land Seminary of Washington, D. C., and in 1879 was appointed an instructor in the Hampton Institute. There he was successful in directing the work of about 75 Indians of whose education General Armstrong was then making trial, and introduced and took charge of the night school, which soon became an important feature. In 1881 he was appointed to establish a colored normal school at Tuskegee, Ala., the State Legislature having granted an annual appropriation of $2000 to be used for the salaries of instructors. He opened the school in a dilapidated shanty and a church, with 30 scholars, and himself as the only teacher. Subsequently he transferred the school to its present site on a plantation bought for $500, about one mile from Tuskegee. His efforts to better the condition of this institution led to his appearance at many important public assemblages, both religious and secular, and his addresses on these occasions soon made him known as a remarkably fluent and effective speaker with a faculty for telling a homely story to illustrate his point. He became known, moreover, not only as a man who was tremendously in earnest, but as a far-sighted and practical reformer. His most notable address was that given at the opening of the Atlanta (Ga.) Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895. In 1900 he organized the National Negro Business League at Boston, Mass. His publications include: The Future of the American Negro (1899); a remarkable autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901, originally published in The Outlook in 1900-01); and Character-Building (1902), a collection of addresses to Tuskegee students. Consult also, Thrasher, Tuskegee; Its Story and Its Work (Boston, 1900), with an introduction by Washington. See Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.
WASHINGTON, Bushrod (1762-1829). An American jurist, born in Westmoreland County, Va. He was the son of John Augustine Washington, younger brother of General Washington. He graduated at William and Mary College in 1778; studied law in Philadelphia; practiced for a time in his native county; and from 1780 until the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown served as a volunteer in Col. J. F. Mercer's troop of horse. In 1787 he became a member of the House of Delegates, and in the following year was a member of the Virginia convention that ratified the Federal Constitution. In 1798 he became an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Four years later, upon the death of Martha Washington, he inherited the mansion of Mount Vernon and part of the estate. Among his published works are: Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Appeals of Virginia (1798-99); and Reports of Cases Determined in the Circuit Court of the United States, for the Third Circuit, from 1803 till 1827, edited by Richard Peters (1826-29). His Life was written by Horace Binney (privately printed, Philadelphia, 1858).
WASHINGTON, George (1732-99). Commander in chief of the Continental forces in the War of the American Revolution, and first President of the United States. He was born in Westmoreland County, Va., near the confluence of Bridges' Creek and the Potomac River, February 22, 1732, and was the oldest son of Augustine Washington by his second wife, Mary Ball. His great-grandfather was John Washington, who emigrated from England about 1657 with his brother Lawrence. John became a landed proprietor and planter in Virginia, in the ‘Northern Neck,’ a district between the Potomac and the Rappahannock rivers, and left two sons, Lawrence and John, the former being the father of Augustine. The little recorded concerning Augustine Washington represents him as a man of high character. By his first wife he had three sons and a daughter; by Mary Ball, who was endowed with great intelligence and beauty, four sons and two daughters. Soon after George's birth his father removed to a farm on the Rappahannock River, opposite Fredericksburg, where he died in 1743. This estate was bequeathed to George; the other children were handsomely provided for, Lawrence receiving the estate afterwards called Mount Vernon. But while the family had a competency and were large landed proprietors, the facilities for education in the colonies — particularly in the South — were at this time so meagre that the younger children were forced to depend on the poor common schools of the neighborhood, where they acquired only the rudimentary branches. Yet, though naturally diffident, George saw something of planter society, and at the age of thirteen he wrote out for his own use 110 maxims of civility and good behavior.
He was athletic in form, much given to exercising, a graceful and expert rider, and fond of the wild life of the woods and encampments. He had the customary boyish proclivity toward imitation of military service, possibly in a marked degree, and appears to have been generally chosen as a leader by the companions of his youth, and to have been deferred to by them in the settlement of disputes which arose. As a growing lad, he was not remarkable as a scholar; was rather reserved and sedate in his demeanor; and was of a more serious turn of mind than is usual among boys. In 1740-42 his half-brother, Lawrence Washington, served, as a captain of Virginia troops, under Admiral Vernon in the expedition against Cartagena, and later named his residence on the Potomac Mount Vernon, in honor of his commander. This connection led to the offer of a midshipman's commission to George, which, but for the opposition of his mother, he would have accepted. Such education as the boy received was completed by the time he was sixteen years of age, his last two years of schooling having been devoted mainly to the study of engineering, geometry, trigonometry, and surveying, probably from his having a mathematical turn of mind, and also because the profession promised advantages, in view of the wild state of the country and the increasing demand for accurate surveys.
In 1748 Washington received a commission aa public surveyor, and the summer months of the next three years were occupied by him in the duties of his profession, more particularly in the region of the Alleghanies, and especially on the immense tracts of land owned by Lord Fairfax, the first surveys of which he made in March and April, 1748. Surveyors were scarce, and the remuneration was ample, and as the young Virginian was economical, he saved money, and acquired property by purchase long before he
