FREDERICKSBURG'S ORIGINS
and a History of Its Neighborhoods

 Chapter 6
George Washington in Fredericksburg

By Paula S. Felder

George Washington's youthful years in Fredericksburg have been understudied and our local records underutilized by his biographers. There are understandable reasons why this has happened. It would take a great deal of time and effort to search painstakingly through the minutiae and details in potential sources to assemble a thoughtful portrait. Most of this scholarship still remains to be accomplished.  Also, there were memorable milestones which properly warranted attention—the beginning of his military career (1752); his seasoning in the French and Indian War, which prepared him for his historic role in the War for Independence; the achievement of his dream—his inheritance of Mount Vernon when his the heirs of his brother, Lawrence, were eliminated by death or disinterest; his marriage at the end of the decade. The result has been a patching together of subjective conclusions about other aspects of his early life by historians who were eager to place him on the larger stage, which they knew by hindsight he was destined for.

Douglas Southall Freeman set the standard for future scholarship on George’s Fredericksburg years. He characterized George's childhood and youth principally as having to put up with a selfish, demanding, and controlling mother.  Freeman wrote that Mary Washington “a poor manager... a thousand trifles were her daily care to the neglect of larger interests… When her complaints frequently drew money from the purse of her son, it was somehow spent to no purpose and forgotten as a gift.” These are only some of his disparaging remarks.

Subsequent biographers have simply cited Freeman's comments as their "original source," giving no other documentation but frequently embellishing their own versions. Flexner portrayed George as a young man  “flying from his mother to war” and his mother as having “a basic conviction that he was being unfaithful to his duty to her.” Another author described Mrs. Washington as arriving at Mount Vernon “to stage a brief and unsuccessful tantrum, before returning unappeased and unheeded to Ferry Farm.” (Emery). 

The military historian, Samuel Eliot Morison, dismissed George Washington’s mother as grasping, querulous, vulgar, exacting and selfish. Mary Washington-bashing has certainly been the vogue for the past half century. And it made for a dramatic story line to get the biographers past the years for which they had done little or no research.  There was, however, an early dissent from Freeman's views. It was by the scholar who reviewed the early volumes of Freeman’s monumental biography of Washington when they were first published.

Writing in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1949, Bernhard Knollenberg, the librarian of Yale University and an authority on the colonial period, while praising Freeman’s work on most counts and predicting its importance, took specific issue with his characterization of Mary Washington: “He has, in fact, defamed a woman, who during the period covered by his volumes, seems to have been worthy of her son’s affection and respect.” 

A contemporary account exists that supports Knollenberg’s view. George’s cousin, Lawrence Washington of the Chotank neighborhood (now in King George County) to whom he was especially close, wrote this reminiscence in his old age:

"I was often there with George, his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's companion. Of the mother, I was ten times more afraid than I ever was of my own parents. She awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was indeed, truly kind. I have often been present with her sons, proper tall fellows too, and we were all as mute as mice; and even now, when time has whitened my locks . . . I could not behold that remarkable woman without feelings it is impossible to describe. Whoever has seen that awe?inspiring air and manner so characteristic in the Father of his Country, will remember the matron.”
 
 Room for Thought

When we begin to assemble the chronological details of young Washington's life and erase the interpretations now accepted as fact, building a new characterization based on his Fredericksburg years can be a stimulating adventure.  The first impression that comes to mind is that he had an extraordinary amount of freedom—which is the opposite picture of life with a controlling mother. Even as the oldest son and a strapping teenager in a fatherless family, he seems to have had few or no familial responsibilities.

He was away from home a good deal of the time. He was often with his cousins at Chotank, who lived on the Potomac River land where the other branch of the Washington family was based and where his father had grown up.  At 16, he went on a lengthy exploration of the wilderness in the party of George William Fairfax, Lawrence's friend and neighbor. He had pleasurable visits at Mount Vernon, and he also traveled with his brother Lawrence, who was in search of health cures.

With William Fairfax as his mentor, George obtained his surveyor’s license when he was only 17 and an appointment as surveyor for the new county of Culpeper.  He was away from home on surveying trips for weeks and even months at a time, and he made good money from an early age.  One proclivity of benefit to historians was George’s letter writing and record keeping.  He wrote and saved copies of the letters he wrote and letters he received.  And he kept a diary.  Certainly, diaries were commonplace, but to save so much paperwork from a very early age – does that not merit some mention as a character trait?

He saved his workbook exercises and practice surveys. Much has been made of his copying "The Rules of Civility" during his student days (probably here in the Reverend Marye's school). The Rules are notable (though more an instruction on etiquette than a philosophical treatise) because his paperwork seldom rose above a very pragmatic level.

Untapped Resources

There is yet another source of information from his own hand - still unpublished and mostly unexplored - that can yield a picture of his Fredericksburg years to local annotators willing to do the laborious searching. That is his expense ledgers. (They are part of the incredible collection of George Washington’s papers available on the web site of the Library of Congress.) The ledgers begin when George was 15 years old and continue to 1793. They contain hundreds of individual accounts; included in the early years are accounts for local family, friends, and associates. These are a means to access his local activities and dealings.

Perhaps even more rewarding are the entries in pages and pages of his petty cash sections. These are invaluably chronological, allowing his path to be traced in fascinating detail. Once again, one is struck with Washington's proclivity for writing everything down—ferry expenses, wins and losses at billiards or cards (even a few pence), tips to servants in houses he visited, loans small or large to family members. The ledgers are the principal means by which Washington's Fredericksburg days can be chronicled.

We find him at Mrs. Gordon's (later Weedon's), at Julian's, at the play, at the saddlers, and shopping on Caroline Street, where he knew all the merchants.  Even though he took up residence at Mount Vernon in 1755, Washington maintained a comfortable familiarity with Fredericksburg until he departed for the Revolutionary War.  And within a few weeks of his return to Mount Vernon at war’s end, he graciously acknowledged the town's affection - and his admiration for his mother - in a memorable visit in February 1784.  The visit was reported, with all the toasts and speeches, in the Virginia Gazette.

Finally, there is one overriding feature of his Fredericksburg life that has been overlooked by his biographers. That was his sister Betty's marriage to Fielding Lewis in 1750. Young Washington already had some independence under his belt and a surveyor's income by the time of the marriage. But Lewis, seven years his senior and well established in the ranks of the gentry, was an especially valuable addition to the family. And George Washington was additionally fortunate in having such a benevolent and steadfast brother-in-law.

The two men shared interests in every aspect of their plantations – from their manor houses to crops.  Lewis’ store was a great convenience, as were his banking services, financial arrangements, and other services, both in Fredericksburg and Williamsburg.  In just a few years in the decade of the 1750s, Washington - only a young surveyor in 1752 when he wrote the field notes for his brother-in-law’s new acquisition (the Royston tract) - became Lewis’ equal in prominence.  They served together in the House of Burgesses in 1758, before George began his upward climb toward the national stage.