Augustine Washington (1694-1743) was the father of George Washington and the original owner of Mount Vernon. When asked about the father of George Washington in the mid-nineteenth century, George Washington Parke Custis replied: “Of Augustin Washington, the father of the Chief, but little is known.”1 What little is known, however, sheds some light on the Chesapeake world into which George Washington was born.
Early Life
Named for his mother’s father, Augustine Washington was the second child of Lawrence and Mildred (née Warner) Washington of Mattox Creek in Virginia’s Northern Neck. Although no documentary evidence is known to exist, Augustine Washington was most likely born in 1694. His father, Lawrence Washington, was a politically active citizen of Westmoreland County, holding key local offices and representing the district in Virginia’s House of Burgesses. He abruptly passed away in 1698 at the age of thirty-eight when Augustine was a toddler.
Mildred Washington married George Gale, a merchant, and moved her family to her new husband’s home in Whitehaven, England. Tragedy struck the family in January of 1701 when Mildred died a few days after childbirth. Captain Gale sent his stepsons, Augustine and his older brother John, to a nearby school, possibly to Appleby Grammar School, where Augustine would later send his two eldest sons.2 Questions over the inheritance of Lawrence and Mildred Washington’s estates, however, ultimately led to the Washington children returning to Virginia and becoming wards of a distant relative, John Washington of Chotank. John raised the children in the eastern portion of what was then Stafford County, Virginia, until 1713.3
Marriage and Adulthood
As an adult, Augustine stood six feet tall, had a fair complexion, and possessed great physical strength and a gentle personality.4 He married Jane Butler on April 20, 1715.5 Jane’s dowry added 1,750 acres to Augustine’s inheritance of 1,100 acres. She also arrived with an unknown number of enslaved people, who joined six enslaved people already living with Augustine. The young couple became tobacco planters on Washington family land at the mouth of Bridge’s Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia.6 They had four children, but only Lawrence and Augustine Jr. survived to adulthood. Following in his father’s footsteps, Augustine entered public life and increasingly served his community as a church warden, Justice of the Peace, and Sheriff for Westmoreland County.7 He also began to add land in the Northern Neck of Virginia to his holdings.
When iron-rich deposits were found on his property near Accokeek Creek in Stafford County, Augustine ventured into the fledgling iron industry in British North America. He partnered with an agent of an established association of British iron-masters, merchants, and investors - called the Principio Company - and traveled to England in 1729 to negotiate a contract for iron production. William Byrd II visited in 1732 and recorded: “Not far from [Fredericksburg] are [Mr.] England’s iron mines, called so from the chief manager of them, though the land belongs to Mr. Washington. These mines are two miles from the furnace, and Mr. Washington raises the ore, and carts it thither for twenty shillings the ton of iron that it yields” adding, “Matters are very well managed there.”8
When Augustine returned to the Virginia colony from England in the spring of 1730, he was met with the shocking news that his wife had died the previous autumn. The following year, he married Mary Ball on Tuesday, March 6, 1731.9 The couple began their life together at Augustine’s home on Pope’s Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia and soon began a family of their own. Their first child, named George, was born in February of 1732. He was in time followed by five siblings.10
Life at Mount Vernon
Perhaps to be closer to the ironworks, Augustine moved his growing family sixty miles up the Potomac River. By the end of 1735, he built a home on his “Little Hunting Creek Tract.”11 Augustine oversaw the building of the home that would become the core of the Mount Vernon mansion.12 As fate would have it, the on-site manager of the ironworks died shortly after the Washington family’s move. This pressed Augustine into taking a greater hands-on role in overseeing the iron producing operations at Accokeek Creek. It also caused Augustine to travel to England again to clarify his position with the directors of the Principio Company in London. He returned in the early summer of 1737 with an even better contract for his management of the iron enterprise.
To be closer to the foundry and furnace, Augustine purchased land and “a very handsome Dwelling house” near the growing town of Fredericksburg in November of 1738.13 The property came to be known as Ferry Farm for the nearby ferryboat that crossed the Rappahannock River between the Washington property and Fredericksburg. Augustine continued farming tobacco, corn, and wheat, but ever inquisitive, he tried a turn at raising sheep for wool. He also became a trustee of Fredericksburg in 1742.14
Death and Legacy
Five years after settling on Ferry Farm, Augustine Washington died on the 12th of April 1743.15 By his own wish, his body was interred at the family graveyard near Bridges Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia.16
When Augustine’s extensive and complicated will carried out, eleven-year old George Washington received the Ferry Farm property, three lots in Fredericksburg, and a half interest in an undeveloped tract in Stafford County. He was also granted ten enslaved people.17 This property was held in trust by his mother until he reached legal age.18 Regrettably, there are no existing remembrances by George Washington of his father. Yet he conclusively shaped his son George’s exceptional course of life, from his extraordinary strength to his business acumen and civic mindedness.
