George Augustine Washington

George Augustine Washington ( – February 5, 1793) was a nephew of George Washington who served as manager of the Mount Vernon estate from 1786 to 1791. He also served as an officer in the American Revolutionary War, including as a cavalry soldier, as part of Washington's guard, and as an aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Lafayette.

Early life and military career George Augustine Washington was born around 1759. He was the firstborn of George Washington's youngest brother Charles and Mildred Thornton Washington. Little is known of his early life other than he grew up in or near Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 1777, at approximately age 18, he was offered a junior officer’s commission in a light horse regiment of the Continental Army.

Mount Vernon For the next three years, George Augustine Washington traveled to a number of locations along the east coast of the United States, as well as to Barbados and Bermuda, in an effort to find relief from his illness. George Washington arranged for the support and financial assistance in the different locales of his nephew’s recuperation. In 1785 George Augustine returned to Virginia in better health, but still sickly. In October of that year he married Frances “Fanny” Bassett, a favorite niece of Martha Washington, in a ceremony at Mount Vernon. George and Martha Washington were fond of the couple and invited them to reside with them at the estate, which they did. In 1786 George and Martha Washington gave the newlyweds over two thousand acres of land which was part of the estate.

Although George Washington largely ran the estate himself when he was present, the daily supervision of Mount Vernon had been the responsibility of Lund Washington, a distant cousin of Washington's, since the mid 1760's. Lund stepped down from the position in 1785 and George Augustine Washington took over the job in the spring of 1786. The farms that constituted Mount Vernon by that time had grown to 7,000 acres.

In May 1787 George Washington travelled to Philadelphia for four months to attend the Constitutional Convention. During this time he wrote frequent and voluminous letters to his nephew regarding the agricultural operations at Mount Vernon. For example, two days after the convention opened, he asked his nephew if he had "tried both fresh and salt fish as a manure" and recommended that he plant buckwheat. The two men consulted constantly about the operation of the estate during George Augustine's time there, on everything from crop rotation to mule breeding.

In April 1789, when George Washington travelled to New York City to assume his duties as the first President of the United States, he entrusted George Augustine “with the general management of all my concerns,”. Despite his many duties as President, George Washington acted as executor of his nephew's estate.

In his will, George Washington left legacies to the three surviving children of George Augustine and Fanny Washington, Anna Maria, George Fayette, and Charles Augustine Washington, stating: “as on account of the affection I had for, and the obligation I was under to, their father when living, who from his youth had attached himself to my person, and followed my fortunes through the viscissitudes [sic] of the late Revolution - afterwards devoting his time to the Superintendence of my private concerns for many years… thereby affording me essential Services, and always performing them in a manner the most felial and respectful.”

Ancestry