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He was remarkably skilled in penmanship and mathematics
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As we will see, there is evidence that it was a Christian education that formed his great character.
Author Frank Grizzard, Jr. well summarizes the state of the research on George Washington’s early education.
David Humphrey’s biography of Washington contains the tantalizing but cryptic statement that “his education was principally conducted by a private tutor.” Although many have sought to identify the unnamed tutor, Washington himself edited Humphrey’s draft in 1786 without commenting on the passage. It is known that Washington attended school with George Masons’ “Neighbour & Your old School-fellow, Mr. [David] Piper,” a planter who lived in the vicinity of Washington and Mason’s estate but who had been raised in Washington Parish, Westmoreland County, near Washington’s birthplace, and a school stood at the nearby Lower Church of the parish.9
It is interesting to note that two of George’s brothers studied in a way that would have made them less inclined to join the American cause (in the divide between America and Great Britain) had they lived until that time. Indeed, Joseph D. Sawyer writes, “an English college education confirmed the two elder sons of Augustine Washington in Toryism; while plain American schooling, somewhat crudely started by Master Hobby at Falmouth, furthered at the Marye School in Fredericksburg and supplemented by Mr. Williams at Oak Grove, seated George firmly in the colonial saddle. When coupled with sound home training, his modest education turned him into a thoroughgoing American. George Washington never went to college—a fact he is said to have regretted in adult life; his youth was too full of action, perhaps too burdened with responsibility, to allow for a college career. Had his father lived, he would probably have entered Brasenose College, Oxford, the alma mater of his half-brothers and of those earlier Washingtons in England,—including Lawrence, the allegedly drunken Vicar—all of whom enjoyed the advantages of a liberal arts education.”10
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
The details of George Washington’s early education are sketchy. The family moved to Fredericksburg in 1738, when George was six years old. Later, he may have been a student at the Reverend James Marye’s school, which had begun in 1740.11 Reverend James Marye was notable for his evangelical views and sincere piety.12 Another possibility is that after George’s father died, he lived for a time with his older half brother, Augustine, Jr., at his birthplace on Pope Creek farm and went to a school operated by Henry Williams.
We don’t have definitive facts on Washington’s childhood education. We do know that during the war, someone who wanted to discredit the commander in chief did so in part by ridiculing his childhood schooling. This critic was Reverend Jonathan Boucher, the tutor Washington himself had hired for his stepson John Parke Custis, affectionately called “Jacky.” Reverend Boucher, an Anglican clergyman, wrote with evident disdain, “George, who, like most people thereabouts at that time, had no other education than reading, writing and accounts, which he was taught by a convict servant whom his father bought for a schoolmaster.”13 Boucher wrote these words after he and Washington had parted company over loyalty to the crown. Prior to the politically motivated rupture of their relationship, they had enjoyed an extensive correspondence.14 As an Anglican clergyman, Boucher’s ordination vow included loyalty to the King, a King that Washington viewed as a tyrant and destroyer of American liberty. Boucher’s loyalty to the King became so controversial in revolutionary Virginia, that his final sermons preached before leaving for England were delivered from a pulpit graced with two loaded pistols!15
In Fredericksburg, on the Washington side of the Rappahannock River, there still exists an eighteenth century, small school building adjoining a cemetery. It is a small log cabin structure, with a cemetery and the remains of a church nearby. Tradition holds that Washington received his education in this “field school” from one Master Hobby (sometimes identified as William Groves), who also served as the parish’s sexton.
