Lawrence Washington (1718 – July 26, 1752) was an American soldier, planter, politician, and prominent landowner in colonial Virginia. As a founding member of the Ohio Company of Virginia, and a member of the colonial legislature representing Fairfax County, he also founded the town of Alexandria, Virginia on the banks of the Potomac River in 1749.
Washington was the older half-brother of George Washington, the future President of the United States. He was the first of the family to live in the house known as Mount Vernon, which he named after British Admiral Edward Vernon, his commanding officer in the War of Jenkins' Ear. Washington became ill with tuberculosis. He and George travelled to Barbados, hoping that the warm climate would alleviate his ill health. This failed, and Lawrence died at Mount Vernon the following year.
Biography
Early years
Lawrence was born into the Washington family, being believed to have been born in 1718, the second child of Augustine Washington and his wife Jane Butler Washington (whose first-born son, Butler, died in infancy in 1716.) The family was then living in Westmoreland County, Virginia, along the Potomac River. In 1729, Augustine took Lawrence and younger son Augustine, Jr., to England and enrolled them in the Appleby Grammar School in Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria. Augustine would return to Virginia months later and discover that his wife had died, leaving daughter Jane in the care of the extended Washington family in Westmoreland County. In 1731 he married the young heiress Mary Ball, and they had a family. This second Augustine Washington family - including George and his siblings - moved into a home on the Little Hunting Creek plantation in 1735. The foundations of this home can still be seen underneath the present Mount Vernon.
Lawrence completed his education and returned to Virginia in 1738 to oversee the management of his father's 2,000-plus acre plantation on the Potomac River at Little Hunting Creek (then in Prince William County; after 1742 Fairfax County). In late 1738, Augustine moved his young family to Ferry Farm, which he had recently purchased, on the edge of Fredericksburg in King George County. Prince William County Deed books reveal that the following spring, March 1739, Lawrence Washington began to purchase tracts of land bordering the family's Little Hunting Creek estate: the purchases, in his own name, indicates Lawrence had attained his majority (age 21).
Military career
In late 1739 the British Parliament decided to raise a "Regiment of Foot" (infantry) in the American colonies, to be used in the West Indies for the war against Spain, known as the War of Jenkins' Ear. The regiment, to be composed of four battalions, was designated Colonel William Gooch's Regiment of Foot. The company commanders were to be recruited in the colonies and Colonel William Blakeney was sent across the Atlantic with blank commissions, signed by King George II, to be distributed to the various governors. On 10 July 1740, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia William Gooch awarded the senior (of 4) Captain's Commission in one of Virginia's companies to Lawrence Washington: his Commission survives in the archives of the Mount Vernon estate.
The four Virginia Companies mustered at Williamsburg in August 1740, but the transport ships did not set sail for Jamaica until early October. The main British invasion force did not arrive in Jamaica until early January 1741, and the Conjunct Expedition, under the dual command of Vice Admiral Edward Vernon and Brigadier General Thomas Wentworth, got under way in late January. In early February commanders decided to assault the Spanish fortress at Cartagena (in present-day Colombia). At that time, some of the Americans were seconded to Admiral Vernon's warships to be used as Marines. Lawrence was fortunate, as he would later write to his father, to be appointed "Captain of the Soldiers acting as Marines" on board Vernon's flagship, the 80-gun HMS Princess Caroline. Because of this service, the 43rd Foot was called "Gooch's Marines."