the back country and to pin them to the Atlantic coast. In the foreground was the prospect of winning or losing the fur trade.
In full appreciation of what the loss of the fur trade would mean, the French had become aggressive. During the first days of the Ohio Company the protection of the frontier had been little more than an argument to facilitate large grants to Virginia land speculators; now it was a reality. In 1749, the Marquis de la Galissonière, French Governor of Canada, had sent the Chevalier Céloron de Bienville to the Ohio Valley to reassert the claim of France to that region. Céloron had visited numerous Indian tribes and had penetrated to Logstown. There he had warned the Indians against the English. When the word of Céloron’s expedition reached the English Colonies, it convinced both Pennsylvanians and Virginians that they should strengthen their ties with the Six Nations and that they should confirm the treaty which had been made at Lancaster in 1744 but never had been ratified acceptably. Forts must be built to resist the French if they should return.
It was shortly after this that Governor Dinwiddie had arrived in Virginia and had become interested, financially and politically, in the Ohio Company and in the settlements it proposed to establish in the region claimed by the French. Soon he commissioned Joshua Fry, Lunsford Lomax and James Patton to deliver a present to the Six Nations at Logstown on May 15, 1752, procure the desired ratification of the Treaty of Lancaster, and renew friendly relations and gain new concessions. Fry and his companions had to spend many days in coaxing the Indians into a new agreement. Finally, on June 13, 1752, they won full confirmation of the treaty. Permission was given the English to build two strong trading posts on the Ohio and establish settlements south of that river.
This success of English Colonial diplomacy was offset that same month when Charles Langlade, a French trader, mustered 250 Ottawas and Ojibwas and badly defeated the Indian Chief, Old Britain, oddly styled the Demoiselle, a known friend of England. After that, nothing was heard of French activity in the disputed region until the winter of 1752-53. Word then reached Dinwiddie that the Miami Indians had gone over to the “other side” and that fifteen or sixteen French had come to Logstown and were establishing themselves there. Dinwiddie was alarmed. “We would fain hope,” he declared, “these people are only French traders, and they have no other view but trade. I hope there is no great army of French among the lakes.”
His hope was vain. A force of 1500 French troops landed in the spring of 1753 on the southern shore of Lake Erie and built forts and some stretches of road. These soldiers of King Louis spread their dominion swiftly and without resistance, only to find disease a worse foe than the Indians or the negligent English colonists. By autumn most of the survivors were sent back to Montreal. The number of those who remained at Forts Presque Isle and Le Boeuf was not known to the Virginians, but this much was plain: These men from Canada were in territory claimed by England, and if they pushed southward, they would reach the Ohio and close to English traders and settlers the rich lands that speculators had been eyeing ever since the Treaty of Lancaster had been signed.
The young Adjutant of the Southern District read in the Virginia Gazette of some of these events, and doubtless he learned from Colonel Fairfax that the situation on the Ohio had been described in dispatches to the home government. Perhaps, too, it was Fairfax who told him that the Governor had resolved to send a warning to the French commander to leave the country of the British King. George reflected, saw an opportunity, determined to seize it—and set out for Williamsburg: He would volunteer to carry the message to the Ohio.
