So, on September 8, 1746, George went across the ferry from the farm to Fredericksburg and there met Col. William Fairfax, who was preparing, with William Beverley and Lunsford Lomax, to mark the newly established boundaries of the proprietary. Colonel Fairfax had come directly from Belvoir. He brought news of Mount Vernon and, more particularly, he put into George’s hands two letters from Lawrence. One was addressed to George himself; the other was to Lawrence’s stepmother. Fairfax explained that Lawrence wished George to ponder the letter meant for him but not to mention to his mother that he had received it; the letter to Mrs. Washington doubtless was deferential and probably did no more than mention the benefits that might come to George from service on the deck of a good ship. George understood the diplomacy of this approach. He promised Fairfax to follow the advice of Lawrence, who, he said, was his best friend.
Either from George or from an acquaintance in Fredericksburg, Colonel Fairfax learned that a Doctor Spencer was visiting often at Ferry Farm and exercising some influence over Mrs. Washington, then not older than thirty-seven and consequently not beyond thought of remarriage. The Doctor was urged to influence the widow to look favorably on the plan for George to go to sea. Mrs. Washington was half-converted, but within a few days was back to her original state of mind. As a friend of the family, Robert Jackson, wrote Lawrence about a week after the delivery of Lawrence’s letter, “she offers several trifling objections such as fond and unthinking mothers naturally suggest and I find that one word against [George’s] going has more weight than ten for it.”
There, for the time, the matter rested, though it continued to be discussed in family letters and eventually in one from some of the kinsfolk to Joseph Ball, Mary’s half-brother in England. Mary had plans of her own that involved Joseph. She had to look forward to 1753 when George would be of age and would come into possession of Ferry Farm. Not far down the Rappahannock was the property that Mary’s father had divided between her and Joseph. If the brother would permit her to cut timber and collect stone from his part of the property, she could assure herself a home there when she should leave Ferry Farm. Joseph was the wealthy member of the Ball family. Mary thought he should give her the timber and the stone for foundations and chimneys and that he could afford, indeed, to make a handsome present to his niece, Mary’s daughter Betty. To solicit these gifts Mary wrote her brother on December 13, 1746.
If George was not to go to sea until his mother had made up her mind, he had abundant, nearer activities. He seemed to pass in a single year from boyhood to young manhood. Strong of frame and of muscle, he still was studying mathematics and he was learning to write a swift, clear hand that made copying less tedious than for most boys. Among young Virginians of his class there was circulating an abbreviated version of Francis Hawkins’s Youth’s Behaviour. George read this and transcribed the rules with boyish lack of discrimination. He did not attempt to discard those intended for urban English or Continental life rather than for the Colonies; as the text was, so was it copied. At the end he transcribed: “Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Cetial fire Called Conscience.” He did so well with his copying that he scarcely deserved a black mark for writing “Cetial” instead of “Celestial.” He was to apply the maxim though he marred the word.
Of religion, there was at Ferry Farm an acceptance of belief in God and a compliance with the ritual of the church, but no special zeal or active faith. Such religious instruction as George received was of a sort to turn his mind towards conduct rather than towards creed. He was beginning to reason that there were certain principles of honesty and fairplay by which a man ought to live. In his small world he tried to practice those principles, but already he was looking beyond Ferry Farm and the Rappahannock. Everywhere the talk was of surveys and of the designs Lawrence and some of his friends were formulating for a company to develop the Ohio country that was accessible under the new Treaty of Lancaster. Whatever career the sea might hold later, the land was full of interest and of promise. George was developing an ambition to share in the profits his seniors were predicting.
The means of advancement were at hand—the surveyor’s instruments that had belonged to George’s father. George quickly learned the elements of surveying and began to run lines at Ferry Farm or on the plantations of his kinsmen. The work entranced him. By August of 1747 he had attained to the required standard of accuracy on simple assignments. Soon he was proficient on surveys that were not unduly complicated. One batch of surveys at the beginning of October brought the boy £2 3s. It was welcome coin to a boy who already had money-making as one of his ambitions. Surveying not only was excellent training, but it also had interest and yielded a profit.
