Joy Lee Schmidt

The Washington family was a wealthy Virginia family which had made its fortune in land speculation.[10] Washington's great-grandfather John Washington immigrated in 1656 from Sulgrave, England, to the British Colony of Virginia where he accumulated 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) of land, including Little Hunting Creek on the Potomac River. George Washington was born February 22, 1732, at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia,[11] and was the first of six children of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington.[12] By English common law Washington was a naturalized subject of the King, as were all others born in the English colonies.[13] His father was a justice of the peace and a prominent public figure who had three additional children from his first marriage to Jane Butler.[14] The family moved to Little Hunting Creek in 1735, then to Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1738. When Augustine died in 1743, Washington inherited Ferry Farm and ten slaves; his older half-brother Lawrence inherited Little Hunting Creek and renamed it Mount Vernon.[15]