In the Footsteps of Our First President (Part One)

Since the next article in my National Geographic Magazine is particularly long, I'm opting to post it in two sections.  "The Travels of George Washington: Dramatic Episodes in His Career as the First Geographer of the United States," by William Joseph Showalter, Sc.D., L.L.D., January, 1932, is extremely interesting, exciting, and is making President Washington a very real person to me.

Our first American President, George Washington, started out in life as a surveyor.  Picture him as a 16-year-old lad, surveying Virginia with a friend.  "From then until his last Journey to Philadelphia in 1798, he traveled far and wide, considering the transport methods of those days," (p. 1).

Washington kept meticulous records and diaries, and we know the wide extent of these trips; covering nearly every part of the original colonies and beyond - by horse.  "Washington sometimes averaged upward of 35 miles a day for more than a week, " (p. 1). We cannot imagine the dangers and inconveniences of travel in colonial times: mostly horrible "roads," frequently sleeping outside, unfriendly natives, and even getting lost.  Also: there were no bridges on rivers, no dams nor locks to avoid the falls on rivers.

Before George was a 20-year-old, he had to go to sea to accompany his ill older brother, Lawrence, to Barbados to recover.  While there George contracted smallpox but recovered a month later.  Back in Virginia, young George, an aristocrat, son of a wealthy landowner, had dinner with Governor Dinwiddie, who entrusted him to take an important letter "to the French in northwestern Pennsylvania demanding that they retire from the Ohio Basin . . . little could he then have dreamed that the message he bore from Governor Dinwiddie, under instructions from the King of England. . . was the first in the chain of events" which led to the American Revolutionary War (pp. 9 - 11).

At age 22, Washington was a Lieutenant Colonel, the commander of a Virginia regiment.  The French troops attacked Fort Necessity and George Washington had to surrender his vastly outnumbered forces on July 3, 1754.  Soon thereafter, General Braddock, commander of the British forces in the colonies, invited him to join the British Army.  In their first battle with the French in Pennsylvania, their troops were surprised and beaten.  General Braddock died, George Washington was asked to and accepted the command of the entire Virginia militia.  In time he met John Adams in Boston.

Wow!  'General Washington' was defeated in battle as a young army officer!  In his job as surveyor, he learned all the states in the soon-to-be-formed Union.  Can you imagine, taking a letter from the English King to the General in charge of all the French forts along the Ohio River, demanding they leave!!  George apparently had 'street smarts' and knew very well how to get along with everyone, especially the Native Americans, whose help he needed in removing the French.  With his second defeat, he learned that the traditional battle with armies facing each other and firing would no longer work: his troops were surprised and attacked from the woods.  This knowledge surely would help in later ousting the British also from America.  We shall see - tomorrow!