Author: Samuel K. Fore
Published: April 23, 2024
Further Reading
Ford, Worthington C., ed. Wills of George Washington and His Immediate Ancestors. (Brooklyn: Historical Printing Club, 1891).
Freeman, Douglas Southall. Young Washington, Vols. 1 & 2 of George Washington, A Biography. (New York: Scribner, 1948).
Levy, Philip. Upon This Land: Seven Generations of the Washington Family and the Residents of Popes Creek and Mattox Neck… ([Washington, D.C.]: U. S. Department of the Interior, 2023).
Notes
1. George Washington Parke Custis to “Brown”, April 24 1851, in Drake, Samuel G., ed. New England Historical & Genealogical Register… [New Series] Vol. XI. (Jan 1857) No. 1 (Boston: C. Benjamin Richardson, 1857.), pp. 4-6.
2. Zagarri, Rosemarie, ed. David Humphreys’ Life of General Washington with George Washington’s "Remarks”. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), p. 6 & Pape, T. “Appleby Grammar School and Its Washington Pupils” The William and Mary Quarterly Vol. 20, No. 4 (Oct. 1940), pp. 498-501.
3. Levy, Philip. Upon This Land: Seven Generations of the Washington Family and the Residents of Popes Creek and Mattox Neck… ([Washington, D.C.]: U. S. Department of the Interior, 2023), p. 233.
4. “George Washington Parke Custis to ‘Brown’, April 24, 1852” in Drake, Samuel G., ed. New England Historical & Genealogical Register… (New Series) Vol. XI. (Jan 1857) No. 1 (Boston: C. Benjamin Richardson, 1857.), pp. 4-6.
5. “Memorandum from Lawrence Washington’s Book” in footnote 3 of “To George Washington from Hannah Fairfax Washington, 9 April 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-10-02-0139
6. Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life. (New York: Penguin Press, 2010), p. 5.
7. Ibid & Gonzalez, Amanda, ed., Westmoreland County, Virginia, Orders, 1726–1729. (Lewes, Del.: Colonial Roots, 2013), pp. 5, 14, 92, 193 & 206.
8. Wynne, Thomas H, ed. History of the Dividing Line, and Other Tracts, From the Papers of William Byrd, of Westover, in Virginia, Esquire. Vol. II: Journey to the Land of Eden, Etc. (Richmond: Privately printed, 1866), pp. 72-73.
9. “Washington Family Bible Page,” The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, accessed 22 Jan. 2024, http://catalog.mountvernon.org/digital/collection/p16829coll5/id/631/
10. “Washington Family Bible Page,” The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, accessed 22 Jan. 2024, http://catalog.mountvernon.org/digital/collection/p16829coll5/id/631/ & “Memorandum from Lawrence Washington’s Book” in footnote 3 of “To George Washington from Hannah Fairfax Washington, 9 April 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-10-02-0139
11. Levy, Philip. Upon This Land: Seven Generations of the Washington Family and the Residents of Popes Creek and Mattox Neck… ([Washington, D.C.]: U. S. Department of the Interior, 2023), p. 259 & 334-335.
12. Chernow, 7.
13. Virginia Gazette (Park’s No. 90, Williamsburg) April 21, 1738, p. 4, col. 2.
14. “Notes and Queries.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 23, no. 3 (1915): 310 http://www.jstor.org/stable/4243454.
15. “Washington Family Bible Page,” The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon & “To George Washington from Hannah Fairfax Washington, 9 April 1792,” National Archives.
16. “Augustine Washington, Will. 1743.” George Washington Papers, Library of Congress, accessed 22 Jan. 2024 https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw441960/
[17] Ibid
[18] “Augustine Washington, Will. 1743.” George Washington Papers, Library of Congress, accessed 22 Jan. 2024 https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw441960/
As an adult, Augustine stood six feet tall, had a fair complexion, and possessed great physical strength and a gentle personality.