00:04:09.220He was a compassionate family friend who took her in.
00:04:12.440Eskridge treated her like one of his own,
00:04:14.740offering shelter, guidance, and perhaps even a semblance of family warmth.
00:04:19.260This act of kindness left an indelible mark on Mary.
00:04:23.540It's also likely that Eskridge played Cupid,
00:04:27.600introducing a 22-year-old Mary to Augustine Washington.
00:04:32.120He was a 37-year-old widower looking to rebuild his life after losing his first wife.
00:04:37.440And he was a man on the move, a land speculator, an ironworks owner.
00:04:41.900He was always eyeing the next opportunity in Virginia's expanding wilderness.
00:04:47.740Mary and Augustine's marriage in 1731 was not a fairytale romance.
00:04:51.680It was practical, a union of necessity in a frontier society where survival often depended on such partnerships.
00:05:00.060Augustine brought three young children into the mix,
00:05:03.320sons Lawrence and Augustine Jr., and a daughter named Jane.
00:05:09.460Into this bustling family arrived George Washington in the winter of 1732.
00:05:15.320He was the first of Mary and Augustine's six children.
00:05:19.120Mary named him after George Eskridge, honoring the man who had been her lifeline.
00:05:25.400George Washington's older half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine Jr., were at school in England during his early years.
00:05:32.520When George was six years old, Lawrence returned from England at the age of 20.
00:05:36.640Augustine put him in charge of the family's property on the Potomac, while the rest of the family lived at Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
00:05:45.160But just a year later, Lawrence embarked on an adventure in the Caribbean.
00:05:49.920He joined the British military under Admiral Edward Vernon.
00:05:54.140He experienced some combat in a brief but intense clash with Spain.
00:06:00.180Lawrence's service was short, but it left him with a deep admiration for Admiral Vernon,
00:06:06.700so much so that he renamed the family estate Mount Vernon in his honor.
00:06:13.580He even hung a portrait of the Admiral in the main house that captivated the young George
00:06:18.600with tales of battle and heroism in exotic places.
00:06:23.960An enormous blow rocked the Washington family when George's father, Augustine, died in 1743 at the age of 49.
00:06:35.02011-year-old George inherited a new world of responsibility, helping care for his siblings and the family farm.
00:06:42.380His father's death changed George's direction, especially his education.0.68
00:06:47.800There would be no boarding school in England, none of that European polish that was revered in the colonies.
00:06:54.220But that early disparity planted seeds of determination in George, fueling his drive to prove himself.
00:07:01.100He had no Latin, Greek, or French, which, even when he was older, made him feel a bit rough around the edges compared to the men like Jefferson and Adams and Hamilton.
00:07:11.000Yet his boyhood drive is evident in the 200-plus pages of school exercises
00:07:18.400that are found in the files he left behind.
00:07:21.760Page after page of geometry lessons, measurements, currency conversions.
00:07:27.040As a kid, he even transcribed legal documents for things like land patents and leases.
00:07:32.460He absorbed all manner of practical knowledge.
00:07:36.320In 1807, an early Washington biographer described young George as,
00:07:41.000grave, silent, and thoughtful. Diligent and methodical in business, dignified in his appearance
00:07:47.800and strictly honorable in his deportment. But George wasn't all business and no play.
00:07:54.900He loved swimming in the deep water of the Rappahannock River. Hunting was a passion,
00:08:00.400honing his marksmanship and patience. Horse riding came naturally to him. Future peers would rave
00:24:06.280One Indian warrior claimed Washington himself fired the first shot.
00:24:09.980The French insisted that they were victims of an unprovoked attack.
00:24:14.100that they were simply on a diplomatic mission,
00:24:16.320carrying a message to warn the British off the land.
00:24:20.120Complicating things further was that the French envoy was among the dead.
00:24:25.300Some claimed the envoy was shot in the head
00:24:27.680while trying to read aloud his diplomatic orders.
