George Washington

The first president of the United States was born at Bridges Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia, on the 22nd (Old Style 11th) of February 1732. The genealogical researches of Henry E. Waters seem to have established the connection of the family with the Washingtons of Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, England. The brothers John and Lawrence Washington appear in Virginia in 1658. John took up land at Bridges Creek, became a member of the House of Burgesses in 1666, and died in 1676. His eldest son, Lawrence, married Mildred Warner, by whom he had three children -- John, Augustine (1694-1743) and Mildred. Augustine Washington married twice. By the first marriage, with Jane Butler, there were four children, two of whom, Lawrence and Augustine, grew to manhood. By the second marriage, in 1730, with Mary Ball, descendant of a family which migrated to Virginia in 1657, there were six children -- George, Betty, Samuel, John, Charles and Mildred. Upon the death of the father, Lawrence inherited the estate at Hunting Creek, on the Potomac, later known as Mount Vernon, and George the estate on the Rappahannock, nearly opposite Fredericksburg, where his father usually lived.

Of Washington's early life little is known, probably because there was little unusual to tell. The story of the hatchet and the cherry tree, and similar tales, are undoubtedly apocryphal, having been coined by Washington's most popular biographer, Mason Weems (d. 1825). There is nothing to show that the boy's life was markedly different from that common to Virginia families in easy circumstances; plantation affairs, hunting, fishing, and a little reading making up its substance. From 1735 to 1739 he lived at what is now called Mount Vernon, and afterwards at the estate on the Rappahannock. His education was only elementary and very defective, except in mathematics, in which he was largely self-taught; and although at his death he left a considerable library, he was never an assiduous reader. Although he had throughout his life a good deal of official contact with the French, he never mastered their language. Some careful reading of good books there must have been, however, for in spite of pervading illiteracy, common in that age, in matters of grammar and spelling, he acquired a dignified and effective English style. The texts of his writings, as published by Jared Sparks, have been so "edited" in these respects as to destroy their value as evidence; but the edition of Mr. Worthington C. Ford restores the original texts. Washington left school in the autumn of 1747, and from this time we begin to know something of his life. He was then at Mount Vernon with his half-brother Lawrence, who was also his guardian. Lawrence was a son-in-law of William Fairfax, proprietor of the neighboring plantation of Belvoir, and agent for the extensive Fairfax lands in the colony. Lawrence had served with Fairfax at Cartagena, and had made the acquaintance of Admiral