Lawrence Washington

Augustine married into another very wealthy Virginia family, lived a life of a wealthy and respectable southern planter, but never really showed any great interest in military or politics.

The oldest half-brother who lived to adulthood was Lawrence Washington.

He became the family patriarch at age 29 when their father died in 1743.

Lawrence is the one who helped George and his brothers get started in life.

So here's the story.

So smallpox, right? So in 1751, Lawrence Washington, George's elder half-brother, was suffering from tuberculosis.

We're, we're getting it all in here.

And had George accompany him to Barbados as a potential refuge.

The Washingtons were respectable but not exalted.

George's older half-brother, Lawrence Washington, had married into the powerful Fairfax family, giving young George a glimpse of that rarefied world.

Lawrence lived at Mount Vernon, the grand estate overlooking the Potomac, a place George came to love as home.

Lawrence had served with the British military in the Caribbean and carried himself with an easy authority that George admired.