WASHINGTON 



6199 



WASHINGTON 



kegee and on sociological topics relating to the 

 people of his race. In an extremely busy life 

 he found time to write The Future of the 

 American Negro, the autobiographical Up from 



Slavery, Working with the Hands, My Larger 

 Education and The Man Farthest Down. 



Consult the books named above written by him ; 

 also, Holtzclaw's The Black Man's Burden. 



of Arms 



Where 

 Washington 

 was made 

 PreaHent 



GEORGE WASHINGT 



ASHINGTON, GEORGE (1732-1799), an 

 American soldier and statesman, first President 

 of the United States, the greatest figure in 

 America in the eighteenth century. One of the 

 most recent historians of the American people 

 has said that "General Washington is known to 

 us, and President Washington; but George 

 Washington is an unknown man." Washington 

 stands as a type, and has stamped himself on 

 the world's imagination. In the progress of 

 time he has become more or less mythical, and 

 the real Washington has become almost lost to 

 sight. He has been pictured as a lonely figure, 

 of lofty intellect and tremendous moral force, 

 who had about as much warmth as an ancient 

 statue. 



true that this myth has some reality in 

 it. In Washington there was something of 

 greatness, of majesty, or whatever people 

 choose to call it. which held men aloof. He 

 was a difficult man to know, and though he 

 wrote thousands of letters, speeches and mes- 

 sages, scarcely one of these reveals anything of 

 ih" man. But behind this myth is a real man, 

 a man of thoughts and emotions, a man who 

 had visions of the future as well as sharp, vivid 

 pi< tures of the present. He was great as a 

 soldier, equally great as a statesman, greater as 

 a leader of men, but greatest of all merely as a 



And he who fails to see the humanity of 

 Washington fails utterly to grasp the meaning 



Ml" hi- lit'*'. 



So groat an impression did Washington make 

 on the world in his own lifetime that strangers 

 1 1 n< lit took to construct for him a suitable 

 f.imily tree. One of these genealogists wrote to 

 Washington about his ancestry. Washington 

 replied politely, Diving the names of the Vir- 

 ginia Washington, but explaining that he knew 



practically nothing about the family in Eng- 

 land. He had been, he said, a busy man, and 

 had paid but little, attention to the subject. 

 It is now fairly well established, however, that 

 George Washington was descended from the 

 Washingtons of Sulgrave Manor, in Northamp- 

 tonshire, the family running back to a Norman 

 knight, Sir William de Hertburn. Sir William, 

 about the year 1180, became knight of a little 

 village of Wessyngton, or Washington, in the 

 north of England, from which the family took 

 its name. 



Many of the Washingtons became eminent. 

 One, in the sixteenth century, was mayor of 

 Northampton, and in 1538 Sulgrave 



Manor as a gift from King Henry VIII. Sev- 

 eral of the mayor's descendants were con- 

 spicuous in the armies of Charles I, and one 

 was implicated in Monmouth's rebellion. On 

 the whole they were a successful, thrifty race, 

 "owning lands and estates, wise magistrates and 

 good soldiers, marrying well, and increasing 

 their wealth and strength from generation to 

 generation." 



In 1658, two brothers, John and Lawrence 

 Washington, bought lands in Westmoreland 

 County, Virginia. John became prominent in 

 the colony, was elected to the house of bur- 

 gesses, and at one time was a colonel of th< 

 Virginia militia. He loft a fair estate to be 

 divided among his children, the eldest of whom 

 was Lawrence. Lawrence's second son was 

 AuguMme. who married first Jane Butler, by 

 whom he had three sons and a daughter, and 

 second, Mary Ball, by whom he had four sons 

 and t\\o daughter*. The second son of tin- 

 second marriage was christened George. He 

 was born on February 11, Old Style, or I-Ybni- 

 ary 22, New Style, 1732. His birthplace, the 



