This is the FCB podcast Network. The breed us off the Jeremy starting and they thought so well working America and of the. Welcome back to the Growing Patriot podcast American History for Kids. I'm your host, Amelia Hamilton. Last time we wrapped up the life and work of Benjamin Franklin. Now we're going to start on our next founding father, the one who is the next youngest, George Washington. Are you ready? Here we go. George Washington was born on February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, when Benjamin Franklin was already twenty six years old. He was quite a bit older than the rest of our founding fathers. But George Washington was born in Virginia at a place called Pope's Creek Plantation to his parents, Augustine and Mary Ball Washington, and they were farmers who were somewhat wealthy and prosperous. So it was a little bit more likely that George would end up being somebody kind of important than maybe someone like Benjamin Franklin, but he still wasn't expected to be super important like he ended up being. George also had a bunch of siblings. His dad had been married before, so, even before he married Mary Ball Washington, he had three children, Lawrence, Augustine Junior, and Jane. And then when Augustine married Mary, there were six more. First was George, and then Eddie, Samuel, John, Augustine, Charles, and Mildred. That's a lot of children. When George was a little boy, the family moved around a few times, but then when he was only six years old, they settled down at a place called Fairy Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia. The farm grew tobacco, corn, and wheat, and those were the biggest crops, but they also did produce wool and manufacture iron. It was after only a few years of living there that the first huge event of George Washington's life happened. When he was eleven years old, his dad died, and because he had older brothers, there wasn't really much for him to inherit. In those days, things weren't really split evenly between children. The older son got just about everything, and younger sons got something if there was something left, and daughters they hardly got anything at all. So his older brother Lawrence got the main plantation, something called Hunting Creek, which he renamed Mount Vernon, and you will definitely hear more about that later as we talk more about George Washington's life. But they did own more than one property, so young George did inherit Fairy Farm, but he was only eleven years old and too young to run it. So his mom did, and she would until he was twenty one. But it wasn't a big enough farm for them to live on and make enough money. And without enough money, George relied on his family. So his older brothers were able to do things, live in England to go to school, but he and his younger brothers couldn't. His mom taught him how to manage a plantation, though, and his neighbor, Colonel William Fairfax, taught him something that would change his life. What was it that Colonel Fairfax taught George Washington? He taught him about surveying, which is a way to measure land and create maps. It was a very respectable job and that would end up being really important in his life. In fact, the oldest book that is still surviving from George Washington's collection of books is a surveying book. The Washington Library has a sixteen seventy nine edition of a book called The Complete Surveyor by William Layborne, and that's from his own personal library. He got that book from Colonel Fairfax when he was only thirteen years old. In seventeen forty eight, Fairfax organized a surveying group to lay out lots of land among the western frontier of Virginia, and George Washington got to be part of the group. He got a lot of experience about surveying and living in difficult circumstances. In fact, he even wrote in his journal about sleeping on the ground with just one blanket and the blanket had bugs. Then around the time he turned seventeen. That next year, in seventeen forty nine, he got his first professional surveying job, and that was to survey Culpeper County, Virginia. Again, he got that job from Fairfax, who was serving on the Governor's council. Then he was determined to do a good job, so he was sworn in and just two days later he had already measured four hundred acres for a man named Richard Barnes. In just a few years, he had surveyed two hundred times for more than six hundred thousand acres of land. He could have gone on to be a great surveyor and made that a wonderful career. His life ended up going in a different direction. But the skills he had to understand the land around him and to sleep rough in a field would serve him well in the military too. But his life was about to change again. George Washington's life took another turn in seventeen fifty one when he went to Barbados with his older brother, Lawrence. That was his oldest half brother, who was about fourteen years older, and since his father had died, he had been kind of a father figure to young George Washington. Lawrence suffered from tuberculosis, which was a disease of the lungs. The doctors thought that a winter in the tropical climate would be good for him. His wife couldn't go, so Lawrence took George with him. At that time, he had been a little bit into Maryland just a couple of times, but other than that, he had never even left Virginia, and this would be the one and only time in George's whole life that he ever left the North American mainland. They arrived in Barbados on November two, seventeen fifty one after about six weeks at sea, and when they got to the place where they were staying, some one there had smallpox, and within two weeks George Washington had it too. Of course we know he survived because his story doesn't end there, but he was very, very lucky. While they were in Barbados, they spent time with the high society there. He was just received and accepted as a gentleman, just like his wealthier older brother Lawrence, so he got to see what that life was like. But he also visited the military was there and got to talk with people about the British Empire and how other colonies were feeling. He got to see the British forts in Barbados, and that got him thinking about a military career, but his mom kind of talked him out of that when he got home, and he did go home at the end of December, but he went home alone. Lawrence wasn't feeling better yet, so he decided to go to Bermuda instead to see if that would