A biography of George Washington on one line: his Virginia boyhood and surveying, the Virginia Regiment and the French and Indian War, Mount Vernon and the people enslaved there, the House of Burgesses, eight and a half years in command of the Continental Army, the Constitutional Convention, two terms as the first president, and his last years and will. A sample built from the cited sources, chiefly Wikipedia, the Papers of George Washington (Founders Online) and Mount Vernon’s research library. **How to read it.** Chapter headings mark the stages of his life. His life’s stages, homes, commands, offices, campaigns and family are durations; everything else is a moment with its sources. Related events (a battle and the one it led to) are linked. Colours follow the first tag: family, land, slavery, war, politics and the presidency, writing, and the wider world. **Dates.** Days in Virginia time, approximated as a fixed UTC−5. Britain and its colonies used the Julian calendar (Old Style) until September 1752; dates before then are converted to the Gregorian calendar, and the date as written at the time is kept as each moment’s original historical date. He was born on 11 February 1731/32, Old Style: 22 February 1732.
115 moments · 1732-01-01T00:00:00-05:00 CE – 1802-05-22T00:00:00-05:00 CE · by @athan · @athan
Dies at Mount Vernon
family
After a day of struggling to breathe, bled heavily by his doctors, Washington dies in his bedroom at Mount Vernon, aged 67, with Martha, **Tobias Lear** and several enslaved household servants present. The illness was most likely acute epiglottitis.
Date precision
Between 10 and 11 p.m. (Tobias Lear’s account); placed at 10:30