CHAPTER 1
Barbados
Was strongly attacked with the small Pox.
It was by a hair's breadth that George Washingtonwas ever born. Augustine Washington's secondwife, Mary Ball, was pregnant with her first childwhen at a dinner party at the Washington farmhouse oneSunday afternoon after church, an incredible, very tragicincident occurred. Thunder rolled and lightning zig-zagged theskies as one of the familiar summer storms arrived over thefarm at Pope's Creek. Biographer Willard Randall hasdescribed how a bolt "struck the house and traveled down thechimney and hit a young girl who was visiting theWashingtons for Sunday dinner." The poor girl "diedinstantly." According to Randall, the electric current was "sostrong it fused the knife and fork she was using to cut hermeat." As Washington's mother-to-be was "sitting only a fewfeet away," she naturally felt the shock and was "severelyjolted." It was a close call for the as yet unborn GeorgeWashington. It has to be counted as the first of many.
Although the family was not in fear for their lives, theFerry Farm was largely destroyed by fire on Christmas Eve,when little George was not yet eight years old. It was at aboutthis time that George's younger sister Mildred died in infancy,just short of her first birthday. And it was not three years laterthat his father died. The farm was left to George.
But all in all, it can be said that George Washington inhis early childhood experienced a fairly quiet, safe life in hisnative Virginia. His was a wealthy, sophisticated plantationfamily. He experienced, so far as is known, no terribly closeencounters with the Grim Reaper during his early years. Hemay have suffered a brief bout with diptheria, and he mayhave even been afflicted by the childhood measles, as he laterhad chances to contract that disease and did not. He may havehad the mumps. At age sixteen, while on the surveyingmission for Lord Fairfax, there was the "Ague and Feaver"(malaria), which, as he remembered, "I had to an extremity."Malaria of course had to be taken seriously. Indeed (as notedabove), when Washington was but a toddler, his half-sisterJane (who was ten, orperhaps twelve, years old)had been lost to a "fevercontracted in theTidewater swamps,"surely malaria. And as ifa malaria mosquito is notenough for the sixteen-year-oldWashington,toward the end of thatearly surveyingexpedition, the pallet ofstraw upon which the ladwas sleeping somehowbecame ignited. Happily,a fellow surveyor awokein time to extinguish theflames. So there were troubles enough, but GeorgeWashington was in fact nineteen years old before his life wasseriously imperiled.
Washington departed from the region that is now theUnited States only once in his sixty-seven years. This was in1751, when he was nineteen years old, when with his half-brotherLawrence he sailed to Barbados. George was veryfond of the much older Lawrence, and the two had grownquite close, very much enjoying their riding together over thebeautiful Virginia countryside.
Lawrence was actually fourteen years older thanGeorge. He was the son of Augustine Washington by his firstwife, Jane Butler. When he was only eleven years old,Lawrence (and later his brother Augustine, Jr.) was deliveredby his father to the Appleby Grammar School, CountyWestmoreland in Old England. When the lad returned toVirginia some eight years later, at age twenty, his education"complete," it was to find he had a six-year-old half-brothernamed George, his father having remarried after the death ofLawrence's mother.
On July 10, 1740, Lawrence, now twenty-two yearsold, was by the Governor of Virginia, William Gooch, giventhe senior commission as Captain of one of Virginia's fourcompanies of soldiers. For the next two years he was quiteactive in the English military expeditions against the seaportof Castagna, New Granada (now Columbia), and against bothCuba and Panama. In his last battle he participated in theBritish landing at Guatanamo. Miraculously, especially as thetroops were devastated by yellow fever, he survived all ofthese experiences.
In 1742, having returned to Virginia, Lawrence wasplaced in charge of his father's 2000-acre plantation along thePotomac River, and five years later was married to the eldestdaughter of the prominent landowner Colonel WilliamFairfax. Anne Fairfax was fifteen years old; Lawrence wastwenty-five, a very common disparity in those years.
The year after his marriage Lawrence was elected toVirginia's House of Burgesses and became a member of theambitious Ohio Company of Virginia. He was the primemover in the founding of a wholly new town on the Potomac,which was named Alexandria. But his health by this time hadturned "bad," and he hurried off to London to consultphysicians. From time to time (as in the winter of 1750) youngGeorge had accompanied Lawrence, of whom he was mostfond, to the resort of warm baths in the region now known asBerkeley Springs, West Virginia. But because his health wasnot improving, Lawrence elected to journey to Barbados,which island (in spite of the fact that both tuberculosis andsmallpox were rampant there) had somehow acquired areputation for a health-improving climate. The island wasconsidered a "cure for the vapours."
