Collateral relatives. Washington was a half first cousin twice removed of President James Madison, a second cousin seven times removed of Queen Elizabeth II 1926- of the United Kingdom, a third cousin twice removed of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and an eighth cousin six times removed of Winston Churchill.
CHILDREN Washington had no natural children thus, no direct descendant of Washington survives. He adopted his wifes two children from a previous marriage, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis. Johns granddaughter Mary Custis married Robert E. Lee. BIRTH Washington was born at the family estate on the south bank of the Potomac River near the mouth of Popes Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia, at 10 A.M. on February 22, 1732 Old Style February 11, the date Washington always celebrated as his birthday in 1752 England and the colonies adopted the New Style, or Gregorian, calendar to replace the Old Style, or Julian, calendar.
He was christened on April 5, 1732. CHILDHOOD Little is known of Washingtons childhood. The legendary cherry tree incident and his inability to tell lies, of course, sprang wholly from the imagination of Parson Weems. Clearly the single greatest influence on young George was his half brother Lawrence, 14 years his senior.
Having lost his father when he was 11, George looked upon Lawrence as a surrogate father and undoubtedly sought to emulate him. Lawrence thought a career at sea might suit his little brother and arranged for his appointment as midshipman in the British navy. George loved the idea. Together they tried to convince Georges mother of the virtues of such service, but Mary Washington was adamantly opposed. George, then 14, could have run away to sea, as did many boys of his day, but he reluctantly respected his mothers wishes and turned down the appointment. At 16 George moved in with Lawrence at his estate, which he called Mount Vernon, after Admiral Edward Vernon, commander of British forces in the West Indies while Captain Lawrence Washington served with the American Regiment there.
At Mount Vernon George honed his surveying skills and looked forward to his twenty-first birthday, when he was to receive his inheritance from his fathers estate the Ferry Farm, near Fredericksburg, where the family had lived from 1738 and where his mother remained until her death half of a 4,000-acre tract three lots in Fredericksburg 10 slaves and a portion of his fathers personal property.
EDUCATION Perhaps because she did not want to part with her eldest son for an extended period, perhaps because she did not want to spend the money, the widow Washington refused to send George to school in England, as her late husband had done for his older boys, but instead exposed him to the irregular education common in colonial Virginia.
Just who instructed George is unknown, but by age 11 he had picked up basic reading, writing, and mathematical skills. Math was his best subject. Unlike many of the Founding Fathers, Washington never found time to learn French, then the language of diplomacy, and did not attend university. He applied his mathematical mind to surveying, an occupation much in demand in colonial Virginia, where mens fortunes were reckoned in acres of tobacco rather than pounds of gold. RELIGION Episcopalian.
However, religion played only a minor role in his life. He fashioned a moral code based on his own sense of right and wrong and adhered to it rigidly. He referred rarely to God or Jesus in his writings but rather to Providence, a rather amorphous supernatural substance that controlled mens lives. He strongly believed in fate, a force so powerful, he maintained, as not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of human nature.