Young Washington was in the first excitement of this engrossing work and of his first acquisition of earned money when his mother received a somewhat strange reply to the letter she had written her brother Joseph concerning the use of timber from his woods. Joseph wrote (in part) on May 19, 1747:
I think you are in the Right to leave the House where you are, and to go upon your own Land; but as for Timber, I have scarce enough for my own Plantations; so can spare you none of that; but as for stone, you may take what you please to build you a House. . . .
I understand you are advised, and have some thought of sending your son George to sea. I think he had better be put aprentice to a tinker; for a common sailor before the mast has by no means the common liberty of the Subject; for they will press him from a ship where he has 50 shillings a month and make him like a Negro, or rather, like a dog. And as for any considerable preferment in the Navy, it is not to be expected, there are always too many grasping for it here, who have interest and he has none. And if he should get to be master of a Virginia ship (which will be very difficult to do) a planter that has three or four hundred acres of land and three or four slaves, if he be industrious, may live more comfortably, and leave his family in better Bread, than such a master of a ship can . . .. beforehand, let him begin to chinch, that is buy goods for tobacco and sell. . . .
The arguments against a mariner’s life for George probably were decisive with Joseph’s half-sister. Nothing more was said in advocacy of such a career at a time when to Mrs. Washington’s refusal were added George’s profitable employment and a further event that might open many opportunities: Lord Fairfax—the Proprietor himself!—had arrived in Virginia and had established himself at Belvoir. It probably was in February 1748 that George journeyed to Mount Vernon and soon afterward went down to the next plantation to pay his respect to the great landlord. Lord Fairfax was fifty-four in 1748 and was not conspicuous either for good looks or for ugliness. Doubtless in the eyes of the youthful visitor, who was of the age and temperament to admire dress, the strangest characteristic of the owner of the Northern Neck was a disdain of fine apparel. Fairfax would buy of the best and the newest and never wear what he purchased. Year by year his unused wardrobe increased, while he went about in the plainest garments. Another peculiarity was Fairfax’s dislike of the company of women. Even among men, as his Virginia kinspeople were to find, he occasionally was silent and sullen; in the presence of ladies he almost always was reserved and embarrassed. If these were peculiarities discernible to young Washington, there was about Fairfax nothing that barbed antagonisms. His intellect was far from brilliant, but he was sufficiently wise to employ competent counsel when he needed to supplement his own. If some accounted him dull, none accused him of being vicious. He never was to have—and never undertook to have—an influence on George comparable to that exerted by Colonel Fairfax or by Lawrence.
Among the Fairfaxes were young women who had grace and good manners and wore fine clothes as if born to them. The resplendent young man of the circle was Colonel Fairfax’s oldest son, George William, born in the Bahamas but well-schooled and well-polished in England. He was twenty-three in 1748, seven years older than George, and already a Justice of the County and a newly elected Burgess. With these acquisitions would be coupled a great fort
une in land. What finer model could there be, or one more certain to arouse emulation in the heart of George Washington?
Chance offered George in the spring of 1748 an opportunity of being in the company of this young gentleman in circumstances that would permit George to be useful at the same time that he was having a fascinating experience. A surveying party was about to start for the remote South Branch of the Potomac. James Genn, the commissioned County Surveyor of Prince William, was to be in charge; the Proprietor was to be represented by George William Fairfax. Chairmen and other helpers were to be recruited on the frontier. If George cared to do so, he could go with the party. Somewhat surprisingly, permission was given by George’s mother.
