Lawrence Washington

This article deals with politicians, for the mathematician see Lawrence C. Washington

Lawrence Washington

Lawrence Washington (* 1718 in Virginia, † 1752 in Mount Vernon ) was a soldier and well-known landowner in colonial Virginia . A founding member of the Ohio Company of Virginia and a member of the Fairfax County's Colonial Legislature , he was primarily responsible for ensuring the founding of the city of Alexandria , Virginia on the banks of the Potomac River in 1749. Washington was also the beloved, older half-brother of the future President of the United States, George Washington , and the first to inhabit the Mount Vernon mansion, giving it its current name.

Military career

At the end of 1739 the British Parliament decided to set up a "Regiment of Foot" (infantry) in the American colonies to be used in the war against Spain in the West Indies, known as the War of Jenkins' Ear . The regiment, which was formed from 4 battalions, was named Colonel William Gooch's 43rd Regiment of Foot ; this showed his primacy within the British Army. It was also decided that company commanders were allowed to recruit within the colonies. Colonel William Blakeney was sent across the Atlantic with commissions signed by King George II to distribute to the governors. On July 10, 1740, the Governor of Virginia, William Gooch, gave the Captain's Commission to Lawrence Washington over one of four Virginia companies; his commission is preserved in the archives of Mount Vernon.

The 4 Virginia companies were mustered in Williamsburg in August 1740, but the transport ships to Jamaica did not set sail until October at the earliest. The main British invasion forces did not arrive in Jamaica until early January 1741 - the expedition, under the dual command of Vice Admiral Edward Vernon and Brigadier General Thomas Wentworth, finally began in late January. In early February, the decision was made to attack the Spanish fortress in Cartagena (in present-day Colombia). At the time, some of the Americans were being dispatched to Admiral Vernon's warships to serve as marines. Lawrence was happy, as he later wrote to his father, to have been appointed "Captain of the Soldiers acting as Marines" on board Vernon's flagship , the HMS Princess Caroline (an 80-gun ship of the line ). Because of this calling, the 43rd Foot was later called the "Goochs Marines".

Lawrence was a survivor of the war campaign against the port city of Cartagena , New Granada (Battle of Cartagena de Indias) and against Cuba and Panama . The attack on Cartagena in March – April 1741 turned out to be a catastrophe when over half of the British forces fell ill and died of tropical diseases, most notably yellow fever. The fever prevailed on the newly arriving troop ships, while the crews on Vernon's warships, which had been in the Caribbean for a year, were largely immune to disease. Lawrence Washington survived the fever that killed nearly 90 percent of Americans.

In January 1741, 3,255 officers and men of Gooch's American Regiment were embarked in the port of Kingston, Jamaica. Not quite two years later, on October 24, 1742, only 17 officers and 130 sailors could be mustered from among the surviving Americans; they returned to North America in November and December, accompanied by 268 sick people.

Washington was also involved in the British landing at Guantanamo (Cumberland Harbor) Cuba in 1741, as part of Admiral Vernon's unrealized plan to attack Santiago from behind (from land) and from the front (from sea).

Upon returning to Virginia in late 1742, Lawrence learned that the post of adjutant to the militia commander was vacant. He applied for the office and in the spring of 1743 was appointed adjutant to Governor Gooch with the rank of major.

Personal life

Lawrence is believed to be born in 1718, the second child of Augustine Washington and Jane Butler (whose firstborn son, Butler, died in childhood). The family then lived in Westmoreland County , Virginia, near the Rappahannock River . In 1729 Augustine brought Lawrence and his younger son, Augustine, Jr., to England and enrolled them in Appleby School. When Augustine returned to Virginia a month later and discovered his wife had died, he left his daughter Jane in the care of his family in Westmoreland County. The father married the young heiress Mary Ball in 1731 .

Lawrence completed his training and returned to Virginia in 1738 - here he took over the management of his father's 2000 hectare plantation on the Potomac River in Little Hunting Creek (later Prince William County; after 1742 Fairfax County). At the end of 1738 Augustine moved with his second family to the recently acquired Ferry Farm on the outskirts of Fredericksburg. The Prince William County Deed books show that Lawrence began acquiring tracts of land on the boundaries of the Little Hunting Creek family estate in March 1739. The purchases made in his own name indicate that Lawrence was 21 years of age.

Washington married Anne Fairfax (1728–1761), the eldest daughter of Colonel William Fairfax of neighboring Belvoir , herself a land agent for his cousin, Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron , in July 1743 .

