My Ancestry being derived from Yorkshire in England, it is more than probable that I am entitled to that honorable Connection, which you are pleased to mention; ...⁵⁰

The Lady’s letter had obviously asked Washington to be an executor of her missionary plan to the Indians, and in the same letter had proposed the possibility that Washington and Lady Huntingdon were related. Historians have established that the common ancestor of the Countess and Washington was Lawrence Washington of Sulgrave Manor (1500-1584).⁵¹ But Washington, true to form, never bothered to establish the connection.⁵² Yet Washington was interested in the Countess’ mission to the Indians. Although his plans for retirement prevented taking on the task of executor, he pledged himself to her cause “so far as my general Superintendence, or incidental Attention can contribute to the promotion of your Establishment, you may command my Assistance.”⁵³

This offer of assistance was more than enough for the royal Lady’s purposes. She wrote back on March 20, 1784, with striking words. She did not merely call upon Washington to assist her in her American version of her Gospel Connexion, namely, the evangelization of the Indians; instead, she addressed him with Messianic terms as she boldly applied the biblical texts of Isaiah 41:2 and 8 to the triumphant American commander in chief. If Washington were a Deist, this would have been a most awkward misunderstanding. Lady Huntingdon wrote,

Sir, I should lament the want of expression extremely did I believe it could convey with the exactness of truth the sensibility your most polite kind and friendly letter afforded me. Any degree of your consideration for the most interesting views of my grant which stands so connected with the service of the Indian nations eminently demands my perpetual thanks.

No compliments can be accepted by you, the wise providence of God having called you to, and so honoured you in, a situation far above many of your equals. And as one mark of His favour to His servants of old was given—“the nations to your sword and as the driven stubble to your bow” [Isa. 41:2]—[this] allows me then to follow the comparison till that character shall as eminently belong to you—“He was called the friend of God.” [Isa. 41:8]. May therefore the blessings obtained for the poor, so unite the temporal with the eternal good of those miserable neglected and despised nations that they may be enabled to bless you in future ages whose fatherly hand has yielded to their present and everlasting comfort.

I am obliged to say that no early or intemperate zeal, under a religious character, or those various superstitious impositions, too generally taken up for Christian piety, does in any measure prevail with my passions for this end. To raise an altar for the knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent “where ignorance alike of him and of themselves so evidently appears” is my only object. And this to convey the united blessings of this life, with the lively evidence of an eternity founded on the sure and only wise testimony of immutable truth is all my wants or wishes in this matter. And my poor unworthy prayers are for those providences of God that may best prepare the way to so rational and great an end.⁵⁴

How would a Deist answer this biblical plea to help an evangelical establish Christian missionaries “to raise an altar for the knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ”? While various letters between the Countess of Huntingdon and Washington have not survived, we do have several which establish Washington’s views of Lady Huntingdon’s Gospel mission to the Indians. His responses are those of a Christian. Washington wrote to Lady Huntingdon on February 27, 1785,

My Lady: …With respect to your humane and benevolent intentions towards the Indians, and the plan which your Ladyship has adopted to carry them into effect, they meet my highest approbation; and I should be very happy to find every possible encouragement given to them. ….I have written fully to the President of Congress, with whom I have a particular intimacy, and transmitted copies of your Ladyships plan, addresses and letter to the several States therein mentioned, with my approving sentiments thereon. …⁵⁵

Writing on January 25, 1785, to Sir James Jay, friend of the Countess and the brother of American political leader John Jay, Washington says,

I am clearly in sentiment with her Ladyship, that Christianity will never make any progress among the Indians, or work any considerable reformation in their principles, until they are brought to a state of greater civilization; and the mode by which she means to attempt this, as far as I have been able to give it consideration, is as likely to succeed as any other that could have been devised…As I am well acquainted with the President of Congress, I will in the course of a few days write him a private letter on this subject giving the substance of Lady Huntington’s plan and asking his opinion of the encouragement it might expect to receive from Congress if it should be brought before that honorable body. …Without reverberating the arguments in support of the humane and benevolent intention of Lady Huntington to Christianize and reduce to a state of civilization the Savage tribes within the limits of the American States, or discanting upon the advantages which the Union may derive from the Emigration which is blended with, and becomes part of the plan, I highly approve of them…⁵⁶

Writing to Richard Henry Lee, the President of the Congress on February 8, 1785, Washington explains:

Towards the latter part of the year 1783 I was honored with a letter from the Countess of Huntington, briefly reciting her benevolent intention of spreading Christianity among the Tribes of Indians inhabiting our Western Territory; and Expressing a desire of my advice and assistance to carry this charitable design into execution.…Her Ladyship has spoken so feelingly and sensibly, on the religious and benevolent purposes of the plan, that no language of which I am possessed, can add aught to enforce her observations. …⁵⁷

Writing finally with the disappointing news of lack of success to the Countess of Huntingdon on June 30, 1785, Washington explained that resistance to the plan had been encountered in Congress for various reasons, including the concern of placing British subjects on America’s frontier as a possible future source of political destabilization:

