Augustine Washington and his wife were a gentleman and lady of the eighteenth century, living in Virginia.

So far as we know without guessing or conjecture, they were simple, honest, and straight-forward, devoted to the care of their family and estate, and doing their duty sensibly and after the fashion of their time.

Their son, to whom the greatest wrong has been done, not only never did anything common or mean, but from the beginning to the end of his life he was never for an instant ridiculous or affected, and he was as utterly removed from canting or priggishness as any human being could well be.

Let us therefore consign the Weems stories and their offspring to the limbo of historical rubbish, and try to learn what the plain facts tell us of the boy Washington.
Unfortunately these same facts are at first very few, so few that they tell us hardly anything.

We know when and where Washington was born; and how, when he was little more than three years old,[1] he was taken from Bridges Creek to the banks of the Rappahannock.