George Washington did not begin his life as Father of Our Country.
Neither did he spend it all at Mt. Vernon.
The unique strength of character that led him to risk his neck in armed rebellion against the mightiest sovereign in the world and help found a nation through his embodiment of republican principal was forged in a boyhood and youth spent mostly on a backwater Colonial farm.
Everyone knows about Washington’s experience as our Revolutionary War commander-in-chief, holding his ragged army together at Valley Forge.
We are familiar with his role as an influential member of the Colonial House of Burgesses in Williamsburg, his leadership in the constitutional proceedings at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and his life as a wealthy planter at his vast Mt. Vernon estate on the Potomac.
All these places are among the most wonderfully restored historical sites and popular tourist destinations in America.
But, except for imaginative biographer Parson Weems’ fanciful tales of chopping down his father’s cherry trees and throwing silver dollars across the Rappahannock, scant attention has been paid to his youth and boyhood, which was spent mostly here at Fredericksburg, Washington’s home town.
Situated on the shores of the gentle Rappahannock River about 50 miles south of the nation’s capital now bearing his name, Fredericksburg is on the fringe of a sprawling megalopolis and most famous for the bloody Civil War battle that was fought here in 1862.
But the stamp of the Washingtons is still very much on the place, especially in the handsomely restored historic district on the bluff overlooking the river.
Washington was born about 40 miles east of the town and his earliest childhood was passed farther north along the Potomac, but this was his home from age 6 to age 20, and was his mother’s and sister’s address for most of their lives.
It was here he first loved and lost–alas, several times, with local lovelies preferring more propertied swains. It was here that he received his education and learned the trade of surveying, an occupation that led swiftly to more august callings with the military and Colonial government.
Here lie George Washington’s roots.
Like many a young man of his time and situation, he left his hometown for the wider world with little money and small prospects. Thanks to a burning ambition and resolute nature, his success was considerable and swift. He acquired wealth, position, military glory and even world fame while he was still in his 20s. But he always came back to Fredericksburg.
Three fixtures of Washington’s life have survived here: Ferry Farm, the homestead where he grew up just across the river from the town center of Fredericksburg; Kenmore, the handsome plantation house within the town limits where Washington’s beloved sister Betty lived after her marriage to the well-to-do Col. Fielding Lewis; and the small, neat cottage a few blocks from Kenmore where Washington installed his sometimes irascible mother, Mary, when she got too old to remain at Ferry Farm.
Mary Washington’s grave, marked by an obelisk that looks a scale model of the gigantic Washington Monument in the capital to her son, is just down the street from Kenmore.
Though its foundations have been preserved, the Ferry Farm’s main house was lost to fire more than a century ago, and the historic property faced an even more appalling fate last year, when the Wal-Mart Co. tried to build one of its huge stores on the land.
The Fredericksburg-based Kenmore Association, which maintains Betty Washington’s Kenmore Plantation and Gardens, intervened, taking out a $2.2 million loan to buy the Ferry Farm property before it could be commercially developed.
The association is now busily engaged in restoring it, and the grounds and a small museum there are open to the public.
The farm took its name from a ferry owned and operated by the family at the riverfront base of the bluff on which the farm sits. It was essentially a flatboat that could carry a handful of passengers and two horses. Connected to a cable strung across the river–which apparently could be lowered when a ship came upstream–the boat was poled back and forth by a hired ferryman.
A road to the ferry landing, leading from what was once “the King’s Highway,” has been restored by the association. Standing at it, one can appreciate the implausibility of biographer Weems’ claim of Washington’s once having hurled a silver dollar across the Rappahannock from this spot.
Local historians say it was more likely a rock, but don’t doubt the feat. Perhaps the best horseman ever to sit saddle in this country, the 6-foot-3 Washington was an unusually strong man and a considerable athlete in his youth.
Though they were modest folk compared to the lordly Fairfax, Carter and Cary families who owned grand plantations down on the James and York Rivers in Tidewater Virginia, Washington’s parents were not poor. In addition to the 600-acre farm and the ferry, Washington’s father, Augustine, operated a small iron furnace under license from the British crown government at Accokeek, about eight miles northeast of Fredericksburg, and owned several plots of land elsewhere in the area, including acreage on the Potomac.
But he had two sons born to his first wife, Jane (two others died in childhood); and six children with his second wife, Mary, including George, Betty, Samuel, John, Charles and Mildred (who died at age 16 months). His estate was much divided.