My Lady: In the last letter which I had the honor to write to you, I informed your Ladyship of the communication I had made to the President of Congress of your wishes to obtain Lands in the Western Territory for a number of Emigrants as a means of civilizing the Savages, and propagating the Gospel among them. …I will delay no longer to express my concern that your Ladyships humane and benevolent views are not better seconded.⁵⁸

Nevertheless, when General Washington became President Washington, he continued to view “a System corresponding with the mild principles of Religion and Philanthropy towards an unenlightened race of Men” to “be as honorable to the national character as conformable to the dictates of sound policy.”⁵⁹

The last we hear of Lady Huntingdon in Washington’s writings is on January 8, 1792. Washington wrote a brief note of acknowledgment to Robert Bowyer for an engraved portrait print of the Countess of Huntingdon, made from Bowyer’s painting.⁶⁰ The Countess had died the year before. Obviously Washington did not want the “connection” with Lady Huntingdon to end. We honestly wonder how many Deists through the years have secured engraved portraits of the world’s great Christian missionaries and evangelical philanthropists.

WASHINGTON’S VIRGINIA ROOTS

Washington was an American and a Virginian. He never forgot his rich legacy. In the first draft of his Farewell Address, President Washington accented his roots:

I retire from the Chair of government . . . I leave you with undefiled hands, an uncorrupted heart, and with ardent vows to heaven for the welfare and happiness of that country in which I and my forefathers to the third or fourth progenitor drew our first breath.⁶¹

In fact, when he was retiring, our first president attempted to trace his roots. He was asked by a high ranking British official for this information. So on November 15, 1796, when he was in Philadelphia, George Washington wrote to his nephew, Captain William Augustine Washington:

Without any application, intimation, or the most remote thought or expectation of the kind, on my part; Sir Isaac Heard, Garter and principal King at Arms, wrote to me some years since enclosing our Armorial [coat of arms]; and requesting a genealogical account of our progenitors since the first arrival of them in this country. …and although I have not the least Solicitude to trace our Ancestry, yet as this Gentleman appears to interest himself in the research, common civility requires that he should obtain the aids he asks, if it is in our power to give it to him. Let me request of you, therefore, to give me what assistance you can to solve the queries propounded in his letter, if you have only old papers which have a tendency towards it: if not, or whether or not, by examining the Inscriptions on the Tombs at the Ancient Vault, and burying ground of our Ancestors, which is on your Estate at Bridges Creek. And if you are able to do it, trace the descendents of Lawrence Washington who came over with John, our Progenitor. ⁶²

Tomb stone placed by Washington’s family on the crypt several years after his death with the inscription from John 11:25.

In other words, Washington was asking his nephew for help in tracing his roots back to England, including reading tombstones, if necessary. Although Washington had no personal interest in his family’s genealogy, he had already been thinking about his ancestors’ tombstones for over a decade. On December 18, 1784, Washington wrote that he “might soon expect to be entombed in the dreary mansions of my father’s.”⁶³ We don’t know what inscriptions Washington’s nephew found on the tombs of their early Virginian ancestors. But we do know what Washington’s ancestors ultimately put on his Mount Vernon tomb. Should you visit Washington’s tomb at Mount Vernon, you will read “I am the resurrection and the Life.” (John 11:25), the very first words of the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer. Strange indeed that the immediate descendants of a Deist would have a Gospel text quoting Jesus’ teaching on the resurrection on the alleged Deist’s tomb! Either Washington’s heirs were quite confused about the faith of Virginia’s greatest son, or they knew George Washington’s faith better than most recent historians do.

CONCLUSION

Thus, the tapestry of early Virginia was intricately interwoven with the commerce of tobacco production, a sincere commitment to the church and the Christian mission to the Native Americans, alongside the tragic realities of trading in slaves, the assimilation of convicts and conflict with Native Americans. It was to this faltering yet consciously Christian colony that Washington’s family emigrated some fifty years after the establishment of Jamestown. Accordingly, Washington’s life was deeply marked by the culture and values of Virginia, “that country in which” he and his “forefathers to the third or fourth progenitor drew” their “first breath.”⁶⁴ Whether as General, a private citizen, or as president, Washington never swerved from an expressed commitment to the Christian evangelistic mission to the Native Americans that was a legacy bequeathed to him by the very first Anglican settlers of the colony of Virginia. The skeptics who argue for Washington the Deist must explain his lifelong and heartfelt commitment to Christian missionary work. Moreover, nothing less than both written evidence and recorded deeds from Washington himself will be sufficient to explain how he could simultaneously explicitly advocate Christian missionary evangelism, and yet as a Deist deny the teachings of Christianity.

FIVE

George Washington’s Virginian Ancestors

“Honour and obey your natural parents altho’ they be poor.”