A Field School similar to the one in which Washington was educated by his tutor Master Hobby
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Evidence exists that there was at this time a church sexton who had also held a higher position in the church’s life, but had to relinquish it because his legal record in England became known.16 Boucher’s claim that Washington’s tutor was a “bought servant” comports with the fact that indentured servitude was a common practice to get a new start on a new life in the New World. Moreover, it is conceivable that an educated person could have run afoul of the common law in the mother country for a non-heinous crime such as debt.17
Even author Rupert Hughes (who is generally skeptical of the Christianity of George Washington) supports the notion that young George was taught by a Christian layman, a Mr. Hobby: “This sexton, William Grove, may have been nicknamed ‘Hobby’ or there may have been another teacher named Hobby. M.D. Conway, in Washington and Mount Vernon states that Reverend Dr. Philip Slaughter’s researches led him to believe that Hobby was sexton at Fallmouth, two miles above the Washington farm, and that the Washington Children went to school there.”18
Washington biographer Benson Lossing provides additional information about Hobby. “The sexton of the chapel was Master Hobby, the first school-teacher of George Washington. He reigned over an ‘old field’ school-house—a log building—as a pedagogue for many years. He had a sort of bullet head and a vast amount of self-esteem. Master Hobby was regarded with great reverence by his pupils as ‘wondrous wise,’ and as they gazed at him while quaint words of wisdom dropped from his lips, ‘Still the wonder grew, How his small head could carry all he knew.’ When Master Hobby became an old man he often boasted that he was ‘the making of General Washington.’”19
But whether these accounts of Hobby are factual or not, the foundational claim they make is substantiated by the evidence. Washington was educated in the context of the Anglican Church. Whether it was by a sexton, a clerical tutor, or simply home education, all of the available evidence resoundingly demonstrates this fact.
The handwritten record of Washington’s baptism and godparents from the family Bible.
The religious education of Washington began in the customary Anglican fashion—by baptism with sponsors. In the Washington family Bible is found:
George William, son to Augustine Washington, and Mary his wife, was born the eleventh day of February, 1731-2, about ten in the morning, and was baptized the 3rd April following, Mr. Bromley Whiting, and Captain Christopher Brooks godfathers, and Mrs. Mildred Gregory godmother.20
Whether George himself wrote this record in the Washington family Bible has been debated.21
George’s training would have included one of the clergy as his religious tutor. Working with his parents—his father the vestryman and his deeply religious mother—the clergyman helped teach George and his siblings the historic Anglican Catechism, which included statements such as “I heartily thank our heavenly Father, that he hath called me to this state of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. And I pray unto God to give me his grace, that I may continue in the same unto my life’s end”22 as well as the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, a statement on the doctrine of the Trinity, the Lord’s Prayer (the Our Father), and comments on the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Table. It articulated that we should love God and love our neighbor:
My duty towards God, is to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship him, to give him thanks, to put my whole trust in him, to call upon him, to honour his holy Name and his Word, and to serve him truly all the days of my life....
My duty towards my Neighbour, is to love him as myself, and to do to all men, as I would they should do unto me: To love, honour, and succour my father and mother...23
The mature Washington clearly remembered these duties to God and man.24
WASHINGTON’S CHILDHOOD SCHOOL BOOKS IN HIS OWN LIBRARY
If you investigate Washington’s own library, which we have sought to do, we can see the influence of his Christian education on him. The Boston Athenaeum has done a superlative job keeping Washington’s library intact for the most part. Washington’s earliest extant signature, portending his famous penmanship and flowing elegant signature, is in a book designed to teach a person to use the Book Of Common Prayer.25 This childhood script is dated by a note of a family member as indicating he was around thirteen years old. A careful examination of this work reveals that portions of its text are stained, perhaps even tear-stained, particularly one of the highly used sections that seeks to bring comfort at the time of death. The book has long been considered one of the textbooks of Washington’s early education.
William Coolidge Lane writes, “The volume has been rebacked, otherwise it is in the same binding of old calf as it was when Washington handled and probably studied it in his boyhood.”26 The book certainly seems to have been precious to Washington. It contained a signature of his father, Augustine Washington, dated 1727, along with the signature of his mother, Mary Washington. Washington, the student, also signed his father’s name and drew several doodles of the kind that young scholars indulge in when finding their work less than engaging. The above evidences of use corroborate the fact that Washington was carefully instructed in the Book Of Common Prayer as part of his education.