help, and when that didn't really help his condition, he returned home to Mount Vernon in Virginia, the plantation Lawrence had inherited that had initially been named Little Hunting Creek. In July of seventeen fifty two, George Washington's brother, Lawrence also passed away. Mount Vernon was left to Lawrence's widow, but twenty year old George leased it from her and began his own life as a planter. He also succeeded Lawrence as a senior officer in the Virginia Militia, and that career would end up being more important than anyone could have ever imagined. And that's what we will talk about in the next episode. But before we close this episode, I want to talk a little bit more about all of those Washington siblings. First, his half brother Augustine Junior. He served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and inherited part of an iron company from Lawrence. One of his daughters went on to marry General Spotswood, whose dad was the Governor of Virginia and mom was Martha Washington's cousin. Jane Washington died when she was only about twelve, so not much is known about her. Next was Betty. She married a man named Fielding Lewis, who was a vestryman of his local church, a colonel in the Spotsylvania County militia and served as a member of the House of Burgesses. In seventeen seventy three, he joined the Virginia Committee of Correspondents, and since he was gone so much, Betty was in charge of running their estate and the store that they owned. During the revolution, they supplied salt, flour, bacon, and clothing to patriots, among other supplies they needed, and they also maintained a gunnery, but they ran out of money doing it. Even though Mildred is actually the youngest of all the Washington siblings, I'm going to mention her out of order just so we can do all of the sisters at once. Poor Mildred died at only eighteen months old when George was seven, so Sarah was actually the only sister to live to adulthood. Next after Sarah was Samuel. He was also a planter and a militia officer in Virginia, but he was no George Washington. In fact, he was known as being pretty bad with money and had to borrow from his brother George a lot. But here's something cool. The house he built Harwood in West Virginia is still privately owned by members of the Washington family today. Next was John Augustine, who was known as Jack. While Lawrence was more of a father figure to George, j was more like a favorite brother. He managed Mount Vernon for George during the French and Indian War and was a Revolutionary War patriot too. He married a woman named Hannah bush Rod, and they had a son named Bushrod Washington, who became a Supreme Court justice. When Jack died in seventeen eighty seven, George was deeply upset. And then there's Charles. Have you ever heard of Charlestown, West Virginia. Well, this is the Charles it was named after. He lived most of his life in Fredericksburg, Virginia as a vestryman and justice, and then moved to the Shenandoah Valley to live on land he inherited from Lawrence, and that brings us to Lawrence. I saved him for last because he was the most important in George's life, and we know the most about him. He was the eldest and adored by his brother George. George really got a foothold in high society that otherwise would have been unattainable for a younger brother. George didn't actually meet Lawrence until he was six because his big brother was living in England at the time getting a fancy education. On June ninth, seventeen forty, Lawrence Washington was given a commission as a captain in one of four Virginia companies that was fighting the War of Jenkins's Ear, a war in the West Indies between Britain and Spain. And that commission came right from the court of King George the Second of England. It's pretty crazy that his younger brother George would fight King George the Third of England. But when he got back to Virginia in seventeen forty two, he got to take over that farm, Little Hunting Creek, and he became a jutant general for the Militia of Northern Virginia and promoted to major. Because he was from a pretty important family, he was able to court and win the hand of Anne Fairfax, the daughter of Colonel William Fairfax, and that is one of the reasons that young George had that connection and was able to get into surveying and have the opportunities through William Fairfax. And that marriage also helped Lawrence. He had a lot more money once he was related to the Fairfax family, and after his father died, he also had little hunting Creek, which he renamed Mount Vernon after Admiral Edward Vernon, a man he admired quite a bit. While he was serving as a captain in the Virginia Foot Regiments. Lawrence also had some power in Virginia as a member of the House of Burgesses representing Fairfax County, and he really looked after his little brother George. He had him to visit often, and he introduced him into society. Without this, he would not have had the connections and the opportunities that he had. And without those connections, without those opportunities, where would America be today. It's hard to think about that. When Lawrence died, Mount Vernon went to his daughter Sarah, his only living child, But then Sarah died only two years later with no children of her own. So then Mount Vernon went to Lawrence's wife, Anne, but Anne had already remarried by that time and no longer lived at Mount Vernon. As I said earlier, George Washington was leasing it and running the farm at that time himself. So then when she died in seventeen sixty one, Mount Vernon was officially his. It was officially George Washington's and it would be home to him for the rest of his life, even if he didn't spend much time there. But we will get to that in another episode. My goodness, that is a lot of Washington's siblings, isn't it. That is a good place to leave it for today. We left off with George Washington just starting out on a military career, but we're still quite a few years before the American Revolution. So in the next episode we're going to find out what his life was like as a soldier for the king. It's going to be fun. Can't wait to tell you about it. Then, in the meantime, don't forget to visit Growingpatriots dot com and Growing Patriots on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for resources that go with this episode and every episode. See you next time. They breed us out with Ranny still and they thought so well the working America and