00:24:31.680Washington's first taste of battle was a blurry, bloody incident
00:24:36.660that remains somewhat hazy even after the musket smoke had cleared.
00:24:40.860he didn't realize it yet but he had just sparked a major war in a letter to his younger brother
00:24:49.840jack a short time later washington wrote this about his first ever combat i fortunately escaped
00:24:55.880without a wound though the right wing where i stood was exposed to and received all the enemy's
00:25:01.420fire and was the part where the man was killed and the rest wounded i can with truth assure you
00:25:08.000I heard bullets whistle, and believe me, there was something charming in the sound.
00:25:14.240Those whistling bullets were the opening shots of the French and Indian War,
00:25:19.540an international conflict that became known in Europe as the Seven Years' War.
00:25:24.820As one British politician put it, quote,
00:25:27.260the volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.
00:25:32.860And now, Washington was trapped in it, because the French were not going to let their envoy's death go unanswered.0.63
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00:30:33.580At dusk, the French signaled they were willing to talk.
00:30:37.820Jacob von Brom, Washington's translator, shuttled between the lines, relaying terms.
00:30:43.420Washington and his fellow officers could barely read the document in the flickering lamplight,
00:30:48.120rain smearing the ink, paper blotted, words smudged.
00:30:52.600And that is why a fatal mistranslation crept in.
00:30:56.400The terms of surrender stated that the French attack was in retaliation for the French envoy's death two months earlier.
00:31:03.340But the French called it an assassination, a loaded word implying murder rather than the neutral combat loss.
00:31:12.640Around midnight, Washington and his officers signed the document believing the French word meant death or loss.
00:31:19.480It may have been Washington's inexperience, maybe a rookie mistake, but signing off on the word assassination was an inadvertent confession that handed the French a major propaganda victory.
00:31:32.540They were able to paint the British as aggressors.
00:31:35.960But Washington always insisted that he never went along with the word assassination.
00:31:41.060That we were willfully or ignorantly deceived by our interpreter in regard to the word assassination,
00:31:47.660I do aver and will to my dying moment.
00:31:52.400The British were permitted to retreat with honors,
00:31:55.300but the Indians ransacked their bag of seizing Washington's diary.
00:32:00.000He was mortified when it was published in Paris two years later to jeers and ridicule.
00:32:05.960The French milked the terms of surrender, branding Washington a murderer of a peaceful envoy,
00:32:11.680turning his Virginia celebrity into international notoriety.
00:32:16.740The battle at Fort Necessity, it was a total debacle.
00:32:20.940Yet glimmers of Washington's potential began to emerge.
00:32:25.920As historian Ron Chernow describes, it, quote,
00:32:29.100With unflagging resolution, Washington had kept his composure in battle, even when surrounded by piles of corpses.
00:32:37.600A born soldier, he was always tenacious and persevering and never settled for halfway measures, end quote.
00:32:46.960Washington returned to Virginia, stung by defeat.
00:32:51.240Three months after the Fort Necessity loss, he resigned his military post.
00:40:12.780For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings, by David Barton and Tim Barton, available now at WallBuilders dot com.
00:40:24.940In 1755, shortly after General Braddock's catastrophic defeat near Fort Duquesne,
00:40:35.980Virginia's assembly increased funds to help defend its western border from Indian attacks.
00:40:41.560Governor Dinwiddie named George Washington commander of all Virginia forces.
00:40:47.340Washington now was just 23. He had no formal schooling and strategy, no European battle
00:40:53.340experience, but he had what mattered most in Virginia at that moment, the reputation of a man
00:40:58.820who kept his head while everyone else was losing theirs. Washington threw himself into the job. He
00:41:05.640drilled his men, he scrounged supplies, he built forts along the frontier. But frontier security
00:41:11.820was misery. Endless skirmishes, burnt farms, constant shortages. He wrote bitterly about
00:41:18.680the dastardly behavior of undisciplined recruits and the stinginess of the House of Burgesses.