Another textbook that survives with George’s signature (twice, in fact) is the publication of a series of sermons based on Luke 16:29-31, entitled The Sufficiency Of A Standing Revelation. The second sermon, dated February 5, 1700, begins with these words, showing the high view it had of the Scriptures:
The first thing which I propounded to do in discoursing on these Words, was, the endeavour to show, that the present Standing Revelation of God’s will, contained in the Books of the Old and New Testament is abundantly sufficient to persuade men to Repentance, if they are not unreasonably blind and obstinate. They have Moses and the Prophets, (they have also Christ and his Apostles,) let them hear them.
And if that Standing Revelation which God hath made to us of his will in the Holy Scriptures can upon any Account be thought insufficient to effect this Design, it must be, I think, either 1. Because no standing revelation can be sufficient for this Purpose; Or, 2. Because there are some particular defects in that Revelation which we have in the Holy Scriptures which render it not so sufficient for this Purpose, as ’tis possible a Standing Revelation might be.
I have therefore, in a former Discourse upon these words endeavoured to show in general that a Standing Revelation of God’s will may be so well contrived, as so well attested as to be sufficient of the Purpose.27
This book bears the signatures of other students, who apparently with young George had been exposed to these sermons. Its contents were the Robert Boyle Lectures established to refute the infidelity of deistic thought that had begun to surface in England in the late sixteen hundreds. The force of the sermons that Washington read under his tutor’s guidance was designed to refute the Deist claim that there was no divine revelation and so to encourage the historic Protestant view of the sufficiency of Scripture for Christian faith and practice. Robert Boyle, who endowed these lectures, was an Oxford professor, the father of modern chemistry, and a devout Christian.
Another book in his library, dating from this era that had likely been used as a school book, was The Travels of Cyrus. This book states that its purpose was, in part, to refute both atheism and Deism.28 A fictional literary text, The Travels of Pergrine Pickle,29 reveals a sincere belief in divine Providence. Washington even had a copy of Theodore Beza’s Latin translation of the New Testament.30 Beza was a contemporary and compatriot of the Protestant reformer John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland. Beza is one the four reformers honored on the Reformation Wall in Geneva in the form of gigantic stone statues. He is in the company of Calvin, Knox, and Farel. Washington also had a Latin Concordance of all the words in Homer’s Iliad dating from this era.31
One of the science texts in his library was a work by John Ray (1627-1704/5), an English naturalist, entitled The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. The work addressed all of creation, including the human form, and detailed how each revealed the work of the Creator. Washington saw the study of the works of the “great Creator” as “inexpressibly delightful.”32
But what is truly amazing, in regard to Washington’s early education, is that we know a great deal of the specific assignments he had, because his homework pages still exist.33 These immediately illustrate his remarkable skill in penmanship and mathematics. But they also reveal the beliefs being transmitted in his childhood education. Two manuscripts exist that are copies of poems, showing the values of his tutor. One emphasizes moral living, the importance of family, and simplicity for true happiness in life.34 It appeared in the February 1734 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine and even earlier in Universal Spectator.35
Childhood poem entitled “True Happiness” copied by Washington
A CHRISTMAS POEM
Another youthful school paper of Washington’s is his copy of a Christmas poem.36 It shows that he was exposed to historic Christian teachings concerning Christ’s death and resurrection as well as the human and divine nature of Christ. Most scholars only mention this copied poem, or only cite the first two lines.37 The whole text, however, is valuable, because it illustrates the Christian orthodoxy in which Washington had been trained. Young Washington probably copied this from the February 1743 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine (London), cited above.
ON CHRISTMAS DAY
Assist me Muse divine to sing the morn,
On which the Saviour of mankind was born;
But oh! what numbers to the theme can rise?
Unless kind angels aid me from the skies?
Methinks I see the tunefull Host descend,
Hark, by their hymns directed on the road,
The gladsome Shepherds find the nascent God!
