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PERSONALITY: A man of quiet strength, he took few friends into complete confidence. His critics mistook his dignified reserve for pomposity. Life for Washington was a serious mission, a job to be tackled soberly, unremittingly. He had little time for humor. Although basically good- natured, he wrestled with his temper and sometimes lost. He was a poor speaker and could become utterly inarticulate without a prepared text. He preferred to express himself on paper. Still, when he did speak, he was candid, direct, and looked people squarely in the eye. Biographer Douglas
Southall Freeman conceded that Washington's "ambition for wealth made him acquisitive and sometimes contentious." Even after Washington had established himself, Freeman pointed out, "he would insist upon the exact payment of every farthing due him" and was determined "to get everything that he honestly could." Yet neither his ambition to succeed nor his acquisitive nature ever threatened his basic integrity.

ANCESTORS: Through his paternal grandmother, Mildred Warner Washington, he descended from King Edward III (1312-1377) of England. His great-great- grandfather the Reverend Lawrence Washington (c. 1602-1653) served as rector of All Saints, Purleigh Parish, Essex, England, but was fired when certain Puritan members accused him of being a "common frequenter of
Alehouses, not only himself sitting daily tippling there, but also encouraging others in that beastly vice." His great-grandfather John
Washington sailed to America about 1656, intending to remain just long enough to take on a load of tobacco. But shortly after pushing off on the return trip, his ketch sank. Thus John remained in Virginia, where he met and married Anne Pope, the president's great-grandmother.

FATHER: Augustine Washington (16947-1743), planter. Known to friends as
Gus, he spent much of his time acquiring and overseeing some 10,000 acres of land in the Potomac region, running an iron foundry, and tending to business affairs in England. It was upon returning from one of these business trips in 1730 that he discovered that his wife, Jane Butler
Washington, had died in his absence. On March 6, 1731, he married Mary
Ball, who gave birth to George Washington 11 months later. Augustine
Washington died when George was 11 years old. > Because business had kept
Mr. Washington away from home so much, George remembered him only vaguely as a tall, fair, kind man.

MOTHER: Mary Ball Washington (c. 1709-1789). Fatherless at 3 and orphaned at 12, she was placed, in accordance with the terms of her mother's will, under the guardianship of George Eskridge, a lawyer.
Washington's relationship with his mother was forever strained. Although she was by no means poor, she regularly asked for and received money and goods from George. Still she complained, often to outsiders, that she was destitute and neglected by her children, much to George's embarrassment. In
1755, while her son was away serving his king in the French and Indian War, stoically suffering the hardships of camp life, she wrote to him asking for more butter and a new house servant. Animosity between mother and son persisted until her death from cancer in the first year of his presidency.

SIBLINGS: By his father's first marriage, George Washington had two half brothers to live to maturity—Lawrence Washington, surrogate father to
George after the death of their father, and Augustine "Austin" Washington.
He also had three brothers and one sister to live to maturity—Mrs. Betty
Lewis; Samuel Washington; John Augustine "Jack" Washington, father of
Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington; and Charles Washington, founder of Charles Town, West "Virginia.

COLLATERAL RELATIVES: Washington was a half first cousin twice removed of President James Madison, a second cousin seven times removed of Queen
Elizabeth II (1926-) of the United Kingdom, a third cousin twice removed of
Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and an eighth cousin six times removed of Winston Churchill.

CHILDREN: Washington had no natural children; thus, no direct descendant of Washington survives. He adopted his wife's two children from a previous marriage, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis. John's granddaughter Mary Custis married Robert E. Lee.

BIRTH: Washington was born at the family estate on the south bank of the Potomac River near the mouth of Pope's Creek, Westmoreland County,
Virginia, at 10 A.M. on February 22, 1732 (Old Style February 11, the date
Washington always celebrated as his birthday; in 1752 England and the colonies adopted the New Style, or Gregorian, calendar to replace the Old
Style, or Julian, calendar). He was christened on April 5, 1732.

