George Washington Monument

George Washington was born into a family of wealth and privilege in Westmoreland County, Virginia on February 22, 1732. His father, Augustine Washington, was a prominent local planter who also served as a justice of the county court. A few years after his birth, the family took up residence at another one of their properties, Little Hunting Creek Plantation (later renamed Mount Vernon). In 1738, the family moved once again, this time to a plantation on the Rappahannock River called Ferry Farm. It was here that Washington spent most of his younger years. Despite his family’s elevated socio-economic status, he never received a formal education and never attended college. Washington’s only instruction during his early years probably came from private tutors hired by the family. 

During the late 1740s, Washington commenced a career in surveying. After reading books on surveying and completing plans for small plots of land, he joined a surveying party put together by neighbor and friend George William Fairfax. During a month-long outing, Washington and the other men divided up a large land tract on Virginia’s western frontier into smaller lots. In 1749, probably as a result of his work for Fairfax, Washington received a commission to serve as a surveyor for the newly created Culpeper County. 

In the 1750s, Washington’s attention increasingly turned to military affairs. He joined the Virginia militia and in 1753, by order of Governor Dinwiddie, embarked on a 900-mile journey to deliver a message to the French at Fort Le Boeuf near the shores of Lake Erie. The communication that Washington carried informed the French that Virginia claimed the area and demanded that they leave immediately. The following year, after the French refused to leave, Governor Dinwiddie sent Washington (now a lieutenant colonel) and about 150 men to the Ohio Country to assert the colony’s claims to the land. The expedition was a disaster (it resulted in the death of Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville and Washington’s eventually surrender at Fort Necessity) and helped to spark the French and Indian War. After resigning his commission, Washington volunteered to serve as an aide to General Edward Braddock, who had orders to capture Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh) and drive the French from the Ohio Country. In July 1755, French forces and their Native American allies ambushed Braddock’s army near what is now Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Despite having two horses shot out from beneath him and four musket ball holes in his coat, Washington survived the ordeal. His conduct during the engagement helped to repair his reputation as a military commander and as a result he was given command of all Virginia’s forces. In 1758, Washington resigned his commission and returned to his home at Mount Vernon. 

While enjoying the life of a gentleman farmer at Mount Vernon, Washington settled down and became involved in politics. In 1758, he began a nearly two-decades-long stint in the Virginia House of Burgesses. The following year, he married twenty-seven-year-old widow Martha Dandridge Custis. At Mount Vernon, Washington engaged in scientific farming, experimenting with fertilizers, methods of crop rotation, and livestock breeding. He also expanded the works of the plantation by building a gristmill and establishing a whiskey distillery, which became the largest in the United States by the time of his death in 1799. 

At the Second Continental Congress in May 1775, delegates chose Washington to command the Continental Army. In the early years of the American Revolution, poorly-trained, ill-equipped, and often outnumbered, the Continental Army suffered many defeats at the hands of British forces. Washington, however, against long odds, kept the army together and, on several occasions, successfully prevented it from being captured. His stunning victory at Trenton in December 1776 helped to turn the tide of the war and his victory at Yorktown in October 1781 effectively secured American independence. 

After the war, Washington resigned his commission and returned to Mount Vernon. His retirement, however, proved brief as national political developments required his attention. As a delegate from Virginia, he attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Two years later, he was unanimously elected the first President of the United States. After serving two, four-year terms from 1789 to 1797, Washington retired to Mount Vernon. Before leaving office, he penned a letter to the American people (known to historians as Washington’s Farewell Address) that advised them to avoid political partisanship and long-term entanglements with foreign powers. On December 14, 1799, he died of a throat infection at the age of sixty-seven. 

About one hundred years after Washington’s death, the Daughters of the American Revolution hired sculptors Daniel Chester French and Edward C. Potter to design a monument to commemorate the Founding Father and first President of the United States. The result was a larger-than-life-sized bronze equestrian statue of Washington mounted on a granite base, which the Daughters of the American Revolution gave as a gift to the French government for its help during the Revolutionary War. The monument was unveiled in Paris’s Place d’Iéna on July 3, 1900. Two years later, a group of prominent Chicago businessmen and philanthropists asked permission to erect a replica of French and Potter’s work in the city’s Washington Park. In 1904, the monument was dedicated at the park’s northwest entrance.  

"Biography of George Washington." George Washington's Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Web. 26 January 2021 <https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/biography/>.

"Washington (George Washington Monument)." Chicago Park District. City of Chicago. Web. 26 February 2021 <https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/washington-george-washington-monument>.