Upon the father’s death in 1743, George inherited the land at Ferry Farm and 10 slaves, though his mother was accorded the income from the crops and remained proprietor of the place.
The first house on the farm burned to the ground shortly after Washington’s family moved into it, destroying many of their personal possessions in the process. His father quickly erected a second house on the site, which lasted into the 19th Century, though only the foundations of both remain intact.
The family’s recovery from that catastrophe was among the influences that forged Washington’s ability to function in the face of disaster.
A building now shelters the foundations of both first and second houses and contains a number of museum exhibits on the Washington family as well. Historian Douglas Southall Freeman claims the Washington homestead comprised eight rooms, but according to the association, it was only four rooms, with a large central hall and upstairs loft–certainly a modest dwelling compared to the palaces of the Tidewater grandees.
Although it’s doubted that Washington chopped down any cherry trees belonging to his father, his honesty and probity were well known and stem in part from a gentlemanly set of “Rules of Civility” that governed his behavior throughout his life. Among them were prohibitions against speaking ill of others before them and wiping one’s hands on one’s clothes.
Washington was a fastidious man who hated to sleep in inns because of the vermin in the bedding and who, after becoming rich, sent his shirts to England for laundering.
The farm boy’s first turn toward a better life came via his mastering surveying, which brought young Washington his first real income and put him into contact with important men of affairs in Virginia.
After his father’s death, Washington’s older half-brother Lawrence served as a father figure for him. It was Lawrence who first acquired Mt. Vernon up on the Potomac, which he named for a British admiral he had accompanied to the Caribbean in an expedition against the Spanish. Lawrence also took as his wife Anne Fairfax, daughter of one of the richest and most powerful men in Virginia.
On his frequent visits to Lawrence’s house, young George found himself in the company of the colony’s upper strata, whetting his desires for wealth and position. In addition to becoming surveyor for the Fairfax family, and helping to lay out the new town of Alexandria, he acquired Anne’s brother George William Fairfax as a close friend and benefactor.
When George William brought back as bride the very charming and high-born Sally Cary of Williamsburg, Washington fell hopelessly in love. The extent of her return of affection is a matter for historical debate and conjecture, but, though she remained constant to her husband and Washington married the rich Martha, he and Sally corresponded fondly, sometimes passionately, into old age.
Some things about that matter we will never know, because Martha burned stacks of Washington’s personal letters.
Sally was one of the attractions that drew him away from Fredericksburg, but so were his brother Lawrence’s tales of adventure on the high seas. While still a teen, Washington tried to join the British navy, but his mother sharply vetoed the idea after consulting her brother in England, who said Washington would have little chance for advancement and would be treated like a slave. Better to work a farm in the Colonies.
Certainly the future of this country would have taken a different turn had Washington become a sailor for the king.
Washington’s mother, remarkable for her time in being able to keep her family and holdings intact as a widow without remarrying or going into debt, was a strong-willed woman with whom Washington apparently often clashed.
Yet he was dutiful to her. In 1772, when she was 64 and war clouds were gathering, he moved her for her own safety to the house he had bought for her within the town of Fredericksburg on Charles Street. She remained there until her death in 1789, the year he became president.
Small and neat, with few but quite commodious rooms, the house is celebrated for its garden. When Washington was president, a traveler passing through Fredericksburg wrote to Washington commenting on how refreshing to see such a great lady working her garden in a humble gingham dress. Washington wrote to his mother swiftly, urging her to be mindful of “his position.”
The nearby Kenmore, which takes its name from a later resident, was one of Washington’s favorite destinations in Fredericksburg, for he and his sister Betty, a year younger than he, were very close.
One of the finest examples of 18th Century architecture and restoration in the country, the very grand Georgian mansion and outbuildings are open to the public, and were once the centerpiece of a vast estate extending from north of the town all the way to the river.
Recent archeological excavations around the foundations of the house have unearthed a treasure of vintage artifacts, some of which are now on display at Kenmore’s gift shop.
On the grounds is a lovely, winding wilderness walk that replicates what would have been one of the better grade entry roads of the period.
If his mother prevented him from going to sea, Washington had no problem joining the local Virginia militia as a major at age 21.
Though he had no previous military experience, he was sent in 1753 on a perilous mission across the Appalachian Mountains into French and Indian country to deliver an ultimatum to the French commander to leave the Ohio Valley.
