| Bio |

Who they were

George Washington was born on 22 February 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia^[3]. His older half-brother Lawrence inherited the family's Potomac River estate and named it Mount Vernon, after a British admiral he had served under^{[4, p. 260]}; Lawrence became an early influence on the younger Washington. As a young man, Washington trained and worked as a land surveyor^[5], work that took him deep into Virginia's frontier country years before he ever led troops there.

Washington's surveying work on the frontier put him in the middle of the contested borderlands between British and French territory. During the French and Indian War, he served alongside British General Edward Braddock's expedition; Braddock ignored repeated warnings from both Washington and Benjamin Franklin about the dangers of the march^[2]. The experience gave Washington real command experience and a regional reputation as a capable, level-headed officer. Decades later, when the American colonies broke with Britain, that reputation helped make him the choice to lead the new Continental Army as commander in chief^[6].

Washington's defining role was leading the Continental Army through the Revolutionary War, holding a fragile, underfunded, often outnumbered force together until American independence was won. His authority was called on again in 1787, when he was chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia; he spoke very little during the four months of debate, letting delegates argue the details while his presence lent the proceedings legitimacy^{[7, p. 2]}. In 1789 he was unanimously elected the first President of the United States^[8]. As president, he also personally chose the location for the new federal capital on the Potomac River, after Congress authorised him to select the site^{[9, p. 10]}.

After two terms as president, Washington chose not to seek a third, deliberately setting a precedent of voluntarily leaving power^{[2, p. 408]}. In his farewell remarks to the nation, he warned against the 'baneful effects of the spirit of party,' fearing that organised political factions would divide the young republic^{[10, p. 19]}. He retired to Mount Vernon and died there on 14 December 1799^{[11, p. 39]}.

Washington's unanimous election as the first president^[8] and his decision to walk away from power at the end of two terms set an unwritten precedent for a two-term presidency that many of his successors chose to follow^[12]. His warning against political parties proved strikingly prophetic: within years of his farewell address, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans had formed exactly the kind of rival camps he feared^{[10, p. 19]}. Generations later, Americans still use the title given to him even in his own lifetime: 'the Father of his Country'^{[13, p. 17]}.

Contrary to popular legend, Washington's famous false teeth were never made of wood: surviving dentures attributed to him were built from materials including ivory^{[14, p. 11]}. He also, despite the popular association, never actually lived in the White House itself^{[14, p. 11]} — that distinction belongs to his successor, John Adams, the first president to move into the building on the site Washington had chosen.

| Legacy & Reputation |

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