When the new Fairfax County was formed in 1742 (from north Prince William County), Lawrence was elected (for the county and family) to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1744 to represent Fairfax. In 1747, he joined the Northern Neck with his father-in-law, other prominent landowners, and business people to form the Ohio Company of Virginia with the intent of opening trade between Central America and the Potomac River. The company needed a warehouse for this, an interface for trade. The grounds of Hugh West's tobacco warehouse on the western bank of the Potomac near the mouth of Hunting Creek were suitable as the site because its deep waters allowed ships from London to sail straight to the quay. But the local tobacco growers were eager to start a new town away from the river and further upstream on Hunting Creek. During the legislature from 1748 to 1749, Lawrence was responsible for promoting the land on the river and securing the votes required to approve a new Potomac town where it served the interests of the Ohio Company. In May 1749, Governor William Gooch signed a law establishing the city of Alexandria, and Lawrence was given authority "to be absent from service for the restoration of health."

Before the first public auction of the town lots in July 1749, Lawrence sailed to London to do business there on behalf of the Ohio Company and to seek medical advice from English doctors on his health. His younger brother George, an aspiring surveyor, took part in the Public Vendue (auction), copied the city map "A Plan of Alexandria, Now Belhaven" and listed the individual parcels and the selling prices for his brother. Although founded as Alexandria, the city was soon named Belhaven - in honor of the Scottish patriot John Hamiliton, 2nd Lord Belhaven. In 1751 the city council held the "Belhaven Lottery" to raise money for a town hall, and George Washington also speaks of "Belhaven" in his correspondence from the French and Indian War in the late 1750s.

George Washington accompanied his half-brother Lawrence to the hot springs in Bath (now Berkeley Springs, West Virginia), which Lawrence often visited to improve his health. In 1751 they traveled together to Barbados in the hope that Klima could continue to help, since Lawrence was sick with tuberculosis. This was the only trip George Washington ever took outside the confines of what became the United States of America. Upon the death of Lawrence's widow, George inherited the Mount Vernon estate, which Lawrence had named in honor of the British Admiral Edward Vernon, under whom Lawrence had once served. Lawrence died of tuberculosis in his home at Mount Vernon in July 1752. His widow married the Lee family shortly afterwards, so that 20-year-old George lived on and managed the Mount Vernon plantation.

Lawrence and Anne had several children (none of whom survived childhood):

• Jane Washington (September 27, 1744 - January 1745)
• Fairfax Washington (* August 22, 1747 - October 1747) (it was customary to give the mother's surname as the first name of the first male child)
• Mildred Washington (September 28, 1748 - 1749)
• Sarah Washington (7 November 1750; † 1754?), She was her father's heir - if she had survived, she would have inherited Mount Vernon instead of her uncle George Washington.

literature

• Dwight, Allan. To the Walls of Cartagena (Colonial Williamsburg Press: 1967)
• Harkness, Albert. "Americanism and Jenkins' Ear", Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol.37 No. 1 (June 1950), pp. 61-90
• McBarron, H. Charles, Jr., William A. Foote, and John R. Elting. "The American Regiment, 1740-1746 (The 61st Regiment of Foot, or Gooch's Regiment)." Military Collector and Historian, Vol.21 (Fall 1969), pp. 84-86.
• Harding, Richard. Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century: The British Expedition to the West Indies, 1740–42. (Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 61) (Boydell & Brewer, London: 1991)
• Leach, Douglas Edward. Roots of Conflict: British Armed Forces and Colonial Americans, 1677–1763. (University of North Carolina Press: 1986)
• Ranft, Brian M., editor. The Vernon Papers (Navy Records Society, Vol. 99) (London: 1958)
• Titus, James. Old Dominion At War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia. (University of South Carolina Press: 1991)
• Watkins, Walter Kendall. "Massachusetts in the Expedition Under Admiral Vernon in 1740-41 to the West Indies", Society of Colonial Wars, Year-Book for 1899 (Boston: 1899) pp. 65-124
• Frankly, Lee. Gooch's American Regiment, 1740-1742, America's First Marines. (Veterans Publishing Systems: 2009)
• Henry Read McIlwaine, Henry R., editor. Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1748-49, p.385, entry for Wednesday May 3, 1749
• Henriques, Peter R. "Major Lawrence Washington versus the Reverend Charles Green: A Case Study of the Squire and the Parson." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol.100 No.2 (April 1992) pp.233-264

Web links

• How We Got GUANTANAMO
• Alexandria Archeology Looks Back at 250 Years of Alexandria History