March 11, 1748, was fixed as the date for leaving Mount Vernon and Belvoir. An important date it was in George’s life, because it marked his farthest journey from home and brought his first personal contact with the frontier. George was not unequipped for the enterprise; although he had just observed his sixteenth birthday, he was physically his father’s son and, in strength, almost a man. He was systematic, he had achieved his ambition of learning to write swiftly and clearly, and he could perform readily enough the simple mathematical problems of surveying. His mind found interest chiefly in matters of business, concerning which he was mature beyond his age, though he had little imagination except for planning how he could advance himself. On nearly all aspects of farm life, he had the information and the attitude of the plantation owner. For good land he was developing a critical and appraising eye. He rode admirably. He made on adults an excellent impression of vitality, courtesy and integrity at the same time that he won the good will of the young. Along with these excellencies he had the softness of the young gentleman who would ride horseback by the hour but always would come back to a comfortable house and a good bed. Although he was far from rich, he was accustomed to an ease quite different from the life of the frontier. Instead of wearing a hunting shirt and telling time “by sun,” he carried a watch and enjoyed some of the clothes of fashion.
Thus apparelled, George and “Mr. Fairfax” set out. Soon, instead of riding past plantations that were taking on something of the appearance of established estates, they turned northwest, at the Occoquan, and traveled through a country which, in part, was one stage only in development from the primal wilderness. Farms were few and trails were dim. Twenty miles the young men had to journey in woodland and new ground, by way of the recently established second Court House of Prince William County; and forty miles they had covered for the day when, at last, they drew rein at the ordinary of George Neville, located about two-thirds of the way to Ashby’s Bent on the trail from Fredericksburg.
The next morning, March 12, up rode Genn, who lived on the road to Falmouth. He had been one of the men responsible for the survey in 1746 of the boundaries of the proprietary and had been employed, also, on other work for Lord Fairfax. A more experienced surveyor for drawing lines in the frontier scarcely could have been George’s good fortune to find in Virginia. Under Genn’s guidance, the two young gentlemen passed northwestward, at times almost northward, until they reached the crest of the Blue Ridge at Ashby’s Bent. Ahead of George then, almost directly under the mountain, was the beautiful Shenandoah, the valley of which was a vast plain that spread almost to the horizon on the south. Beyond the plain, to the west and northwest, were lofty, enclosing mountains. For the splendor of this scene, George did not have imaginative eyes. With his companions he rode down from the mountain top by the road to Ashby’s Ferry. There, at the house of Captain John Ashby, the travelers spent the night. In a little blank book George had brought with him he wrote down briefly the details of the day’s journey and concluded: “Nothing remarkable happen’d.”
George perceived quickly why the country was exciting gamblers and attracting settlers. About four miles south of Ashby’s Ferry, beyond the western bank of the Shenandoah was the tract of some thousands of acres that Lord Fairfax had established as a “quarter” the previous year. This land, which became known as Greenway Court, George William Fairfax and George Washington set out to examine on March 13. After he got back to Captain Ashby’s he wrote in his journal with the enthusiasm of a planter and land speculator: “We went through most beautiful groves of sugar trees and spent the best part of the day in admiring the trees and the richness of the land.”
The first surveying of the expedition was not to be at Greenway Court but about twenty miles northward, down the Shenandoah, on tracts known as Cates Marsh and Long Marsh. For men working there the vicinity of Frederick Town, subsequently Winchester, was better suited as headquarters than was Ashby’s Ferry. On March 14 Genn, Fairfax and George proceeded along the river bank where early settlers had cleared some of the finest land and had planted it in grain, hemp and tobacco. George saw and admired. George observed a survey of lands that George William Fairfax had patented in the two “marshes” where the party was working. It was a commonplace survey and it may have made no impression on Washington; but like many a similar incident that was to come under his eye, it was typical of what the enterprising young men of the Colony were doing: they were moving ahead of actual settlement and were buying up some of the best of the lands. When George could, he would too. That was so natural a way of making money that he probably never became conscious of reaching any formal decision to share in land speculation.
