In 1731, Augustine remarried. His second wife was Mary Ball (1708-1789), mother of George, Augustine, Sr., and Mary, who was sixteen years younger than her husband, had six children. They were George (1732-1799), Samuel (1734-81), John or “Jack” (1736-1787), Charles (1738-99), Elizabeth or “Betty” (1733-97), and Mildred (1739-1740).
Augustine was active in the Washington family business of land acquisition and development. He farmed, operated an iron works, and was active in the life of the church. He built a home on Popes Creek at a picturesque point where it entered into the Potomac (an Indian word meaning “river of swans”).
What did George’s father look like? He was tall and athletic, like his world-famous son. Robert Lewis, George Washington’s nephew (son of Betty, his only sister) passed along a description of George’s father made by: “Mr. Withers of Stafford, a very aged gentleman.” Withers “remembered Augustine as being six feet tall, of noble appearance, and most manly proportions, with the extraordinary development of muscular power for which his son [George] was afterward so remarkable.” According to Withers’ recollections, when Augustine was the agent for the Principio Iron Works, he had been known to “raise up and place in a wagon a mass of iron that two ordinary men could barely raise from the ground.” Despite such physical prowess, Withers also remembered Augustine as a gentle man, “remarkable for the mildness, courtesy, and amiability of his manners.”18
When the family home was lost in a fire, the couple, with their firstborn child George, moved to a farm near Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock River. This residence became the childhood home of George. Known as Ferry Farm, one can still visit the grounds and a replica of the house to this day.
ACTIVE IN CHURCH DUTIES
Shortly after their move, Augustine Washington assumed the office of vestryman on November 18, 1735, when George, his first-born son by his second marriage, was only three years old. A vestryman was a lay-leader in the church. The oath required for Augustine Washington to become a vestryman was: “I, A B, do declare that I will be conformable to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England, as by law established.” What did those Doctrines of the Church of England include? The classic teachings of Christianity: a belief in the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His atoning work on the cross, His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into heaven, His second coming, and the inspiration and authority of the Bible.19
Nearly thirty years after his father, George took the same oath on August 19, 1765, having been elected to the vestry of Truro Parish on October 25, 1762. The Vestry book of Pohick Church has the following record: “George Washington Esqr. took the oaths according to Law repeated and subscribed the Test and subscribed to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England in order to qualify him to act as a Vestryman of Truro Parish.”20
THE DEATH OF GEORGE WASHINGTON’S FATHER
Augustine died in April 1743, after he caught a cold by riding his horse in a severe storm. George was only eleven years old. Writer Benson Lossing describes the details:
One day early in April, 1743, Mr. Washington rode several hours in a cold rain storm. He became drenched and chilled. Before midnight he was tortured with terrible pains, for his exposure had brought on a fierce attack of hereditary gout. The next day he was burned with fever. His malady ran its course rapidly, and on the 12th he died at the age of forty-nine years. His body was laid in the family vault at Bridges Creek.21
Mary Washington was only thirty-seven. Lossing adds, “She submitted to the Divine Will with the strength of a philosopher and the trustfulness of a Christian.”22
A family tradition recorded by George’s adopted stepgrandson gives a glimpse of Augustine’s dying scene:
The father of the Chief made a declaration on his deathbed that does honor to his memory as a Christian and a man. He said, “I thank God that all my life I never struck a man in anger, for if I had I am sure that, from my remarkable muscular powers, I should have killed my antagonist, and then his blood at this awful moment would have lain heavily on my soul.”23
Like father, like son. Augustine’s son, who would become the “Chief,” would also have a reputation for extraordinary strength and would also die of an infection from a cold caught after riding in a storm—and have a deathbed narrative to leave for posterity.
Augustine’s business acumen enabled him to divide 10,000 acres of land and nearly fifty slaves in his will. His estate provided for his wife Mary, and the bulk of the rest was given to his three oldest sons—Lawrence, Augustine, and George. Augustine, Jr., received the Pope Creek farm, where he had continued to live after the family had moved. Lawrence received the plantation that he would rename Mount Vernon, in honor of a commanding officer he had served with in military duty. Of course, this would eventually become the property of George, when Lawrence died. (Lawrence’s only heir, a daughter, died in childhood.) From his father’s estate, George received the farm in Fredericksburg that was known as the Ferry Farm because a ferry crossed the river by their land. This, however, was kept under the guardianship of his mother, until he came of full age.