The French refused, but Washington’s published account of his “wild west” adventure made him a local hero.
When he returned to the mountains the following year, ambushing a French party led by a young officer performing the same role for his country, Washington found himself an international villain at age 22.
The French officer had been horribly killed in the ambush, and a large French party pursued Washington’s little band and gave battle at a place in southwestern Pennsylvania called Ft. Necessity. Washington was outfought and compelled to surrender.
The capitulation paper was in French, however, and unbeknownst to Washington, included a confession to having murdered the French officer. “George Washington, Assassin” became a rallying cry in France that helped bring on the French Indian or Seven Years War, the first conflict fought all over the globe.
The year after that, 1755, Washington returned to the scene as an aide to British Gen. Edward Braddock, who led the mightiest army ever then seen in North America, only to have it shot and tomahawked to pieces in an infamous debacle of a battle near what is now downtown Pittsburgh.
Young Washington was one of the few to conduct himself bravely and skillfully in that engagement, and his experience would later commend him for the post of commanding general of the Revolutionary War forces.
For the rest of the conflict with the French, Washington was a lieutenant colonel in charge of the entire western frontier of Virginia, based in Winchester and waging battle almost daily against the depredations of the Indian and French guerrilla foe.
After the British at last gained the upper hand, Washington settled in permanently at Mt. Vernon, which he had acquired from his brother Lawrence’s widow, with a wife who adored him, the very rich widow Martha Custis. He became active in the House of Burgesses and emerged as one of the leading men of the Colonies.
Mt. Vernon had one advantage that Fredericksburg did not. Washington’s next-door neighbors there, at an estate called Belvoir, were George William and Sally Fairfax.
HISTORIC PLACES OF GEORGE WASHINGTON’S YOUTH
Fredericksburg, Va.
Ferry Farm, off Route 3 East on the Stafford County side of the Rappahannock. Call 540-373-3381 (the Kenmore Association) for information.
Kenmore Plantation and Gardens, 1201 Washington Ave., 540-373-3381.
Mary Washington Grave and Monument, including her afternoon sunning and reading spot, Meditation Rock. Washington Avenue and Pitt Street.
Mary Washington House and Garden, 1200 Charles St., 540-373-1569.
Rising Sun Tavern, built by Washington’s brother Charles in 1760 and restored to its full 18th Century glory, complete with tavern wenches and a wonderful pewter collection, 1306 Caroline St., 540-371-1494.
Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop, a medical museum restored as used by Washington family friend, Revolutionary War general and local doctor, 1020 Caroline St., 540-373-3362.
George Washington Birthplace National Monument, a historic marker and monument only, 40 miles east of Fredericksburg on U.S. Highway 204, two miles off Route 3.
Mt. Vernon, Va.
Mt. Vernon Plantation, home of George and Martha Washington but also Lawrence and Anne Washington, includes Washington’s grave and numerous farm buildings; tours include slave quarters and discussions of Washington’s relationships with his slaves. Overlooks the Potomac River 16 miles due south of Washington, D.C., on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, 703-780-2000.
Alexandria, Va.
Gadsby’s Tavern and Museum, one of Washington’s favorite stops for food, drink, dancing and conviviality while at nearby Mt. Vernon, 134 N. Royal St., 703-838-4242.
Williamsburg, Va.
Colonial Williamsburg, one of the most elaborate historical re-creations and replications in America, was Virginia capital in Colonial days when Washington and other patriots began to foment rebellion in the House of Burgesses, Colonial Parkway and Virginia Highway 132, 757-220-7645.
Winchester, Va.
George Washington’s headquarters, building used as office by Washington when he was western frontier commander during French Indian War, including model of Ft. Loudon he built there and numerous 18th and 19th Century relics, Cork and Braddock Streets, 540-662-4412.
Uniontown, Pa.
Ft. Necessity Battlefield, including visitor center and a replica of the small, crude fort Lt. Col. Washington had built here in his feckless defense against a pursuing French and Indian force bent on revenge for the killing of a French officer, 11 miles southeast of Uniontown on U.S. Highway 40, 412-329-5512.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Ft. Pitt Museum, best French and Indian War museum in country, built in part of fortifications of original fort near scenes of Washington’s great wilderness adventures, in Point State Park at confluence of Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in downtown Pittsburgh, 101 Commonwealth Pl., 412-281-9284.
