Education

The unexpected death of their father, when George Washington was 11, prevented him from receiving a similar education. Instead, private tutors and possibly a local school in Fredericksburg provided the young man with the only formal instruction he would receive. In addition to reading, writing, and basic legal forms, Washington studied geometry and trigonometry—in preparation for his first career as a surveyor—and manners, which would shape his character and conduct for the rest of his life.  

The Compleat Surveyor

George Washington likely copied geometry problems when he was about 14 years old from The Compleat Surveyor, by William Leybourn, an English mathematician, teacher, and land surveyor. Nearly a century old by the time Washington used it, Leybourn’s work demonstrated how the geometrical rules and theorems developed by the ancient Greeks should be practically applied by the surveyor. Beginning with the basics, the first problems trained students to use simple instruments (such as a compass and rule) to create perpendicular and parallel lines, skills necessary to draft surveys. Gradually increasing in difficulty, later problems challenged students to divide irregular tracts of land into plots of varying sizes.