CHILDHOOD: Little is known of Washington's childhood. The legendary cherry tree incident and his inability to tell lies, of course, sprang wholly from the imagination of Parson Weems. Clearly the single greatest influence on young George was his half brother Lawrence, 14 years his senior. Having lost his father when he was 11, George looked upon Lawrence as a surrogate father and undoubtedly sought to emulate him. Lawrence thought a career at sea might suit his little brother and arranged for his appointment as midshipman in the British navy. George loved the idea.
Together they tried to convince George's mother of the virtues of such service, but Mary Washington was adamantly opposed. George, then 14, could have run away to sea, as did many boys of his day, but he reluctantly respected his mother's wishes and turned down the appointment. At 16 George moved in with Lawrence at his estate, which he called Mount Vernon, after
Admiral Edward Vernon, commander of British forces in the West Indies while
Captain Lawrence Washington served with the American Regiment there. At
Mount Vernon George honed his surveying skills and looked forward to his twenty-first birthday, when he was to receive his inheritance from his father's estate—the Ferry Farm, near Fredericksburg, where the family had lived from 1738 and where his mother remained until her death; half of a
4,000-acre tract; three lots in Fredericksburg; 10 slaves; and a portion of his father's personal property.

EDUCATION: Perhaps because she did not want to part with her eldest son for an extended period, perhaps because she did not want to spend the money, the widow Washington refused to send George to school in England, as her late husband had done for his older boys, but instead exposed him to the irregular education common in colonial Virginia. Just who instructed
George is unknown, but by age 11 he had picked up basic reading, writing, and mathematical skills. Math was his best subject. Unlike many of the
Founding Fathers, Washington never found time to learn French, then the language of diplomacy, and did not attend university. He applied his mathematical mind to surveying, an occupation much in demand in colonial
Virginia, where men's fortunes were reckoned in acres of tobacco rather than pounds of gold.

RELIGION: Episcopalian. However, religion played only a minor role in his life. He fashioned a moral code based on his own sense of right and wrong and adhered to it rigidly. He referred rarely to God or Jesus in his writings but rather to Providence, a rather amorphous supernatural substance that controlled men's lives. He strongly believed in fate, a force so powerful, he maintained, as "not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of human nature."

RECREATION: Washington learned billiards when young, played cards, and especially enjoyed the ritual of the fox hunt. In later years, he often spent evenings reading newspapers aloud to his wife. He walked daily for exercise.

EARLY ROMANCE: Washington was somewhat stiff and awkward with girls, probably often tongue-tied. In his mid-teens he vented his frustration in such moonish doggerel as, "Ah! woe's me, that I should love and conceal,/
Long have

I wish'd, but never dare reveal,/ Even though severely Loves Pains I feel." Before he married Martha, Washington's love life was full of disappointment.

Betsy Fauntleroy. The daughter of a justice and burgess from Richmond
County, Virginia, she was but 16 when she attracted Washington, then 20. He pressed his suit repeatedly, but, repulsed at every turn, he finally gave up.

Mary Philipse. During a trip to Boston to straighten out a military matter in 1756, Washington stopped off in New York and there met Mary
Philipse, 26, daughter of Frederick Philipse, a wealthy landowner. Whether he was taken with her charms or her 51,000 acres is unknown, but he remained in the city a week and is said to have proposed. She later married
Roger Morris, and together they were staunch Tories during the American
Revolution.

Sally Fairfax. From the time he met Sarah Gary "Sally" Fairfax as the
18-year-old bride of his friend and neighbor George William Fairfax,
Washington was infatuated with her easy charm, graceful bearing, good humor, rare beauty, and intelligence. Although the relationship almost certainly never got beyond flirtation, the two had strong feelings for each other and corresponded often. In one letter written to her in 1758, at a time when he was engaged to Martha, he blurted his love, albeit cryptically lest the note fall into the wrong hands. He confessed he was in love with a woman well known to her and then continued, "You have drawn me, dear Madam, or rather I have drawn myself, into an honest confession of a simple Fact.
Misconstrue not my meaning; doubt it not, nor expose it. The world has no business to know the object of my Love, declared in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it." As heartbroken as Washington appears to have been over the hopelessness of the relationship, the anguish might have been greater had he pressed the affair, for the Fairfaxes would not come to share Washington's passion for an independent America. In 1773, the year
American resentment over British taxes erupted in the Boston Tea Party,
Sally and George Fairfax left Virginia for England, where they settled permanently, loyal subjects to the end.

