Washington as Public Land Surveyor

Washington created surveys and maps from his boyhood through the French and Indian Wars.

Boyhood and Beginnings

George Washington was born February 22, 1732, to Augustine and Mary Ball Washington at Popes Creek Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia. When his father died in 1743, eleven-year-old George inherited the small Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River where he was then living with his mother and siblings, while his older half brother Lawrence Washington inherited the larger farm at the junction of the Little Hunting Creek and Potomac Rivers that he renamed Mount Vernon. As he grew to maturity, young George had little use for the meager prospects at the Ferry Farm plantation. After flirting briefly with the idea of a career in the Royal Navy, he began studying geometry and surveying, using a set of surveyor's instruments from the storehouse at Ferry Farm.

Among the earliest maps attributed to Washington are sample surveys included in Washington's so-called "School Boy Copy Books," housed in the George Washington Papers in the Manuscript DIVISION of the Library of Congress. The schoolbook includes lessons in geometry and several practice land surveys Washington prepared at the age of SIXTEEN. These include a survey of the turnip garden belonging to Lawrence Washington, on whose Mount Vernon estate he had been spending increasing amounts of time. Early in 1748, with as few as three practice surveys under his belt, George Washington accompanied George William Fairfax and James Genn, Surveyor of Prince William County, on a month-long trip west across the Blue Ridge Mountains to survey land for Thomas, LORD Fairfax, 6th Baron Cameron. Although the surveys were actually performed by the more experienced members of the party, the trip was Washington's formal initiation into the field and led him to pursue surveying as a profession. The trip also marked the beginning of a lifelong relationship between Washington and the powerful and influential Fairfax family that gave the young surveyor access to the upper echelons of Virginia society.

The Fairfax Connection

A survey of the northern NECK of Virginia, 1747

In the Northern Neck of Virginia, the extensive region between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers, land matters were governed by the Proprietor, Lord Fairfax, and his Virginia representative and first cousin, William Fairfax, through the Northern Neck Proprietary OFFICE. In 1649 King Charles II of England had deeded five million acres lying between the rivers to a group of loyal supporters, including the Fairfax family. Through death and marriage the land was consolidated under one man, Thomas, Lord Fairfax, who established his seat at Belvoir, approximately four miles upstream from Mount Vernon. Later, he moved west of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Greenway Court in Frederick (now Clarke) County, Virginia.4