The wealthy Virginia colonists built handsome houses on their large estates. “The First Families of Virginia,” as they came to be called, owned negroes that had been stolen from the jungles of Africa and sold to the planters. These slaves worked in the tobacco fields and did other work on the farms. Then there were also white men who had broken the laws in England, and were condemned to hard labor in the fields of Virginia instead of being shut up in the prisons of England. As most of the labor on their farms and plantations was done by black slaves and white convicts, the young gentlemen of the colony thought all that kind of work was too low for them to do. So, instead of laboring to improve their new country, as men did in other colonies, the strong young men of Virginia led lives of ease—drinking, carousing, gambling, and horse racing.
Little George Washington’s father was a wealthy planter who owned three plantations. He was a member of a great English company buying up vast tracts of land in the new country. He also owned a big interest in some iron mines. And besides all these, he was owner and master of a ship which took his tobacco and iron to London and brought back cargoes of silks, furniture, tea, coffee, and many other things not then made or raised in Virginia. Mr. Washington sometimes sailed to England on his ship and commanded his crew. From this he was called “Captain.”
Captain Washington’s oldest son, Lawrence, fourteen years older than George, had enlisted in the army while at school in England, and was now a captain fighting the Spaniards under Admiral Vernon.
When George was seven years old the Washington house was burned down, and the family had to move about fifty miles in a sailboat to another estate named “Ferry Farm,” on the Rappahannock River. From there George went to school, riding several miles a day on his own pony.
The schoolhouse was a mere shed in the center of a wornout tobacco field. George did not learn much there, but he did have a great time playing soldier. Small as he was, he was captain of the “white men.” The other “men” were Spaniards, French, or Indians, for England was at war with all these people most of the time. So, just then, there were three “captains” in the Washington family—Augustine, the father, Lawrence, the soldier son, and George, the school leader.
When George was eleven his father died, leaving the best part of his wealth to Lawrence. By English law the most of the property went to the eldest son; so the people of Virginia felt that this was the right thing to do. But George’s mother thought it was all wrong, when the oldest son of her husband’s first wife was made a rich man and her oldest son was left a poor boy by their father’s will. As for George, he believed it must be right because his father had willed it so. Instead of being jealous or grudging his half-brother such good fortune, George began to plan how to earn his own living. In this way the boy George Washington was preparing for the great War for Independence.
To keep his little brother from going to work, Lawrence persuaded his stepmother to let him find George a good place where he might become an officer in the English navy. He could do so through Admiral Vernon, for whom Lawrence had named the mansion he had built where his father’s house had burned down. But when the time came for parting with her oldest son and stand-by, stern, dignified Mary Washington broke down and cried, pleading with George not to leave his mother alone in her widowhood and poverty. It was so hard for George to give up what he thought was his only chance in life, that his face turned white. But for his mother’s sake, he gave it all up. Taking
