Nature Bulletin No. 744   February 22, 1964
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Seymour Simon, President
David H. Thompson, Senior Naturalist

****:GEORGE WASHINGTON:   1732 - 1799

To most of us George Washington does not seem like a flesh-and-
blood person so much as do some other famous Americans. We know 
that he was a great soldier, our first president, and call him "the father 
of his country". But we are reminded of him most often as a man on a 
monument or by his face on a dollar bill or a postage stamp.

Fortunately, a sifting of his diaries and voluminous writings portray 
another, very human side of his personality. This has been well done 
in a recent biography, "Potomac Squire", by Elswyth Thane. Here, 
through hundreds of quotations, we meet a man often harassed by his 
responsibilities for other men's children, often rather hard up, often 
somewhat testy, often humorous, often wise and tolerant. Here we 
learn what he provided for his household and how he struggled to 
maintain and beautify his beloved Mount Vernon in spite of long 
absences.

George's father died when he was eleven, after which his early youth 
was divided between the homes of his widowed mother and his two 
older half-brothers -- Lawrence and Augustine. When about 14, he 
began to use his father's surveying instruments in little jobs for 
Lawrence at Mount Vernon: marking boundaries, mapping turnip 
fields and wood lots.

In 1748, when George was sixteen, Lord Fairfax sent him and a young 
Fairfax nephew to make surveys on his vast tracts of land in the 
Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. There on the frontier he camped out, 
foraged for his food, tended his horses, endured bad weather and 
saddle fatigue, and encountered firsthand that unpredictable and 
dangerous riddle, the Indian.

Washington wrote his letters and diaries with a carefully trimmed quill 
pen in a handwriting which was never a scrawl. At that time spelling 
was not uniform and words were often capitalized in the middle of a 
sentence for emphasis. Besides, he habitually made his own 
abbreviations.

At the time of General Braddock's defeat by the French at the Battle of 
the Monongahela in 1755, Washington was the only officer who was 
not either killed or disabled. A few days later he wrote his brother:

"Dear Jack: As I have heard since my arriv'l at this place, a 
circumstantial acct. of my death and dying speech, I take this 
oppertunity of contradicting the first and assuring you that I have not 
as yet composed the latter...  I had 4 Bullets through my Coat and 2 
Horses shot under me, and yet escaped unhurt.

"We have been most scandalously beaten by a trifling body of men.... 
A Weak and Feeble state of Health obliges me to halt here for 2 or 3 
days, to recover a little strength.... Pray give my Complt. to all my 
F'ds. I am, dr. Jack, y'r most Affect. Broth'r, etc. "

Washington regarded farming as his business. His writings are filled 
with notes on crop rotation, yields and livestock. He grafted fruit trees, 
invented a plow, built a greenhouse, and created a formal garden of 
native and imported flowers and shrubs. He enjoyed music, dancing, 
playing cards, and riding to hounds.

Upon the death of his brother Lawrence, George inherited Mount 
Vernon, at that time a plantation of 25 hundred acres. Eighteen slaves 
went with the estate and he bought three more. He remodeled the 
residence and added a third story. In 175g he married Martha Custis, a 
widow with two young children, and brought them to Mount Vernon. 
On the following January 1 he started a new diary with this entry:

"Called at Mr. Possey's in my way home and desired him to engage me 
100 Bar'ls of Corn upon the best terms he could in Maryland.

"And found Mrs. Washington upon my arrival broke out with the 
Meazles."