The legend lives on
George Washington: The Father of our County
Bottom line, and one that has frustrated Rappahannock history buffs for centuries, is that there is no line.
The legend is firmly ensconced in publications, historical highway markers, even a stone monument on Gay Street, explaining how a young George Washington on July 24, 1749, surveyed the Town of Washington later named in his honor.
Or did he?
Most recently, Rappahannock County author and historian Maureen Harris’ well-researched book, “Washington, Virginia, History: 17352018,” confronted the lore surrounding Washington surveying the town, among her 310 pages of other fascinating tidbits.
Bottom line, and one that has frustrated Rappahannock history buffs for centuries, is that there is no line.
In other words, nobody has definitive proof, one way or the other, whether etched in marble or scribbled on paper (in those days made from recycled linen and cotton rags), that young George’s otherwise famous 1749 measurements of the town ever took place.
Indeed, much is documented of Washington’s “professional surveying” from 1749 to 1752, some culled directly from his personal journals. He was described as a meticulous note taker. And there is no doubt that he lugged his heavy surveyor’s chains up and down these very hills and hollows that later became Rappahannock County.
After all, upon qualifying for his surveyor’s license from the College of William and Mary, 17-year-old George in July 1749 took an oath of allegiance to the Crown and was sworn in as the first Official Surveyor of Culpeper County (which Rappahannock County was carved from in 1833).
In other words, modern day Rappahannock County was George’s personal territory, and it was ripe for surveying.
Which brings us to financier Cyrus A. Ansary’s new book, “George
Washington, Dealmaker-in-Chief: The Story of How The Father of Our Country Unleashed The Entrepreneurial Spirit in America.” For three decades, Ansary, also a lawyer, educator and philanthropist who lives in the D.C. suburbs, was a member of the Life Guard Society of George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
At age 15, Ansary points out, George was looking for opportunities suiting a boy with little formal education.
“Jobs were scarce, and those that paid in cash were even more so,” the author writes. “The keen business sense which became a hallmark of his work in later life demonstrated itself early when he noticed that most of the surrounding land had not been surveyed and had no recognizable boundaries. He already had a solid grounding in math.”
“Without arithmetic,” Washington penned in his diary, “the common affairs of life are not to be managed with success.”
It was while growing up on Ferry Farm, located along the banks of the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg, that George learned to use his late-father’s (Augustine Washington died when George was 11) surveying instruments, such as a theodolite to measure angles and a compass, and he practiced map-making in the meadows. Soon he decided to make surveying his profession, and began by running lines for his neighbors. By age 16, he had joined a surveying party.
“Armed with surveying gear, Washington roamed the hills and valleys of backwoods Virginia,” Ansary notes. “Roaming Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge Mountains, Washington had to cultivate a hardy lifestyle.”
His efforts paid off. George became Culpeper County’s surveyor, commissioned in July 1749 — the same month he is believed to have mapped the town of Washington 25 miles away — by a leading colonist named Robert Tureman, in whose home the first Culpeper Court convened.
Simply put, if the young surveyor did not lay out Washington, the first such town in the United States named in his honor, then by George he surveyed much of the land surrounding it.