Rule of Civility: 108th Copied by George Washington in his school paper. c.1746

¹

Colonel John Washington (1632-1677) and his brother Lawrence (1635-1677) were the first of the Washington family to come to the New World. John was George’s great-grandfather. They came as planters and businessmen in 1657. Their father back in England was the Reverend Lawrence Washington (1602-1652), an Anglican clergyman. One report says Lawrence may have been a heavy drinker.² Whether that is true or not, he was loyal to the king, and that meant he was on the wrong side of Oliver Cromwell, the “Lord Protector,” in the aftermath of the English Civil War, during the days when England was kingless (1640-1660).

The seeds of Civil War were planted, in part, by the Anglican Church, which actively persecuted those who did not conform to its established worship. This persecution is what prompted the Pilgrims and the Puritans to come to American shores. King James died in 1625, and his son Charles I ascended to the throne, and he got into so many conflicts with Puritan nonconformists in his realm that it eventually led to England’s Civil War. Charles lost to a coalition of Puritans, Presbyterians, and Independents, led by independent Oliver Cromwell. Having been condemned by his conquerors as a tyrant, Charles was beheaded in 1649.

The Genealogy of George Washington

The twenty year period from 1640 to 1660 has been termed the Puritan inter-regnum. There was no King between Charles I and his son Charles II who assumed his hereditary throne in 1660. During this inter-regnum, those still loyal to the throne were out of favor. Thus, the Washington brothers left to attempt a new life in the New World. When George Washington looked back to this era, he referred to the Puritan victory over the King in the British Civil War as the “usurpation” of Oliver Cromwell.³ Along with their royal sympathies, the Washington brothers brought with them a Christian heritage in the Anglican tradition.

WASHINGTON’S CHRISTIAN ANCESTORS:

“BY THE MERITS OF JESUS CHRIST”

Both of the brothers had wills drawn up and recorded in Virginia that underscored their religious beliefs. Both wills were made in 1675, eighteen years after their arrival in the New World. They were probated only four days apart in 1677, suggesting that they had both died in the same year. Lawrence Washington said in his will,

I give and bequeath my soul unto the hands of Almighty God, hoping and trusting through the mercy of Jesus Christ, my one Saviour and Redeemer, to receive full pardon and forgiveness of all my sins. . . .⁴

John Washington, George Washington’s great-grandfather directed that a funeral sermon be preached and that a tablet with the Ten Commandments be ordered from England and given to the church. This would likely have been part of an improvement of the reredos in his local Anglican church.

The impact of John Washington on the history of Virginia, and thus on his great-grandson, was far-reaching. Washington parish was named for John, not, as many today would naturally assume, for his world famous descendant George, who would be born three generations later. John, like the future General Washington, was a military man.⁵ His fame in the parish was due to his military prowess as commander-in-chief of the Northern Neck—the approximately 1,400 square miles of land between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, granted to the Culpepper family by Charles II, which eventually came into the possession of the Fairfax family.⁶

JOHN WASHINGTON—GEORGE’S GRANDFATHER AND HIS FIRST ANCESTOR IN AMERICA

John was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1667, after ten years in the colony. Tradition says he was a surveyor, a seemingly trustworthy claim given the large tracts of land the early Washingtons accumulated in Virginia’s unsettled wilderness.⁷ Eight years later he was made a Colonel—the same year he made his will, 1675—and was sent with a force of a thousand men to assist the settlers in Maryland to defeat the Susquehannocks. John’s life anticipated George’s in many respects: a land surveyor, a successful soldier, a man with a keen sense of justice,⁸ an elected political leader, a man honored by lands being named in his memory, a Christian man.

John Washington earned a nickname among the Indians that was also applied to George a hundred years later. Great-grandfather John Washington had not only fought the Indians in Maryland, but he had also been the leader of the colonial army that drove the Indians far from the settlements along the lowland rivers in Virginia. The Indians named him, Conotocarious. When translated, this name can mean either “Town Taker” or “Devourer of Villages.” Joseph D. Sawyer writes, “From the site of the future Mount Vernon twenty-five hundred savages were driven over the hills into the Shenandoah Valley, in that early Indian war, by that first American Washington, who gained the name of “Conotocarius” (Devourer of Villages) through his prowess as an Indian fighter.”⁹

Years later, in 1753, in the unsettled wilderness, this name was also, according to author Frank E. Grizzard, Jr. “given to Washington by the Half-King, a prominent Seneca chief allied with the British against the French in the struggle for control of the Ohio Country.”¹⁰ In the Biographical Memoranda of 1786, written for his first and only approved biographer David Humphreys, Washington confirms this story. Speaking of himself, he says that he “was named by the Half-King (as he was called) and the tribes of Nations with whom he treated, Caunotaucarius or in English, the Town taker; which name being registered in their Manner and communicated to other Nations of Indians, has been remembered by them ever since in all their transactions with him during the late War.”¹¹ George Washington, like his ancestor, John Washington, was a successful Indian fighter.

BACON’S “REBELLION” OR RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY?