Washington Family

On the subject of genealogy, George Washington wrote to Sir Isaac Heard in May of 1792, "This is a subject to which I confess I have paid very little attention.”¹ Sir Isaac was the Garter Principal King of Arms, or chief herald of the College of Arms, and he hoped to learn more of the first president’s American ancestry. Despite claiming that he knew little of the subject, Washington constructed a family tree in 1752, documenting half-siblings who had died over a decade before he was born. He also knew he could turn to family.² He immediately wrote his cousin Hannah Fairfax Washington inquiring about family records. As she looked through “every old paper” in her possession, she enclosed papers of Washington’s deceased half-brother in response.³ Through his own personal record keeping, and that of his family members, Washington understood his North American lineage, and through corresponding with Sir Isaac Heard, Washington learned more about his British ancestry, confirming the Washington family tradition that the family originated “in one of the Northern Counties of England.”⁴

The Wessyngtons of Durham

Genealogists like Heard and his modern successors have confirmed the accuracy of the Washington family tradition. The Wessyngtons, or Washingtons, had been a prominent family in the county of Durham, England, since the twelfth century when William de Hertburn settled at Wessyngton on the River Wear and took it as his surname.⁵In Selby Abbey in Yorkshire, England, there is a medieval stained-glass window bearing the coat of arms of the Washington family. The window was probably dedicated to John Wessington, a fifteenth-century prior of Durham and a collateral ancestor of George Washington.⁶ A version of this coat of arms was later used by Washington.⁷

The Washingtons of Sulgrave Manor

Washington’s direct line can be traced to an early fourteenth century a descendant of William de Wessyngton, Robert de Washington, who settled a branch of the family in the vicinity of Warton, Lancashire. In 1529, Lawrence Washington, a descendant of Robert, moved from Warton to Northamptonshire where he became a prosperous wool merchant. With the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, Washington acquired the Manor of Sulgrave from the Priory of St. Andrew in Northampton. His new home, Sulgrave Manor, was completed in around 1560 and remained in the Washington family until 1610.⁸

George Washington’s great-great grandfather, also named Lawrence, was born at Sulgrave Manor in 1604. He earned his degree from Brasenose College, Oxford in 1623, and in 1633 became the rector of Purleigh, Essex, where his son John was born around 1634. When the English Civil War broke out a decade later, Rev. Lawrence Washington was removed from living in Purleigh because of his Royalist sympathies. Other members of the Washington family were also prominent Royalists, including Lawrence's nephew Colonel Henry Washington who unsuccessfully defended Worcester against Parliamentary forces in 1646.⁹ Rev. Lawrence Washington died in poverty in 1654.

The Washingtons Come to Virginia

Seeking opportunity, his son John Washington (c. 1634-1677) emigrated to Virginia in 1656. His younger brother, Lawrence Washington (1635-1677) later joined him. John Washington married Anne Pope (d. c.1669) in 1658. She was the daughter of a prominent Virginia plantation owner Colonel Nathaniel Pope who gave the couple a parcel of land on Mattox Creek as a wedding gift. John Washington became a successful planter in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He also served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and as a colonel in Virginia militia. His son Lawrence Washington (1659-1698) trained as a lawyer in England and eventually inherited his father's estates on Mattox Creek and Little Hunting Creek, the latter of which later became Mount Vernon.¹⁰

Lawrence Washington married Mildred Warner Washington (d. 1701), the daughter of Augustine Warner II, a colonel, member of the House of Burgess and Virginia landowner, and Mildred Reade Warner. Their son Augustine (1694-1743) was the father of George Washington, the first president of the United States. As his father died when he was a young boy, Augustine inherited a large share of his father's estates. Augustine’s sister, named for their mother and grandmother, Mildred (1696-c.1745) inherited the land that would become Mount Vernon, but she and her husband Roger Gregory sold it to Augustine in 1726.¹¹

With vast landholdings, Augustine was a successful tobacco planter. He served as both a county sheriff and justice of the peace, gaining influence in the community. Augustine was the father of four children with his first wife Jane Butler (1699-1743), including his son Lawrence Washington (1718-1752). After becoming widowed, Augustine married Mary Ball Washington (1708-1789) in 1731. Although orphaned, Mary Ball Washington descended from Virginia landowners who also immigrated from England in the 1650s. Their eldest child together was George Washington (1732-1799), and he was followed by five more siblings: Samuel Washington (1734-1781), John Augustine Washington (1736-1787), Charles Washington (1738-1799), Betty Washington Lewis (1733-1797), and Mildred Washington (1737-1740).¹²

George Washington maintained a close relationship with his sister Betty Washington Lewis, who married Fielding Lewis in 1750 with whom they shared a common great-grandfather, Augustine Warner II. Together they eleven children. After Fielding’s death in 1781, Washington played an active role in the lives of their surviving children. His nephew, Howell Lewis (1771-1822), was briefly his secretary and a manager at Mount Vernon.¹³ Another nephew, Lawrence Lewis (1767-1839), married his step-granddaughter Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis (1779-1852).¹⁴

George Washington’s eldest half-brother, Lawrence, was an influential force in his life. As the eldest surviving son, Lawrence took control of various estates following his father’s death including property at Little Hunting Creek in Fairfax, Virginia, which he would later name Mount Vernon. Lawrence was a commissioned officer in a Virginia company and involved in local politics serving in the House of Burgess. He died of tuberculosis that he contracted during military service. Washington accompanied him to Barbados to receive unsuccessful treatments. After his death, Lawrence willed Mount Vernon to his only surviving child Sarah Washington, and his widow Anne Fairfax Washington leased the property to George. When Sarah and Anne died in the years that followed, George Washington inherited Mount Vernon.

The Washington Family After the Death of George Washington

As Washington did not have biological children to inherit Mount Vernon, he turned to his nephew Bushrod Washington (1762-1829), the son of his brother, John Augustine Washington (1736-1787) and Hannah Bushrod Washington (1736-1801). Bushrod inherited Mount Vernon after the death of George’s wife Martha in 1802.¹⁵ Bushrod and his wife Ann Blackburn Washington (1768-1829) did not have any children, but assisted in raising various nieces and nephews at Mount Vernon including the children of Bushrod’s brother Corbin with his wife Hannah Lee Washington (1786-c.1801) after their deaths. Hannah Lee Washington was the daughter of Richard Henry Lee and Anne Aylett Lee of the prominent Virginia Lee family. Bushrod willed the property to his nephew John Augustine Washington (1792-1832) after his death in 1829. John Augustine Washington (1792-1832) was married to Jane Charlotte Blackburn (1786-1855).

Upon the death of John Augustine Washington (1792-1832) shortly after inheriting Mount Vernon, his son John Augustine Washington III (1821-1861), the great-grandnephew of George Washington, became the last Washington family owner of Mount Vernon. He lived there with his wife Eleanor Love Seldon (1824-1860), and their six children: Louisa F. Washington Chew (1844-1927), Jane C. Washington Willis (1846-1924), Elizabeth S. Washington Hunter (1848-1909), Anna M. Washington Tucker (1851-1927), Lawrence Washington (1854-1920), Eleanor L. Washington Howard (1856-1937), and George Washington (1858-1911). They were the last members of the Washington family to be born at Mount Vernon. He sold it to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association in 1858.

Washington’s paternal ancestry through the Washington family indicates generations of social networks in colonial Virginia, which included family members serving in local government and in the military. Generations of local influence supported by landownership, slavery, and marriage into similarly positioned families informed Washington’s life experiences.

Rob Hardy, Ph.D., Carleton College, revised by Zoie Horecny, Ph.D., 29 July 2025

Notes:

1. “From George Washington to Isaac Heard, 2 May 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives; “Enclosure: Washington Genealogy, 2 May 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives.

2. "George Washington Genealogy [1748-1750?], recto. Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence in Karin Wulf, Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America, (Oxford University Press, 2025), 232-233. 

3. “Hannah Fairfax Washington to George Washington, 9 April 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives.

4. “From George Washington to Isaac Heard, 2 May 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives.

5. John Solloway, Selby Abbey: Past and Present, (Duffield, 1925), 75.

6. “George Washington to Robert Adam, 22 November 1771,” The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008. Original source: Colonial Series (7 July 1748–15 June 1775), Volume 8 (24 June 1767–25 December 1771); “To George Washington from Isaac Heard, 7 December 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives.

7. The ancestral seat of the Washington family in Washington, Tyne and Wear, Washington Old Hall, is currently owned by the National Trust. William came originally from Hertburn, Sunderland.

8. Sulgrave Manor, jointly owned by Great Britain and the United States, is located near Banbury. On the Washingtons of Sulgrave, see S.H. Lee Washington, "New Light on George Washington's Ancestors: The Washingtons of Sulgrave and Brington," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 46 (1938): 201-203. For the Washingtons of Warton, Lancashire, see T. Pape, Warton and George Washington's Ancestors. See also "Oxford and the Washingtons," William and Mary Quarterly 23 (1943): 206-208; and Albert Bushnell Hart, "The English Ancestry of George Washington," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 63 (1929-1930): 3-16.

9. On Rev. Lawrence Washington and his son John, see Martin H. Quitt, "The English Cleric and the Virginia Adventurer: The Washingtons, Father and Son," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 97 (1989): 163-184.

10. Will of Lawrence Washington, 1752 June 20. Mount Vernon Ladies Association, 1752.

11.  “Washington Family Bible Page,” The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon; “To George Washington from Hannah Fairfax Washington, 9 April 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives.

12. “To George Washington from Hannah Fairfax Washington, 9 April 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives.

13. “From George Washington to Howell Lewis, 18 August 1793,” Founders Online, National Archives.

14. “From George Washington to George Deneale, 19 February 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives.

15. “George Washington’s Last Will and Testament, 9 July 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives.

Bibliography:

Casper, Scott E. Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009.

Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life. New York, New York: Penguin Press, 2010.

Duke, Jane Taylor. Kenmore and the Lewises. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1949.

Freeman, Douglas Southall. George Washington: A Biography, Volume I. New York: Scribner's, 1948. See particularly, 42-47.

Hart, Albert Hushnell. "The English Ancestry of George Washington," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 63 (1929-1930): 3-16.

Levy, Philip. Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington's Boyhood Home. New York, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2013.

Robert Dalzell, Jr., and Lee Baldwin Dalzell. George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home In Revolutionary America. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

S.H. Lee Washington, "New Light on George Washington's Ancestors: The Washingtons of Sulgrave and Brington," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 46 (1938): 201-203.

Sipe, C. Hale. Mount Vernon and the Washington Family : A Concise Handbook on the Ancestry, Youth and Family of George Washington, and History of His Home. 5th and enl. ed. Butler, Pa.: Ziegler Print. Co., 1924.

"Oxford and the Washingtons," William and Mary Quarterly 23 (1943): 206-208.

Wulf, Karin. Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America. Oxford University Press, 2025.