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George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was an American Founding Father, military officer, and politician who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797.
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George Washington is often called the “Father of His Country.” He not only served as the first president of the United States, but he also commanded the Continental Army during the American Revolution (1775–83) and presided over the convention that drafted the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. capital is named after Washington—as are many schools, parks, and cities. Today his face appears on the U.S. dollar bill and the quarter.
What political party did George Washington belong to?
George Washington did not belong to a political party. He ran as a nonpartisan candidate in the presidential elections of 1789 and 1792. To this day, Washington is the only U.S. president to have been unanimously elected by the electoral college.
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United States: Political parties
Learn about the origin and development of political parties in the United States.
Little is known of George Washington’s early childhood, spent largely on the Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River, opposite Fredericksburg, Virginia. Mason L. Weems’s stories of the hatchet and cherry tree and of young Washington’s repugnance to fighting are apocryphal efforts to fill a manifest gap. He attended school irregularly from his 7th to his 15th year, first with the local church sexton and later with a schoolmaster named Williams. Some of his schoolboy papers survive. He was fairly well trained in practical mathematics—gauging, several types of mensuration, and such trigonometry as was useful in surveying. He studied geography, possibly had a little Latin, and certainly read some of The Spectator and other English classics. The copybook in which he transcribed at 14 a set of moral precepts, or Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, was carefully preserved. His best training, however, was given him by practical men and outdoor occupations, not by books. He mastered tobacco growing and stock raising, and early in his teens he was sufficiently familiar with surveying to plot the fields about him.
At his father’s death, the 11-year-old boy became the ward of his half brother Lawrence, a man of fine character who gave him wise and affectionate care. Lawrence inherited the beautiful estate of Little Hunting Creek, which had been granted to the original settler, John Washington, and which Augustine had done much since 1738 to develop. Lawrence married Anne (Nancy) Fairfax, daughter of Col. William Fairfax, a cousin and agent of Lord Fairfax and one of the chief proprietors of the region. Lawrence also built a house and named the 2,500-acre (1,000-hectare) holding Mount Vernon in honour of the admiral under whom he had served in the siege of Cartagena. Living there chiefly with Lawrence (though he spent some time near Fredericksburg with his other half brother, Augustine, called Austin), George entered a more spacious and polite world. Anne Fairfax Washington was a woman of charm, grace, and culture; Lawrence had brought from his English school and naval service much knowledge and experience. A valued neighbour and relative, George William Fairfax, whose large estate, Belvoir, was about 4 miles (6 km) distant, and other relatives by marriage, the Carlyles of Alexandria, helped form George’s mind and manners.
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The youth turned first to surveying as a profession. Lord Fairfax, a middle-aged bachelor who owned more than 5,000,000 acres (2,000,000 hectares) in northern Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, came to America in 1746 to live with his cousin George William at Belvoir and to look after his properties. Two years later he sent to the Shenandoah Valley a party to survey and plot his lands to make regular tenants of the squatters moving in from Pennsylvania. With the official surveyor of Prince William county in charge, Washington went along as assistant. The 16-year-old lad kept a disjointed diary of the trip, which shows skill in observation. He describes the discomfort of sleeping under “one thread Bear blanket with double its Weight of Vermin such as Lice Fleas & c”; an encounter with an Indian war party bearing a scalp; the Pennsylvania-German emigrants, “as ignorant a set of people as the Indians they would never speak English but when spoken to they speak all Dutch”; and the serving of roast wild turkey on “a Large Chip,” for “as for dishes we had none.”
The following year (1749), aided by Lord Fairfax, Washington received an appointment as official surveyor of Culpeper county, and for more than two years he was kept almost constantly busy. Surveying not only in Culpeper but also in Frederick and Augusta counties, he made journeys far beyond the Tidewater region into the western wilderness. The experience taught him resourcefulness and endurance and toughened him in both body and mind. Coupled with Lawrence’s ventures in land, it also gave him an interest in western development that endured throughout his life. He was always disposed to speculate in western holdings and to view favourably projects for colonizing the West, and he greatly resented the limitations that the crown in time laid on the westward movement. In 1752 Lord Fairfax determined to take up his final residence in the Shenandoah Valley and settled there in a log hunting lodge, which he called Greenway Court after a Kentish manor of his family’s. There Washington was sometimes entertained and had access to a small library that Fairfax had begun accumulating at Oxford.
Apr 3, 2014 · Learn about the life and achievements of George Washington, the Founding Father of the United States and the first president of the United States. From his early childhood in Virginia to his military and political career in the American Revolutionary War and the Presidency, discover how he became a leader of the nation and a symbol of democracy.
Oct 29, 2009 · Learn about the life and achievements of George Washington, the first U.S. president and commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Explore his early years, his role in the Constitution, his presidency and his death.
Learn about the life and legacy of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Explore his role in the Revolutionary War, the Constitution, slavery, and more.
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George Washington, American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775–83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789–97). He is known as ‘the Father of His Country.’. Learn more about Washington’s life and career.
George Washington, (born Feb. 22, 1732, Westmoreland county, Va.—died Dec. 14, 1799, Mount Vernon, Va., U.S.), American Revolutionary commander-in-chief (1775–83) and first president of the U.S. (1789–97).