Next ahead of the party was the task of reaching by the easiest practicable route the upper waters of the South Branch of the Potomac, where a large and almost inaccessible tract was to be divided into small parcels. Had the ride been directly from Frederick Town to the designated part of South Branch, the distance would not have been more than forty miles; but that would have involved a battle with roadless mountains, through muddy bottoms and across unbridged, swollen streams. A roundabout way was selected. The start for the South Branch of the Potomac was delayed by rain the morning of the seventeenth, but George and his companions, by the day’s end, reached the residence of Andrew Campbell, about twenty-five miles from town.
As the trails ran, the ride the next day to the Potomac was thirty-five miles and was disappointing besides. On the Potomac northwest of the mouth of the Shenandoah the water was six feet above normal and rising. As Genn planned to cross the river and proceed on the Maryland side, he was balked. The surveyors had to go back to Frederick Town and wait, or stay impatiently where they were, or find some occupation of their time till the flooded Potomac fell. Their decision was to visit the Warm Springs about twenty-five miles upstream. It was large labor to small end. George had to write again that “nothing remarkable happen’d.”
March 21 found the surveyors across to the Maryland shore and plodding westward. In continuous rain they pushed their mounts forward over what George pronounced the “worst road ever trod by man or beast.” The riders escaped accident and came at last to the well-stocked trading post and the sizeable residence—half home, half fort—of Thomas Cresap, a renowned frontiersman.
All day March 22 the rain fell; the next morning it still mocked the young gentlemen from Fairfax. After noon, the downfall ended and the skies cleared; but the Potomac still was too high and the road too wet for Genn to think of riding farther towards the point where he intended to recross to the Virginia side. There was the prospect of continued boredom when thirty Indians appeared from nowhere. They were a war party, they told their friend Cresap, but they were somewhat chagrined to own that their expedition had been unprofitable. One scalp was all they had to show for their hardships and their journey.
George never before had seen so many savages together nor encountered a war party that had a contingent of young braves. He watched them with charmed eyes. Presently, from the store of liquor the surveyors carried with them, a friendly offering was tendered the Redmen. It raised their spirits and stirred them to preparations for a dance. Some of them borrowed one of Cresap’s pots and half filled it with water. Then they stretched a deer skin over it to make a drum. Another savage brou
ght out a dry gourd to which was attached a part of a horse’s tail. In this gourd were shot enough to yield a rattle. Other natives, all the while, were clearing a piece of ground and fetching wood. Damp as was the day, they soon had a roaring fire around which they seated themselves in a circle. One of their leaders then launched into a speech unintelligible in every grunt but manifestly done in the best manner of sylvan eloquence.
As to all speeches, there was an end at last. No sooner had the speaker emitted his liberating grunt than a lithe savage jumped into the circle as if he still were dazed with sleep. Whether that was part of the ceremony or a pantomime of the somnolent effect of the speech, George could not determine, but the comedy of it was entrancing. Other Indians joined the first performer; the drummer and the man with the rattle began their accompaniment of the dance. George watched closely and later wrote carefully in his journal a brief account of the whole occurrence. It would be something to tell the household at Mount Vernon and friends in Chotank, and, of course, if it was to be described at all, it must be recorded accurately. That already was part of George’s code.
The current of the river west of the mouth of the South Branch did not seem to be swift enough on the twenty-fifth to endanger a horse that undertook to swim to the Virginia shore. The men, it appeared, could get across in a canoe. The party left Cresap’s and rode upstream to a point opposite Patterson Creek. There the crossing was made without incident. On the south bank, the caravan proceeded up Patterson Creek. Nightfall found the party at the farm of Abram Johnston, fifteen miles up the creek. The twenty-sixth brought the surveyors to the settlement of Solomon Hedges. On the twenty-seventh the men left the creek, turned east and reached the long-sought middle stretches of the South Branch of the Potomac at the cabins of Henry van Meter, an Indian trader. At van Meter’s, the surveyors were about thirty miles from the district where they were to undertake some surveys for James Rutledge. On March 29, eighteen days after the start from Belvoir, the first tract of Rutledge’s was surveyed, and, on March 31, George himself ran the lines of one of the surveys.
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