Furthermore, George’s two older half-brothers—Lawrence and Augustine, Jr.—would serve as surrogate fathers for young George, when Augustine died. Both brothers were in their mid-twenties at that time. Because his father died so early, with insufficient funds available, plans to send George to Appleby School in England had to be scrapped. It is intriguing to wonder if George would have become the leader of the American Revolution had he attended Appleby.
CONCLUSION
Thus, our illustrious founding father came of age in a Virginia steeped in a long history of English and Anglican values, where the Indians were no longer a threat, and an agricultural culture was built on vast lands, tobacco, and slave labor. The unhurried life of the gentleman farmer had become a reality. The rural routine and pastoral pleasures of the plantation gentry were periodically interspersed by a journey to lead, serve, and socialize with others of the ruling class in the House of Burgesses, meeting in Williamsburg. Ideally, a Virginia nobleman’s son should have been educated in England. But Augustine’s untimely death prevented his young son from having the benefit of this experience. However, young Washington still needed to be properly educated, and he was. We will next consider his early childhood and education, which would prepare him for service to the community and impact him throughout his unique and renowned life.
SIX
The Childhood of George Washington
“…for you know it has been said, and truly, ‘that as the twig is bent so it will grow. This, … shows the propriety of letting your inexperience be directed by maturer advice.”
George Washington, 1796
1
The early years of Washington’s life are known more through tradition,2 legend3 and myth,4 than reliable historical evidence. It is sometimes impossible to sort out which of these questionable historical sources best describes the various stories and anecdotes that have come down to posterity. Historians usually reject definitive statements from this part of his life, often adding a disparaging word about the “moralizing” of Parson Weems, Washington’s first popular biographer.
Some of the traditional stories of his early life focus on parental training for moral values. Did youthful Washington really reveal his honest character by telling his father, “I cannot tell a lie, I chopped down the cherry tree”? While virtually all historians today dismiss this as folklore, it is interesting to note that years before Parson Mason Weems immortalized the story in his hagiography of our founding father (written in the early eighteen hundreds) the story must have had some circulation. The evidence for this is a vase made in Germany around the time of the American Revolution (between the 1770s and the 1790s), honoring its leader, by depicting George as a young boy with a hatchet and cherry tree and bearing the initials “G.W.”5
Did George Washington again show his commitment to truth when he immediately told his mother that her favorite colt died while he was trying to break it in?6 In any event, it seems that George, even as a young man, was beginning to develop a reputation of honesty. We do know that Washington desired to be known as an honest man. In a letter to Reverend William Gordon on December 23, 1788, he wrote: “For the great Searcher of human hearts knows there is no wish in mine, beyond that of living and dying an honest man, on my own farm.”7
German made vase from 1790s depicting the cherry tree incident several years before Parson Weems supposedly created the story
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There is yet another story that his father, Augustine Washington, planted cabbage seeds so that when they grew, they would spell out GEORGE WASHINGTON, allowing George to discover this phenomenon on his own. Then, when the young boy told his father about it, George was instructed in the truths concerning the Designer and Creator of the universe.
Whether Washington ever saw his name growing by the design of his father through planted cabbage seeds, he did delight in the intelligent design8 he saw in the work of the “Creator” as he says in his acceptance letter to the American Philosophical Society:
In the philosophic retreat to which I am retiring, I shall often contemplate with pleasure the extensive utility of your Institution. The field of investigation is ample, the benefits which will result to Human Society from discoveries yet to be made, are indubitable, and the task of studying the works of the great Creator, inexpressibly delightful.9
While stories such as the cabbage seeds must remain in the region of uncertainty and apocryphal legend,10 there is a fair amount of important evidence to help us learn about George Washington’s childhood and teen years that imparted to him a deeply rooted concept of God.11 His training was also sufficient for the mastery of prerequisite knowledge and values required for a young man destined to assume a leadership role in the military, church, and government of his state of Virginia.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF WASHINGTON’S CHILDHOOD
We do know he was born in 1732 (per the new dating or 1731 by the old dating)12 in Pope’s Creek, which was built by his father Augustine Washington in the mid-1720s. This was a part of Bridges Creek Plantation, the original seat of the Washington family in Virginia. It was located in Westmoreland County. Later the plantation would be called “Wakefield.” George Washington lived there for about three years until the house burned down in 1735. A handful of books survived the fire, some with signatures of Augustine and Mary Washington, and dates of 1727, for example.