Barbados had been under Portuguese rule and thenSpanish, but the English had taken over the island and hadoccupied it since 1625. Lawrence had learned a little of thehistory of the island, and he certainly had heard enough fromthe Fairfax family to know that it was a gorgeous spot. Ofcourse the island had been a slave society through both theSpanish and the Portuguese rule. Through all of this time theslaves worked the sprawling plantations, which producedtobacco and cotton, and later on sugar. The Barbados wasthen, and it is now, a beautiful island, twenty-one miles longand twenty-three miles wide, located in the Lesser Antilles inthe easternmost part of the Carribean. The name Barbados(which is Portuguese) means "bearded ones" and may havebeen a reference to the conspicuous fig trees, which featuredlong, drooping roots. Fascinated by what Lawrence told him,young George was made most eager to join him on thevoyage.
As the first few pages of George's diary are missing, itis not known exactly when the brothers left Virginia, or evenupon what vessel, but as they made port in Bridgetown onNovember 2, 1751, it is supposed that they set out near themiddle or, more likely, during the last days of September andalmost certainly on the brigantine Success, which was active atthis time.
Except for some seasickness the voyage wasuneventful. But it might have ended in disaster. The crew ofthe Success was much surprised to sight, at four o'clock in themorning of November 2, what they eventually made out to bethe east coast of Barbados. As historian Jack Warren pointsout, the vessel was extremely lucky. Had the sighting come awee bit later, the ship may very well have been dashed on therocky shores. As it was, it made port as scheduled atBridgetown, a considerable seaport city, which dwarfedWilliamsburg.
The two had expected to take lodging at the home ofthe Collector of Customs, Gedney Clarke, who was related tothe Fairfax family of Lawrence's wife Anne; he was actuallyAnne's uncle. This decision turned out to be a mostunadvisable one as there was smallpox in the Clarke home.The brothers did accept an invitation "to breakfast and to dinewith him," and next day, the 5th, secured for Lawrence aprofessional review of his condition: "Early this morningcame Dr. Hilary, an eminent physician recommended byMajor Clarke, to pass his opinion on my brother's disorder,which he did in a favorable light, giving great assurances thatit was not so fixed but that a cure might effectually be made."
And "in the cool of the evening," feeling pretty goodabout that appraisal, the two with a Mr. James Carter rode outto "seek lodgings in the country," as Dr. Hilary had advised.They were "perfectly enraptured with the beautiful prospects,which every side presented to our view,—the fields of cane,corn, fruit trees, &c. in a delightful green."
They eventually wound up renting a house on thecoastal edge of the town, a house with a spectacular view ofthe Carlisle Bay. We know from George's diary a little abouttheir experience there: "Hired from Captain Crofton [Croftan,in command of Fort James] his house for fifteen pounds amonth exclusive of liquors and washing which we are toprovide. We stood a mile from town [Bridgetown] and theview is extensive by land and pleasant to see as we commandthe view of Carlisle Bay and all the shipping and such mannerthat none can come or go without being open to our view."
Although Lawrence was not able to do all that youngGeorge was doing, the two had quite a time, horseback ridingabout the island, visiting the fortifications, including FortsJames and Charles (which fascinated the youngerWashington), and accepting invitations to elegant dinnersprovided by the sophisticates of the town, and the plantations.In his diary Washington accounts for his delight in their toursof the island. The young man enjoyed dancing, and here hesaw his first stage play, which was George Lillo's The LondonMerchant, about a prostitute and the plight of women, apopular play in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Lawrence had the best care that could be provided bythe physicians of the island, but his health failed to improve.Brother George, not surprisingly, about two weeks after theirarrival in Barbados, contracted the smallpox. His diary entryfor November 17 reads: "Was strongly attacked with the smallPox." Indeed the smallpox laid him so low he confidednothing to his diary for almost a week. One historian notesthat few who were stricken with the disease had the capacityto write, and "The void in Washington's diary ... speaks of amisery commonplace in years gone by but unfamiliar to theworld today."
George Washington was lucky. Though his infectionhad him down for three weeks, he did recover, thanks in nosmall measure to the generous and very tender care providedby the much esteemed physician Dr. John Lanahan, who hadbeen sent for and who insisted on inoculation, a practice commonin Barbados at the time, but not practiced in Virginia!
Lawrence, however, was not improving. As hiscondition worsened he decided to give Bermuda a try. Georgedid not accompany him to that island, but started home forVirginia just a few days before Christmas. He sailed on thevessel Industry, and found the trip uneventful, except for anunpleasant recurrence of the seasickness he had suffered onthe way over. When the Industry docked in Yorktown, hefound he had been away from home for seven weeks. After aslight rest in Williamsburg he rode home the next day.
