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Life Before the Presidency John Washington, Georges great grandfather, reached colonial shores in 1657, settling in Virginia. While little definite information exists on Georges ancestors before his father, rumors abound. What is known is that by the time George was born to Augustine and Mary Washington on February 22, 1732, the family had found the lower rung of Virginias ruling class. He was the eldest child of Augustine's second marriage; there were two sons from the first. Farming and land speculation had brought the family moderate prosperity. However, when George was eleven years old, his family was dealt a terrible setback.
Augustine became mortally ill after surveying his lands during a long ride in bad weather. (Ironically, the same circumstances killed George almost seven decades later. ) His mother, Mary, a tough and driven woman, fought to hold home and hearth together. Plans to send George to school in England were aborted, and the boy never received more than the equivalent of an elementary school education. Although George was shy and not highly literate, he was a large, strong and handsome child. His half-brother Lawrence, fourteen years Georges senior, looked out for him. Lawrence counseled the boy about his future and introduced him to Lord Fairfax, head of one of the most powerful families in Virginia. Despite Georges meager education, he had three great strengths: his mothers ambitious drive, a shy charm, and a gift for mathematics.
Lord Fairfax discerned all three traits and invited the sixteen year old to join a team of men surveying Fairfax lands in the Shenandoah Valley region of the Virginia colony. It was the young mans first real trip away from home, and he proved his worth on the wilderness journey, helping the surveyors while learning their trade. Surveying offered George decent wages, travel opportunities, and time away from his strict and demanding mother. By the time he was seventeen, he went into the surveying business on his own. Tragedy, however, visited the Washington family once again a year later. Georges beloved half-brother and mentor, Lawrence, had contracted an aggressive strain of tuberculosis.
George accompanied Lawrence to the island of Barbados in the West Indies in the desperate hope that the tropical climate would help his brother. Unfortunately, it did not, and George returned to Virginia alone, ending the one trip of his life outside America. Lawrence had commanded a local militia in the area near the Washington family home. Soon after returning to Virginia, George, barely out of his teens, lobbied the colonial government for the same post and was awarded it. The young man possessed no military training whatsoever, and it soon showed in disastrous fashion. Folly on the Ohio At 21 Washington volunteered to deliver a message to the French.
Here he crosses the Allegheny River where his raft almost collapses. England and France, vying for control of the American continent north of Mexico, were at each others throats over who controlled the Ohio River Valley. The French were entering the region from Canada and making alliances with Native Americans, and the English-based government in Virginia was determined to stop these incursions. Serving as a British military envoy, Washington led a group of volunteers to the remote area, gathered intelligence on enemy troop strengths, and delivered a message ordering the French to leave the region. They refused, and when Washington returned home, he proposed that a fort be built on the Ohio River in order to stop further French expansion into the area.
In the spring of 1754, he put together a poorly trained and equipped force of 150 men and set out to reinforce troops building this stockade, which he called Fort Necessity. On the way, he encountered a small French force and promptly attacked it, killing ten of the French. An unknown young militiaman from Virginia had fired the first shots of the French and Indian War. Because one of the men killed was a French envoy delivering a message to the British, Washington had taken part in the killing of an ambassador a serious violation of international protocol. Repercussions of this rashness reached all the way to Westminster Palace and Versailles. Native Americans in the region, sensing British-American ineptitude, sided with the French.
The joint Native American-French force attacked the small, ill-placed Fort Necessity and overwhelmed Washington and his men. They were forced to leave the area after signing a surrender document. The document was in French, and in it Washington (who did not read French) supposedly had admitted to breaches of military protocol, thus handing the French a great propaganda victory when the text of the document was released in Europe. Not long afterward, Washington was passed over for promotion and he resigned from the army, bitter that the British had not defended his honor.
England had decided that the best way to drive the French
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