00:41:25.440At times, he was so frustrated he nearly resigned.
00:41:31.420Three years into this job, 1758, Washington was on military leave when he started courting
00:41:37.800Martha Dandridge Custis. She was a wealthy widow whose husband had died the previous year. She was
00:41:44.94026 years old, she had lost two children in infancy and was raising a four-year-old son,
00:41:50.740Jackie, and a two-year-old daughter, Patsy. They lived in a grand estate, ironically called
00:41:57.260the White House. Washington was smitten with Martha, but while he inched towards marriage
00:42:04.880and settling down, the French and Indian War beckoned one more time. British General John
00:42:11.260and Forbes had arrived with another large force to try again to take Fort Duquesne.
00:42:18.640General Forbes named Washington to lead the brigade in the attack on the fort.
00:42:24.100Washington was the only colonial officer to get such an honor.
00:42:26.820He hoped to redeem the previous battle losses he'd experienced.
00:42:30.960But as the British force drew closer to their targets, smoke billowed from Fort Duquesne.
00:42:36.560Indians had split from the French allies and the French, feeling they didn't have adequate
00:42:40.380forces to defend the fort, set it on fire and fled down the Ohio River. The British took the
00:42:46.740charred ruins and renamed it Fort Pitt, after William Pitt, a leader in Parliament who later
00:42:52.460became Prime Minister. The war in the Ohio Valley was effectively over.
00:43:02.280After five grueling years in uniform, Washington resigned his commission in December of 1758.
00:43:10.380Now 26 years old, he was ready to start a new, more peaceful life with Martha and her children.
00:43:18.860His five years in the military had been a thorough dress rehearsal.
00:43:24.160He had learned the importance of discipline, the danger of arrogance,
00:43:27.800and the weakness of British troops when fighting by European rules in American forests.
00:43:33.460He now had vital first-hand knowledge to draw on much later,
00:43:37.320A vision for how a ramshackle colonial militia just might be able to foil the world's most powerful military.
00:43:45.420He didn't know it yet, but he had just trained for the Revolutionary War.
00:43:53.100George married Martha on January 6, 1759 at her White House estate.
00:43:59.100Two years later, his brother Lawrence's widow died, making George the full owner of Mount Vernon.
00:44:05.300He spent the next 14 years focusing on his family and business at Mount Vernon until
00:44:09.920his country, more than just Virginia this time, called on his leadership again.0.98
00:44:18.200That circumstance was the result of a domino effect reaching back to the French and Indian
00:45:39.940Several boycott associations sprang up in the colonies,
00:45:42.860and he received information in the mail about plans for one in Virginia.
00:45:48.320He shared the plan with his neighbor and close friend George Mason.
00:45:52.280Turns out, Mason was the one who wrote the plan.
00:45:55.540In a significant step for Washington, he believed now was the time to take action, writing,
00:46:02.340At a time when our lordly masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom,
00:46:10.160it seems highly necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors.
00:46:18.020By then, Washington had been elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.
00:46:22.380So in their next session, he presented Mason's boycott plan to the members,
00:46:26.940which included a lanky, red-haired 26-year-old named Thomas Jefferson.
00:46:32.540The new royal governor of Virginia did not like this seditious proposal, so he dissolved the House session.
00:46:39.860Undeterred, Washington and other members continued their organizing in Williamsburg in a tavern.
00:46:45.180they signed an agreement to boycott all British goods subject to taxes in America.
00:46:51.320They even added a list of British goods that were not taxed, so they could boycott those as well.
00:46:57.540Washington, the once loyal British officer, had turned a corner into resistance leadership.
00:47:06.300One year later, in 1770, Washington is in his element.
00:47:12.040He's in the quiet hills of western Virginia with a small group of friends,
00:47:16.660exploring the land they had acquired as investments.