Yet this resourceful officer, fighting almost single-handed against
certain defeat, was then only a young man a few months past twenty-one.
He was displaying the same qualities which were later to make him the
commander-in-chief of a Revolution.

George Washington was a typical example of the born leader. He had
received no set military training save that which the stern necessity
of frontier life forced upon him. Yet at nineteen we find him no less
courageous and active when facing the enemy. He had been reared as a
farmer boy, with no other intention at first than the successful
management of his father's estates in Virginia. But boys in those days
had to learn to handle the rifle as readily as the plow, and Washington
was no exception to this rule.

Born in 1732 (every schoolboy knows the month and day) at Bridges
Creek, Virginia, his first home was a plain wooden farmhouse of
somewhat primitive pattern, with four rooms on the ground floor, and a
roomy attic covered by a long, sloping roof. But before he was more
than able to walk this house burned down, and the family removed to
another farm in what was later Stafford County--an attractive knoll
across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg.

When George was eleven years old he lost his father, which threw him to
a great extent upon his own resources, so far as outdoor life was
concerned, although his education was still the care of his mother, who
is pictured as a gentlewoman of the old school--one born to command.
To her Washington owed many traits, among them his courtliness. In
those days, the gentle-bred boys always used very formal language when
addressing their elders. And so we find Washington writing to his
mother, even after he became of age, beginning his letter with,
"Honored Madam," and ending "Your dutiful son."

After his father's death, George Washington made his home for four or
five years with his brother Augustine, who lived at the old homestead,
now rebuilt, at Bridges Creek; and near there he attended school. It
was in no sense a remarkable school, being kept by a Mr. Williams, but
it was thorough in the fundamentals, the "Three R's," without going in
much for the frills. Some of Washington's exercise books are still
preserved, showing in a good round hand a series of "Rules of Civility
and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation."

Such things sound somewhat priggish today; but in those days they were
a necessary part of