MARRIAGE: Washington, 26, married Martha Dandridge Custis, 27, a widow with two children, on January 6, 1759, at her estate, known as the White
House, on the Pamunkey River northwest of Williamsburg. Born in New Kent
County, Virginia, on June 21, 1731, the daughter of John Dandridge, a planter, and Frances Jones Dandridge, Martha was a rather small, pleasant- looking woman, practical, with good common sense if not a great intellect.
At 18 she married Daniel Parke Custis, a prominent planter of more than
17,000 acres. By him she had four children, two of whom survived childhood.
Her husband died intestate in 1757, leaving Martha reputedly the wealthiest marriageable woman in Virginia. It seems likely that Washington had known
Martha and her husband for some time. In March 1758 he visited her at White
House twice; the second time he came away with either an engagement of marriage or at least her promise to think about his proposal. Their wedding was a grand affair. The groom appeared in a suit of blue and silver with red trimming and gold knee buckles. After the Reverend Peter Mossum pronounced them man and wife, the couple honeymooned at White House for several weeks before setting up housekeeping at Washington's Mount Vernon.
Their marriage appears to have been a solid one, untroubled by infidelity or clash of temperament. During the American Revolution she endured considerable hardship to visit her husband at field headquarters. As the
First Lady, Mrs. Washington hosted many affairs of state at New York and
Philadelphia (the capital was moved to Washington in 1800 under the Adams administration). After Washington's death in 1799, she grew morose and died on May 22, 1802.

MILITARY SERVICE: Washington served in the Virginia militia (1752-1754,
1755-1758), rising from major to colonel, and as commander in chief of the
Continental army (1775-1783), with the rank of general. See "Career before the Presidency."

CAREER BEFORE THE PRESIDENCY: In 1749 Washington accepted his first appointment, that of surveyor of Culpepper County, Virginia, having gained much experience in that trade the previous year during an expedition across the Blue Ridge Mountains on behalf of Lord Fairfax. Two years later he accompanied his half brother Lawrence to Barbados. Lawrence, dying of tuberculosis, had hoped to find a cure in the mild climate. Instead, George came down with a near-fatal dose of smallpox. With the deaths of Lawrence and Lawrence's daughter in 1752, George inherited Mount Vernon, an estate that prospered under his management and one that throughout his life served as welcome refuge from the pressures of public life.

French and Indian War, 1754-1763. In 1752 Washington received his first military appointment as a major in the Virginia militia. On a mission for
Governor Robert Dinwiddie during October 1753-January 1754, he delivered an ultimatum to the French at Fort Le Boeuf, demanding their withdrawal from territory claimed by Britain. The French refused. The French and the Ohio
Company, a group of Virginians anxious to acquire western lands, were competing for control of the site of present-day Pittsburgh. The French drove the Ohio Company from the area and at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers constructed Fort Duquesne. Promoted to lieutenant colonel in March 1754, Washington oversaw construction of Fort Necessity in what is now Fayette County, Pennsylvania. However, he was forced to surrender that outpost to superior French and Indian forces in July 1754, a humiliating defeat that temporarily gave France control of the entire region. Later that year, Washington, disgusted with officers beneath his rank who claimed superiority because they were British regulars, resigned his commission. He returned to service, however, in 1755 as an aide-de-camp to General Edward Braddock. In the disastrous engagement at which Braddock was mortally wounded in July 1755, Washington managed to herd what was left of the force to orderly retreat, as twice his horse was shot out from under him. The next month he was promoted to colonel and regimental commander. He resigned from the militia in December 1758 following his election to the
Virginia House of Burgesses.