Lawrence returned home from Bermuda on June 16,1752, and surrendered to tuberculosis on July 26 at age thirty-four,having fought the terrible disease courageously for along time. He had been ill for a decade and extremely ill formore than three whole years. He died at the elegant home hehad built in 1743 and had named Mount Vernon in honor ofBritish Admiral Edward Vernon, whom he had served. By theterms of his will his daughter became heir to the "bulk" of theestate of Mount Vernon, with the whole going to GeorgeWashington should she die "without issue." Anne, with hersecond husband, George Lee, leased Mount Vernon toWashington, and when Anne died, March 14, 1761,Washington inherited the estate, as no child was living.
George was deeply moved by the death of Lawrence.He had been very fond of his half-brother. How much did heappreciate how perilous for himself as well was the Barbadosexperience? Although, as noted above, some biographersshrug the smallpox off as a "mild case," one declares that"The simple truth is that someone lacking Washington's greatstrength probably would have died." All in all, it was a veryclose call, the young Washington's first good reason toacknowledge mortality. What if ...?
CHAPTER 2
The Allegheny
I fortunately saved my Self by catchinghold of one of the Raft Logs.
The date is 1753. Washington is just now turningtwenty-one years of age. He continues to lustfor adventure. Adventure is not far off. Whenthe young Virginia officer wandered into that awesome anduntamed wilderness known as Pennsylvania, he experiencedsome frightfully close associations with eternity.
By the time George Washington and his half-brotherLawrence had returned to Virginia from the Barbados, thecold war between the empire-building nations of France andEngland had begun to heat up. And the hot spot was the Ohiocountry. In a bold move, the French, in the late winter andearly spring of 1753, constructed a fort at Presque Isle on LakeErie; and by the end of the summer they had built a roadsouth some fifteen miles to a most desirable location for a fort,on the banks of the stream known to the French as Rivière auBoeufs (present French Creek at present Waterford, Pa.).Here, beginning construction on July 11 or 12, 1753, theyerected Fort Le Boeuf. The fort was square, like Presque Isle,but somewhat smaller. Jacques Legardeur de Saint Pierreassumed command on December 3, 1753.
By the provincial governments of Virginia andPennsylvania, all of this was well known from the time thefirst log was laid at Presque Isle. A most ominous note wassounded by one Ohio Company trader, William Trent byname, who penned a warning to Governor Dinwiddie onAugust 11, 1753: "The French have already built a Fort onLake Erie, and another is partly finished.... By the lastaccount I can get the French Army consists of about fifteenhundred Souldiers besides Battoe Men. The French told theIndians their Army when collected will make up 15,000 Men,that Part of their Army which is on their way from Mississippihave built two Fortsdown the Ohio, that theCountry belongs to them& that they will buildwhen they like. Now isour Time, if we managewell all the Indians maybe brought to joinagainst the French,otherwise they will jointhe French against theEnglish."
Pennsylvania'sGovernor JamesHamilton had receivedfrom the French muchearlier in the year lettersthat made very clear theFrench considered the Ohio Valley theirs. They referred to theexplorations of La Salle, which may have reached to the OhioRiver. And they made much of the expedition of CaptainPierre Céleron de Blainville, who had commanded a party of230 men on a mission south some 3000 miles from Montrealin 1749. Traveling through western Pennsylvania and the OhioValley, much of the distance in some twenty-three canoes,Blainville, had as his object simply to establish the Frenchclaim to the lands. Virginia insisted that the valley was theirsby the Grant of 1609, and because of the many years of traderactivity. The colony of Pennsylvania, which should have beenmuch offended, registered comparatively little concern.
The portly lieutenant governor of colonial Virginia,Robert Dinwiddie, a Scot born in Glasgow, and now sixtyyears old, certainly was made unhappy. That he meant tocontest this action was very plain to those in his circle. Theyoung George Washington, sensing what he had in mind,hurried off to Williamsburg, eager to be the first consideredfor the necessary mission.
In February of this year, 1753, Washington had beencommissioned a major and had been made Adjutant of theSouthern District of Virginia. He is of course barely twenty-oneyears old.
Now, with the French threat very real and well defined,action by the colony of Virginia was plainly necessary.Learning, probably from Colonel Fairfax, of Dinwiddie'sdetermination to express to the French the displeasure ofVirginia, Washington made himself available. And on October30 (31?) Governor Dinwiddie by order of the Board of Trade,made Washington his envoy to the French. His mission wasclear enough. He was to journey to Fort Le Boeuf, there tomeet with the French Commandant, "to learn by whatauthority he presumes to make Incroachments on hisMajesty's Lands on the Ohio."
