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