Member of House of Burgesses, 1759-1774. In July 1758 Colonel
Washington was elected one of Frederick County's two representatives in the
House of Burgesses. He joined those protesting Britain's colonial policy and in 1769 emerged a leader of the Association, created at an informal session of the House of Burgesses, after it had been dissolved by the royal governor, to consider the most effective means of boycotting British imports. Washington favored cutting trade sharply but opposed a suspension of all commerce with Britain. He also did not approve of the Boston Tea
Party of December 1773. But soon thereafter he came to realize that reconciliation with the mother country was no longer possible. Meanwhile, in 1770, Washington undertook a nine-week expedition to the Ohio country where, as compensation for his service in the French and Indian War, he was to inspect and claim more than 20,000 acres of land for himself and tens of thousands more for the men who had served under him. He had taken the lead in pressing the Virginia veterans' claim. “I might add, without much arrogance,” he later wrote, “that if it had not been for my unremitted attention to every favorable circumstance, not a single acre of land would ever have been obtained”.

Delegate to Continental Congress, 1774-1775. A member of the Virginia delegation to the First and Second Continental Congresses, Washington served on various military preparedness committees and was chairman of the committee to consider ways to raise arms and ammunition for the impending
Revolution. He voted for measures designed to reconcile differences with
Britain peacefully but realized that such efforts now were futile. John
Adams of Massachusetts, in a speech so effusive in its praise that
Washington rushed in embarrassment from the chamber, urged that Washington be named commander in chief of the newly authorized Continental army. In
June 1775, delegates unanimously approved the choice of Washington, both for his military experience and, more pragmatically, to enlist a prominent
Virginian to lead a struggle that heretofore had been spearheaded largely by northern revolutionaries.

Commander in chief of Continental Army during Revolution, 1775-1783.
With a poorly trained, undisciplined force comprised of short-term militia,
General Washington took to the field against crack British regulars and
Hessian mercenaries. In March 1776 he thrilled New Englanders by flushing the redcoats from Boston, but his loss of New York City and other setbacks later that year dispelled any hope of a quick American victory. Sagging
American morale got a boost when Washington slipped across the Delaware
River to New Jersey and defeated superior enemy forces at Trenton (December
1776) and Princeton (January 1777). But humiliating defeats at Brandywine
(September 1777) and Germantown (October 1777) and the subsequent loss of
Philadelphia undermined Washington's prestige in Congress. Richard Henry
Lee, Benjamin Rush, and others conspired to remove Washington and replace him with General Horatio Gates, who had defeated General John Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga (October 1777). Washington's congressional supporters rallied to quash the so-called Conway Cabal. Prospects for victory seemed bleak as Washington settled his men into winter quarters at
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in December 1777.

"To see men without clothes to cover their nakedness," Washington wrote in tribute to the men who suffered with him at Valley Forge, "without blankets to lay on, without shoes, by which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet, and almost as often without provisions as with; marching through frost and snow, and at Christmas taking up their winter quarters within a day's march of the enemy, without a house or hut to cover them till they could be built, and submitting to it without a murmur, is a mark of patience and obedience which in my opinion can scarce be paralleled." Of course, some did grumble— and loudly. "No pay! no clothes! no provisions! no rum!" some chanted. But remarkably there was no mass desertion, no mutiny. Patriotism, to be sure, sustained many, but no more so than did confidence in Washington's ability to see them through safely. With the snow-clogged roads impassable to supply wagons, the men stayed alive on such fare as pepper pot soup, a thin tripe broth flavored with a handful of peppercorns. Many died there that winter. Those that survived drew fresh hope with the greening of spring and the news, announced to them by General Washington in May 1778, that France had recognized the independence of America. Also encouraging was the arrival of
Baron Friedrich von Steuben, who, at Washington's direction, drilled the debilitated Valley Forge survivors into crack troops. Washington's men broke camp in June 1778, a revitalized army that, with aid from France, took the war to the British and in October 1781 boxed in General Charles
Cornwallis at Yorktown, thus forcing the surrender of British forces.

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